Man Fights Back After Robber Targets His Family's Car in Golden Gate Park in SF
A smash and grab robbery in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park was caught on cell phone video after the victim prevented the suspect from driving off with his belongings by chasing him on foot.
The victim, Jason Andaya, was in Golden Gate Park for 10 minutes with his wife Natalie and son Jasper, 2, when the incident occurred. The family was on a road trip from Seattle, KTVU reported.
"I’m just wondering like what's this guy doing on that side of our vehicle… he's got no business there," Andaya told the station.
The video, taken on Feb. 24 by SF resident Forrest Lanning, shows a man in a blue hoodie snatching a suitcase from the broken window of a parked SUV and dashing off to the other side of the street.
Andaya runs after the man to a getaway car driven by an accomplice and gets into a scuffle before the backpack, which was filled with his son’s clothes and toys, is dropped by the suspect.
Lanning recorded the incident around 1:08 p.m. in the area of Martin Luther King Drive and Kezar Drive and shared the video on Twitter.
“I saw this guy at the car and I thought he was just trying to open it, but then I saw him break the window and then I’m like, he’s doing one of those smash-and-grabs,” Lanning told CBS SF BayArea's Betty Yu (@bett_yu). “And then he was going to run across the street and what I didn’t expect is the owner of that car, chased after him.”
Lanning managed to get the suspects’ Chevy Impala license plate, 5ZZN552.
— Forrest Lanning (@rabidmarmot) February 24, 2021
The San Francisco Police Department said it has no record of the incident. Andaya and his family called 911 but couldn’t stay to file a police report. They will do so once they return home.
"At this time, we've not located a police report matching the incident depicted in the Twitter post. It is possible that the victim did not file a report,” the department said in a statement.
An SFPD spokesperson added that robberies in the Richmond district have increased, but auto burglaries are down.
This is the second smash-and-grab Lanning has witnessed in Golden Gate Park in two years. Both times the victims had checked out of hotels and carried luggage in their vehicles.
San Francisco to Redistribute $120 Million from Police to Black Community
San Francisco Mayor London Breed released a plan Thursday to redistribute $120 million from the city’s law enforcement budget to projects aimed at helping the city’s black minority.
Bay Area public radio station KQED reported:
San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Thursday announced a plan for how the city will spend $120 million over the next two years, pulled from law enforcement budgets, to reinvest in the city’s long-underserved Black communities.
“The Dream Keeper Initiative,” as it’s dubbed, increases investments in workforce development, health campaigns, youth and cultural programs and housing support. The allocations reflect spending priorities conveyed by Black residents during a series of community meetings and public surveys led last year by the city’s Human Rights Commission, Breed said.
…
Black people make up only about 5% of San Francisco’s population — a proportion that has consistently decreased in the last 50 years — but make up nearly 40% of its homeless residents. Black residents have among the city’s highest mortality rates and lowest median household incomes, and are involved in a disproportionately high percentage of police use-of-force incidents.
Breed is the city’s first African-American mayor.
The city’s plan follows similar plans in Los Angeles, where Mayor Eric Garcetti promised last year to cut up to $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department — more than 10% of the total — for investment in “communities of color.”
The move was a response to activists’ demands to “defund the police,” which accompanied the Black Lives Matter protests.
San Francisco is in the midst of a massive crime wave, with homicides rising 35% in 2020. The city has also become synonymous with petty crime and public nuisances, such as open drug use and defecation on the sidewalks, leading many residents to consider moving elsewhere.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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