Police in San Francisco claim there has been a dramatic drop in crime around Union Square since the November smash and grab thefts.
Directly after the robberies, police beefed up their numbers in the area and city officials closed streets from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. in a bid to prevent the mob-style break-ins. In a press conference Thursday, police chief Bill Scott announced that the tactics are working.
"From theft to cars being broken into to burglaries, I mean during that one day there was a lot of crime committed, but we’ve seen about an 83% drop," he said.
The data compared the 16 days before the Union Square smash and grab to the 16 days after. Scott said it's helping shoppers and store owners feel safer during the holiday season, but may not be sustainable in the long term.
"We will have an increase in deployment from what it used to be, I can’t guarantee it will be at this level, but we're going to keep this as long as we can," he assured. "We're definitely going to keep it through the Christmas season and then we'll re-assess because we do have an entire city to police."
Scott declined to specify how many extra officers are out there because he wants to keep would-be criminals guessing. "We want people to say, 'I don’t know how many officers are out here, but they're everywhere, so we're not going to come here and commit crimes.'"
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