Bay Area Car Theft at Epidemic Levels, Enabled by Feckless California Policies

Steven Hayward is noticing that California’s downward spiral is accelerating.

The most recent reason why?  No, it has nothing to do with the mayor of Stockton, California recently announcing he’s going to give its poorest residents $500 a month, without any conditions whatsoever.  Neither does it have to do with this state’s proposed legislation to make it illegal for servers at restaurants to give plastic straws with drinks without being asked… with an attached $1000 fine.   It doesn’t even have to do with the fact that California Gov. Jerry Brown compared President Donald Trump supporters to ignorant cave dwellers.

Nope.  It has to do with a sophisticated crime ring in the Bay area that steals key fob signals on newer model cars, so thieves can just walk on out and steal the new car of their choice:

I was the victim of a clever gang of organized car burglars in the Bay Area who are using sophisticated scanners to copy and boost the key-fob signal for recent model keyless entry and ignition cars. Once you latch on to the signal, the car door unlocks at the touch of your hand, as people with such models know. (I learned about this security flaw subsequently as looked into how this could have happened.) All of the restaurants and retail establishments in my neighborhood have posted printed signs saying “leave no valuables in your car; frequent car thefts in the area.” I have taken electronic countermeasures against this happening again.

This kind of activity is epidemic in the Bay Area right now. There were 30,000 car thefts reported in San Francisco last year (much higher in the Bay Area as a whole). The police are doing very little about it.

And that’s not all.  Also in San Francisco, Powerline reproduces a crazy Twitter story of a car rental business owner named Sharky Laguana (CEO & founder of @Bandago) whose van was stolen.  Even though he — through a crazy turn of events — ends up spotting the van in rush hour traffic, he can’t get the police to respond.  For some reason, they call it embezzlement instead of theft, which is a lot less pressing of a legal matter.  Sharky, however, doesn’t want to just let this van out of his sight, because he knows it’ll be the last time he sees it.  So, he follows the van for hours…  and finally takes matters into his own hands.  Once stopped, he goes up to the window of the van, knocks on it, and tells the driver that the police are on their way.  If she gets all of her stuff out now, she can go free.  Turns out, she had a lot of belongings, suitcases, clothing. She was living in the van and had no intention of ever giving it back.

It was a risky move that citizens should not have to take. As Ed Driscoll noted, “No matter how badly the Bay Area is circling the drain, I’d love to be wrong, but I can’t see a clone of Rudy Giuliani winning in San Francisco anytime soon.”

This is just a further, very sad example of what liberalism does to communities and states.  It’s a shame that California, so rich with natural beauty and resources, is so poor in common sense.

Hat Tip: Powerline Blog

Image Credit: By James086 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons