SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — If your car has been broken into in San Francisco, you are in good company.
Car break-ins have been on the uptick since 2014, and there seems to be no end in sight.
KRON’s Dan Kerman has been looking into this issue and has crunched the numbers and has spoken to victims.
Someone can break into a car and steal thousands of dollars of items very quickly. In San Francisco, vehicle theft climbed more than 30 percent in 2015, compared to the previous year.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Sabrina Jusino, a car break-in victim. “I go to city college. I make minimum wage. It costs a lot of money to be repairing my window.”
Jusino said her car was just broken into for the second time in three months.
“They didn’t even take anything,” she said. “They broke into my car. I didn’t have anything to steal. I had some dirty laundry on the floor, and that’s about it. They didn’t take anything. They just broke into it.”
The surge in auto break-ins has meant big business for repair shops like In & Out Auto Glass on Bayshore Boulevard.
“We see something what’s called smash and grab, but now, they are more curious,” said Ricky Villareal, who is a sales manager at In and Out Auto Glass. “If they don’t see anything, they go to the next car. They break it, to see if nothing there, and they move on.”
San Francisco police have set up undercover sting operations which they say is helping, but even if a person is caught, it doesn’t mean he or she will be arrested and go to jail.
For example, if the person who broke into one car KRON saw is caught, but the property taken falls below $950, the suspect simply gets a citation.
“That means if the officer apprehends the criminal, all we are doing is giving him a ticket and handing it to them for a court date, so that way they can turn around and commit more crimes when we can’t see it,” San Francisco police Ofc. Carlos Manfredi said.