Stores are not the only targets for smash-and-grab looters in San Francisco, as the crime wave has extended to automobile break-ins to the tune of 3,375 larcenies in the city in the month of November alone, most of them car break-ins.
"It's out of control," San Francisco Patrol Special Police Officer Alan Byard told CBS-5 San Francisco. "We have people that are doing this — are breaking into cars in Nob Hill, then they go down to Fisherman's Wharf, then they come out here. Then they go to another part of the city and the police can't chase the cars, it's considered a misdemeanor."
It is a nightly event in the crime-riddled city now, and car burglaries are the No. 1 problem he is seeing as a member of a neighborhood police force authorized by the city of San Francisco.
"I come out here every night and I see new piles of glass," Byard said.
Byard serves in SFPD's Central District, the famed tourist hot spots that include Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown, where the highest number of smash-and-grabs are occurring, according to the report.
Crime is rising, but the area has long had problems, which are just becoming more magnified and prevalent in recent years.
"I've always seen a lot of glass here so it's no surprise," resident Aileen McAllister told CBS-5. "It's been going on for years. I've lived here in the '90s and my car has been broken into actually, not as of late, it was probably in the last 20 years, broken into twice."
The difference now is the indifference to smash-and-grabs, Byard told CBS-5.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.