Posted on 11/08/2021 6:22:34 AM PST by grundle
The racket began around 3:30 a.m. on a recent Thursday, as two thieves rummaged through the basement of a three-unit Victorian in San Francisco’s Castro district.
Startled by the noise, a dog in the house barked frantically. One of the residents, Mauricio, scrambled out of bed and grabbed a baseball bat. He heard a clunk. By the time the man got to the shared basement, Mauricio told The Chronicle, the burglars had stolen his bicycle and his neighbor’s e-bike.
Mauricio, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he fears retaliation, called the police. Within hours they had apprehended two suspects — Nicholas Tiller and Tyler Howerton — at Seventh and Market streets downtown, known to be the center of the stolen goods trade in San Francisco.
According to documents reviewed by The Chronicle, both men had extensive criminal histories: Howerton had been arrested seven times on suspicion of burglary since 2019; Tiller had been arrested 13 times in burglary cases since 2013. Both were on probation at the time they were apprehended.
What to do about the two men is a quandary for a city pursuing criminal justice reform while debating how to manage rates of property crime that for years have been among the highest in the nation. District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office has charged them with felony first-degree residential burglary, among other counts, and they could face six years in prison if convicted.
The district attorney’s spokesperson, Rachel Marshall, said in an email to The Chronicle that the office would consider other types of intervention, such as drug treatment, “if there is a specific, viable plan that can address what is driving their behavior.”
Superior Court Judge Brian Ferrall ordered Howerton released from jail with GPS monitoring. He did so over the objection of the District Attorney’s Office, which noted that Howerton wasn’t cooperating with his existing probation. However, as the judge pointed out, another prosecutor had not opposed Howerton’s release at his earlier arraignment.
Tiller remains in jail. Attorneys representing Tiller and Howerton declined to comment.
As of Oct. 31, San Francisco police had received reports of 810 burglaries or attempted burglaries this year in the jurisdiction of the Mission District Police Station, which includes the Castro. That number marks a 13% increase from the 716 reported by the end of October last year.
Police have dispatched more officers to the Castro and nearby areas to address the surge, fueled by a high-end bike boom and correlating with a drop in other forms of theft. The department also adjusted investigators’ work schedules, enabling them to respond to crimes in the moment. Such measures probably helped in arresting Tiller and Howerton, police said.
At the same time, residents and city leaders are searching for answers: Should they tolerate a high level of burglaries as a downside of city living, and focus on barricading their homes? Should people who are repeatedly accused of stealing be targeted with rehabilitation services, or incarcerated so they can’t commit more crimes?
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman is frustrated. He’s a longtime supporter of criminal justice reform whose policy views evolved as he grappled with property crime in his district — a persistent problem that makes residents feel vulnerable in their own homes.
“It raises tricky questions about incarceration,” Mandelman said. “Because so far we’ve been unable to release (Tiller and Howerton) without them committing more crimes. And the question for reformers is, ‘What do we do with someone like that?’”
The Castro and surrounding neighborhoods are hot spots for burglary, in part because many of the homes have garages or basements where residents stow bicycles — an enticement for thieves, because they are valuable and fairly easy to swipe.
Several factors are fueling the trend, from neighborhood architecture, to the e-bike craze, to the increased popularity of bicycles during the pandemic, because gyms were closed and people were driving less often. Thefts of e-bikes and bicycles took off at a time when auto burglaries became less appealing, owing to the dearth of tourist rental cars with luggage in their trunks.
“Unfortunately a lot of these victims have bicycles inside their garages that are being targeted,” San Francisco police Lt. Scott Ryan said. As head of the burglary and auto unit, he saw a rise in home break-ins as the pandemic got into full swing, along with another disturbing pattern: more burglaries happening in the early morning, when people were home asleep.
The timing of these crimes concerns police, in part because it could lead to confrontations between perpetrators and residents. To some, it makes the burglary feel more invasive. Castro resident and Google public affairs chief Rebecca Prozan shuddered, noting that a flight of stairs leads directly from her garage into her kitchen.
Burglars broke into the garage of her Victorian duplex twice at the beginning of the pandemic, she said, stealing bicycles, luggage and wine. They returned twice more to burglarize an adjacent mail room, after she secured the garage door.
Other residents say it doesn’t matter whether a resident is home when a stranger breaks in; the crime still feels like a personal violation. For some, the recent burst in property crimes, many of them unreported, has caused feelings of unease to permeate the Castro. The historic district, long known as a safe haven for the LGBTQ community, has become such a hotbed that police now recommend people lock up their bikes inside their garages.
“It’s not a violent crime, but when someone is in your garage, where you keep your Christmas decorations, your tools, your bicycles — it just makes you feel less safe,” Duboce Triangle resident David Burke said. He’s a civilian employee of the Police Department and serves as the public safety liaison for his district.
