It seems all these drones, license plate readers, and ‘bait cars’ might be doing the trick on stopping a notorious SF crime, as car break-ins were down 50% in 2024 compared to the previous year, and at the lowest level the city has seen since 2003.

San Francisco has long been notorious for the smashed-glass shards that come with this city’s persistent car-break-in problem, a problem that even plagues the rich and famous when they come here, like a CNN reporter, Senator Adam Schiff, and the guy from the viral Fleetwood Mac skateboarding video. But after the SFPD started trying some new strategies like bait cars, drones, and automated license plate readers, SFPD data started showing a significant drop in car break-ins this past September.  

And it wasn’t just a blip in the bips. Today’s Chronicle sifts through decades of reported SFPD car break-in data to find that SF car-break-ins are at a 22-year low, and at their lowest reported levels since 2003. In fact, they may be at even lower levels than prior to that year, because as the Chronicle notes, “that’s only because records earlier than 2003 weren’t readily available.”

There were roughly 8,500 car break-ins reported in SF in 2024, which still sounds like a lot, but is way down from the more than 20,000 car break-ins that were reported in 2022. And people don’t really talk about how the worst year for car break-ins was 2017 (28,500 break-ins), which was actually Ed Lee’s final year in office. These lower levels of reported break-ins are consistent with both property crime and violent crime rates being on the decline in San Francisco, reflecting a similar nationwide trend.

Moreover, SF saw a larger than 50% drop in car break-ins in 2024 compared to 2023 (there were 18,400 reported break-ins in 2023). And 2025 data is looking pretty good so far too, with only 457 car break-ins being reported in February. Two months is obviously a pretty small sample size, but at the current rate, we’d be looking at well under 6,000 break-ins for 2025 at this pace.

Of course people are going to argue that simply no one is reporting their car break-ins anymore, and indeed, the numbers are probably somewhat underreported. But the lower numbers of reported break-ins have to be indicative of something. And the Chronicle also adds that "Auto glass repair shops contacted by the Chronicle said they had noticed fewer people coming in with smashed windows, and the scattered glass that was once a common sight on streets and sidewalks in busy neighborhoods is far more infrequent."

Okay the second half of that statement is pretty anecdotal, but the first half about auto repair shops is certainly meaningful.

And these numbers do absolutely coincide with the SFPD’s announced autumn 2023 car break-in crackdown. So credit where it’s due, as that crackdown appears to have led to a sharp reduction in break-ins. And the simplest explanation is that a small number of suspects is behind a very large number of break-ins, so maybe getting rid of a few prolific bip artists has had an outsize effect on the overall number of San Francisco car break-ins.

Related: First Suspect Arrested In SFPD’s ‘Bait Car’ Campaign Has Prolific History of Car Break-Ins [SFist]

Image: @adelinamanaut via Twitter