San Francisco is asking – and willing to pay huge sums of cash – for the public's help to stem the rampant and brazen car theft plaguing the city.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Tuesday announced the city is launching a new, privately-funded cash rewards program where people can earn up to $100,000 in exchange for information leading to the arrest and conviction of criminals engaging in smash and grab car thefts.
The Mayor's Office called the rewards system a "keystone element" of a citywide plan which "aims to educate motorists and visitors; deter, investigate and arrest active auto burglars; and shut down the upstream criminal enterprises that traffic in stolen goods, fueling street-level auto burglaries."
"The frequent auto burglaries in San Francisco are not victimless crimes, they have real financial and emotional consequences for the victims and we’re continuing to work to hold people who commit these crimes accountable," Breed said in a release. "These break-ins hurt our residents, especially working families who do not have the time or money to deal with the effects, as well as visitors to our City whose experiences are too often tarnished after an otherwise positive experience.
We've made good progress in recent months since announcing our Tourism Deployment Plan, but there's still more work to do to ensure that everyone feels safe on our streets. I want to thank our partners in the private sector who understand the urgency of this issue, and we want to be very clear to the organized groups who are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes that we are committing the resources and the manpower to hold you accountable."
Authorities said that "less than a dozen" regular crews account for the large majority or auto burglaries throughout the Bay Area.
The initiative is fully funded by private donors in the hospitality and tourism industry. Individuals who provide "accurate and transparent information" could receive up to $100,000 pending the arrest and conviction of the suspects.
"Today's announcement adds a promising new tool to the coordinated efforts of public and private sector partners to fight auto burglaries in San Francisco," Police Chief Bill Scott said. "We know the profit motives of a few upstream fencing operations are fueling thousands of auto burglaries and other kinds of thefts. This generously funded cash reward enables us to flip the script on profit motives — creating an incentive that can help us bring these criminal enterprises to justice."
The rewards program debuts just days after a popular Australian singer and TikTok star was robbed at gunpoint in the city's Cow Hollow neighborhood.
"Just imagine going to visit the most beautiful city in the world and coming back to your car and actually witnessing someone breaking into your car. And, sadly as we just saw, holding you hostage to gunpoint," Breed said during her press conference announcing the program.
While car burglaries continue to severely impact the city, they've generally decreased since 2017.
Auto thefts did increase from 2020 to 2021, though that was mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place orders. This year's car thefts are less than 2019, the most recent pre-pandemic data available.
Officials are hoping their new rewards program will bolster the positive results from their previous initiative which increased patrols in high traffic areas in the city, as crime has dropped 37% since the program was introduced in July.
"The criminals are committing these acts in broad daylight in this city and they think that they can get away with it, and the goal is to make sure that they know eyes and ears are on the streets and we’re not going to let them get away with it," Breed said.
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