For many policymakers, burglaries present a vexing challenge. As Burke observed, the crimes are serious but not violent. The perpetrators are often methodical, repeat offenders with tools and expertise. They know how to drill holes and use wires to open garage doors; they don’t have the desperation of people who steal packages from porches, or even of the drugstore shoplifters who grab toiletries from shelves and toss them into garbage bags.
And in the case of the most recent arrest, both defendants have long rap sheets. Tiller even made headlines in 2016 for participating in a robbery of the Make-a-Wish Foundation at 400 Market St. and stealing — among other things — a scooter autographed by former Giants right fielder Hunter Pence.
Boudin and other policymakers believe that incarceration fails to address the underlying factors in property crime, such as poverty and addiction.
Although San Francisco offers diversion programs and collaborative courts that link people to treatment, the criminal legal system in general “cannot resolve all of the major, structural problems — including poverty, a lack of housing, and widespread addiction that create the conditions for property crime,” said Marshall, his spokesperson.
But some burglary victims have grown disenchanted with the city’s emphasis on programs and services over jail.
“When it comes to the point that these are repeat offenders who are well known and documented — that’s probably the line,” Mission Dolores resident Justin Forth said. Burglars broke into his apartment building’s communal bike storage three times in August, stealing bicycles and a trailer he uses to carry his dog.
While criminal justice experts and policymakers debate strategies and philosophies, Castro residents are taking steps to secure their homes. Eric Hansen said he has installed security cameras, upgraded locks on the windows and placed a sensor on the front door of his white stucco house, which was burglarized twice this year.
Police dusted for fingerprints and analyzed security footage after the second burglary, in September, but were unable to gather enough evidence to make an arrest. The man who jimmied open a door and stole a bike from Hansen’s garage had worn gloves.
Over the course of the year, Hansen and his neighbors acknowledged that property crime is inevitable in San Francisco. They began fortifying their homes with surveillance cameras, simulated TVs and timed lights, while also trimming back trees and removing retractable cords from garages.
“Police gave us some ideas about how to improve not just our house, but the whole block,” Hansen said. “The basic message that they have is, ‘If your block is anti-theft, they will go to another block.”
Some residents grudgingly accept this element of city living. Others are appalled, saying they’ve begun to lose faith in the legal system.
Prozan, the Castro resident who dealt with four burglaries during the pandemic, worked as a prosecutor under former District Attorneys Kamala Harris and George Gascón. She learned from experience that burglaries are difficult and time-consuming to investigate, and that police often see them as a lost cause, no matter who sits in the District Attorney’s Office.
Forth knows this firsthand. Recently while walking through the Castro, he passed by an encampment and glimpsed one of his stolen bikes, as well as the dog trailer. He called police, who were aware that Forth had filed reports for both items.
But the two officers who arrived said they couldn’t do anything. They believed Forth but lacked proof the bike and trailer were his.
“So the situation had to be me going up to people who happen to be living on the street, and saying ‘Hey, I think you stole that,’” Forth said. “And I just wasn’t willing to steal my bike back.”
Firing Squad.
Fire the GD district attorney!
Make them ride the bikes 100 miles with no seats........................
Mauricio, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he fears retaliation,
Mauricio, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he fears retaliation,
Mauricio, who asked to be identified only by his first name because he fears retaliation,
Will that include the city kakistocracy?!?
One can mark their bike in hidden places.
List the serial number of your electronic devices in an e-mail sent to yourself.
— Frank Zappa, Call Any Vegetable
Yes they will. And the more mobile among them will move elsewhere and vote Dem. It makes me so angry.
The actual, original purpose of having a professional police force, is to protect criminals from being lynched (which is what happens when people get fed up over crime).
Why would anyone accept criminal behavior as “just part of city living”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqTfK2pRXs0&t=336s
They should ban fences and armed security for the politicians and elitists. The answer will suddenly become clear to them.
Boudin and other policymakers believe that incarceration fails to address the underlying factors in property crime, such as poverty and addiction.
Yes, that may be true for a small group. help them. The rest...............................
No decent, rational person would voluntarily live in Democrat run urban areas or send their children to those public schools. Eventually the childless, bizarre elites and crazies will be displaced by the “undocumented” and some rationality may return. Then again maybe not. The places might just rot when Republican Congresses refuse to chronically subsidize them.
Yes.
And protecting yourself from a burglary should be/is a crime.
Voting for socialists has consequences, so suck it San Francisco.
Maybe they’ll be found floating face down in SF Bay.
Vigilante justice is still better than no justice at all.
Another data point proving our civilization is becoming totally unraveled. We have transitioned beyond a civilization based on reason (logic and critical thinking) to one based on emotion, mysticism, and a perverted concept of “equity”.
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