Television Crew In San Francisco Has Vehicle Broken Into Doing Story on Car Break Ins

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Robbers break into TV crew’s SUV while crew was reporting on car break-ins

SAN FRANCISCO —
A television production crew investigating car break-ins in San Francisco inadvertently played themselves when thieves broke into not just a bait car, but the camera crew's vehicle as well.

Reporters with Inside Edition brought a car to the city's Alamo Square with a Michael Kors purse and a $250 speaker in plain view inside. Both items had been fitted with GPS tracking devices. As anticipated, the car was broken into by a woman and a man soon after it was parked. The crime, the reporters later noted after reviewing footage, took about 20 seconds.

The two alleged thieves fled to a bus before ending up at a nearby subway station, where Inside Edition's Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero approached the man. Speaker still in hand, the man then attempted to head onto the subway.

"Five million people are gonna see you steal that," Guerrero said on camera. "So you can choose to give it back or not."

After being further pressed, the man told Guerrero he was going to call his mother before putting the speaker down on the platform and walking away. Guerrero later traced the purse to a nearby garbage can.

The reporter later caught up with a resident whose surveillance camera caught the break-in. But, to Guerrero's shock, the camera crew's van was broken into while she was conducting an interview inside the neighbor's residence.

"They stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment," she said, opening the SUV door to shattered glass. "We actually got hit twice in one day."


San Francisco and Oakland, California, are currently fighting a car break-in epidemic. In 2017, break-ins hit a historic high, with 31,122 reported incidents. Only 2 percent of cases saw arrests.