Blue Wave Spawns Crime Wave Coast to Coast

CLAY: Hope all of you are having a great run-up to Christmas, the holiday season, wherever you may be across the country. People that are not having, necessarily, a great time? We played yesterday the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, who called for an aggressive expansion of policing because she’s so fired up about all the crime that’s going on.

Things have gotten so bad in San Francisco, Buck — you teased this as we went out to the last break and I saw this story, and I was like, “This cannot be true.” People in San Francisco are now leaving their trunks open because they are so afraid of people breaking into their car, they want to make it clear that they have nothing in their trunk; so please don’t break into my car. Listen here to cut 14 as people in San Francisco discuss the rampant crime that is leading them to leave their trunks open.

STEPHANIE SIERRA: We see the aftermath of car break-ins all too often — windows smashed, glass shattered — but now some people are getting so fed up, they’re leaving their trunks open, hoping that’ll at least spare them the hefty bill to get it fixed. (voice over) Call it the price of parking in the Bay Area. But now it’s come to this: Trunks left open in broad daylight in Oakland.

DRENNON LINDSEY: It doesn’t really surprise.

STEPHANIE SIERRA: Oakland’s deputy interim police chief Drennon Lindsey says. It’s the first she’s heard of it, but it’s happening in San Francisco too. The San Francisco Police Department has reported a 32% increase in car break-ins paired with a 25% increase in auto burglaries. Same story in Oakland.

BUCK: Think about what this really means. It’s people that are so terrified and anxious about their car being broken into, vandalized, stuff being thrown from them, they’re essentially creating a “please, please don’t rob me” sign by leaving the trunk to their car open. I remember ’cause I lived in New York in the nineties when things were really bad, Clay, you would see this all the time.

There would be these people who would put “no radio” signs — little-handmade “no radio” signs — in the window and that was just a constant reminder as you look at around, a psychological hit you would take of wow, there’s a lot of crime in this city and remember when everyone had The Club in their car, on the steering wheel? That became a big thing for a while.

CLAY: Yeah. I remember in the nineties, Buck, and a couple my friends lived in neighborhoods where it was pretty sketchy, and we would leave the car unlocked because you were afraid. You’d take anything of any value out of the car and then you would leave your car door unlocked so if somebody wanted just get in your car and look through it, at least then they wouldn’t break your window.

I’ve never heard of leaving the trunks open, but then that disappeared, right, because the only thing that Joe Biden might have gotten right in his political clear was the 1994 crime bill, which crime collapsed as a result of us putting more police officers on the street, not letting criminals. The “three strikes and you’re out bill” that now everybody hates, you see. I was reading this morning an article — I think it was in the Wall Street Journal — about all the DAs. There now are requirements that you have to be charged with a felony 10 times in some places — 10 felonies — before you face significant bail. It’s unbelievable.