New report on car break-ins may be great news for Bay Area residents and businesses
But there is still a long way to go to create sustainable change.
Crime in the San Francisco Bay Area has been a topic in the media for a few years now, and the most prevalent of the crimes in the area has been car break-ins.
The car burglaries have been so rampant that they've affected not only residents in the area, but also businesses. Over the last two weeks, major restaurants chains In-N-Out and Denny's announced they would be closing locations within the same vicinity in Oakland. Both companies cited safety concerns for staff and customers as a reason for the closures.
Related: Iconic restaurant chain joins In-N-Out by closing store due to this city's rampant crimes
But a new report by the San Francisco Chronicle points out some positive trends showing that car burglaries are going down in the Bay Area at least compared to the year prior.
The Chronicle reported that for the three-month period from Sept. 1 to Nov. 26, San Francisco police received 3,399 car break-in reports, which is down nearly 100% from the 6,703 reports from the same period in 2022.
The trend continued for December and January data with the number cut by even more than half versus prior year for those two months.
Related: Beloved burger chain closing only store in this big city due to crime
Oakland data also showed improvements in the last three months of 2022 — 2,594 reports in 2023 versus 3,377 in 2022 — although this trend hasn't continued into the new year.
The report spoke to a police spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky, who credited the police's use of data to create a better strategy for catching criminals.
However, the Chronicle also received an opinion from assistant professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University Thaddaeus Johnson, who said that while the San Francisco police has made progress, there needs to be improvement in larger-scale problems like poverty and unemployment for the effects to be more sustainable.
Car break-ins are only one of the many problems affecting residents and businesses in the area; Break-ins of small businesses have also been a massive problem.
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