between crossing guards and driverless cars. it did not recognize me in the intersection. we investigate how often it's happening near schools in san francisco. also reports of car break ins are

dropping. but what's really happening on the streets? we get some unique perspective from a man making it his mission to return stolen luggage, plus an unsanctioned pool party in a south bay backyard. turns out the property was listed on an app like airbnb by an imposter. what to know if you're a homeowner and are you willing to let caltrans track the mileage on your car for 400 bucks? we've got the details. good evening. this is nbc bay area news tonight, i'm raj mathai. it is a busy tuesday. we start with the protesters at stanford. several several civil rights organizations are asking stanford university not to discipline the students who rallied in support of palestinians. the asian law caucus and council on american-islamic relations care are among more than 35 groups that sent a letter to the

university. they're asking stanford's president and provost to drop the disciplinary charges against those students who participated in the recent demonstrations that included an encampment on campus, the letter claims. stanford has not provided specific factual allegations against the 13 students in question. the students say they're facing academic probation or suspension. we reached out to stanford for comment but have yet to hear back. another headline we're watching was a black family in san francisco, the target of a hate crime, a fire destroying two homes near alamo square today, one of the people who lives there says he's recently been getting disturbing, racist hate mail. this is a this is at fillmore and grove shortly before noon today. the three story building engulfed in flames. firefighters rescued two people and rushed them to a hospital, one of them in serious condition. both of those people are the parents of terry williams, the man who's been getting the racist

packages. i just don't feel good right now, you know, because i'm like, i'm his only son. so i feel like i should have been here, you know? i mean, i could have stopped, prevented anything, you know? yeah. terry williams was not there. instead he was at city hall when this fire started to watch supervisors vote on a resolution denouncing the racist mail that he's been getting. williams is a well-known dog walker in the neighborhood, and his neighbors recently put together a rally. you see there to support him and his family because of those racist packages and mail, investigators have not figured out if the racist mail and the fire today are connected. we have an update now on that deadly crash in pleasanton involving an electric car. a federal agency is now investigating to see if there's a critical steering issue with that car. the crash happened last month, and electric car that was made in vietnam crashed into a tree and burst into flames. the driver to run, george, his wife and their two children all died. the car's

called a vinfast. vf eight belongs to george's coworker. after the crash, the owner filed a complaint claiming the last time he drove that car, it kept steering dangerously to the side on its own. us inspectors plan to look into both the car's steering and the fire. vinfast releasing a statement saying this. vinfast and nhtsa, which is the national highway traffic safety administration, are working cooperatively to determine the causes of the tragic crash in pleasanton. nhtsa is not investigating vinfast. pleasanton police currently investigating as well, and will share its findings when the work is completed. well, tonight we investigate more problems with driverless cars here in the bay area, this time crossing guards at different schools across san francisco and sharing similar stories about almost being hit. teresa dawn says a self-driving car nearly hit three. she was nearly hit her three times over the past

year, each time near flint elementary in san francisco's bernal heights. during one of those close calls, she had kids and their families in the crosswalk with her. the parent grabbed the child, looked at the car, and there was nobody driving it. so, you know, they just, like, grabbed their chest. it almost hit you. yes it did not recognize me in the intersection, even though you were standing in it with your stop sign. yes. okay. this could have been so much worse. bigad shaban is leading this investigation for us. you spoke with her? how many other crossing guards have come forward that you've spoken to or even chatted with online? yeah. so in person, raj, we spoke to 30 crossing guard stationed across 20 different schools in san francisco. all in the city, all crossing guards, all in the city. and so about 25. so roughly 1 in 4 tell us they experienced some type of close call in the crosswalk,

specifically with a waymo driverless car. so what does that mean exactly? well, they say either the car had to break last minute or the crossing guards tell us they had to rush out of the way to avoid being hit. so again, roughly 25, nearly 1 in 4 crossing guards that we spoke with in san francisco, raj telling us they had a close call. i deal with the crossing guard every morning, dropping off my daughter at school. i've never seen this type of situation, at least not yet. these are waymo cars, which is part of the google family. any response from waymo yet to this reporting? so interesting to note, the crossing guards we spoke with who say that they had a close call. none could remember the exact date or time. and as a result of that, waymo tells us it's difficult for them to be able to comment on waymo's tracking exactly their whereabouts of these cars. we should know exactly. well, waymo does have cameras that actually provide a 360 view on the car, but the reality is, is without having the date or time, it's difficult for them to basically look at the receipts and see what the cameras had to say, what actually happened that

being said, waymo is saying that they do take these concerns very seriously. they also know that they are proud of their public safety record, but acknowledge there is a huge importance in making sure that the people that share the road with these vehicles feel comfortable and safe riding or walking alongside. so now i guess these crossing guards really need to document. okay, it happened tuesday morning at 7:45 a.m. they need to start doing that. perhaps interestingly, we've actually heard from the sfmta they actually employ the crossing guards that are deployed across san francisco. they tell us that they have a couple trainings every couple of years or excuse me, a couple times each year, and one of the ones coming up in august, they're actually going to have an opportunity for crossing guards to any safety concerns they have to get a sense of just how often this is happening. this is california keeps tracks of crashes involving these driverless cars, as we know, does the state track these close calls that what we're seeing in san francisco? so the short answer is no, actually at the state level, as well as the federal level, the thing that driverless cars are mandated to report are details relating specifically to collisions, crashes. so we actually sat down with congressman kevin mullin of

california. he tells us that is a huge issue. he wants to know how often these kinds of near misses or close calls are happening. so he's actually taking steps that could change this dramatically. we're going to talk more about that, raj, tonight in our full investigation, which we're going to bring you at 11. okay. bigad. thank you. we'll see you at 11:00. one more note for this other california lawmakers are also working to limit driverless cars. a bill that would give local leaders a say in whether the cars can be on their roads, passed a key hurdle today. state senators approved it. right now the state approves where driverless cars can or cannot go, not the local leaders. the same bill also requires the cars to have an override. so first responders can move the cars. a bill. this bill still has to go in front of the assembly and then to the governor before it could become a law. well here's some encouraging news. when it comes to one of the bay area's most common crimes, reports of car break-ins are falling in san francisco. we dug into the

numbers last month. take a look. 762 reported break ins. that's about 25 reported break ins a day. that's also the lowest it's been in at least six years. we are going down here. however the problem is far from fixed. we put together this heat map showing car break-ins the hot spots this year. now the dark purple zones. they're all over the city in multiple areas. those are the hot spots. they include along the waterfront from the wharf to the embarcadero, the civic center, japantown, and alamo square. not surprisingly, hot spots for tourists as well. now, in 2021, we reported on a neighborhood where thieves often dumped stolen luggage. it's the richmond district. some people who lived in the area actually started tracking all the discarded luggage when they could. they had also tried to return the luggage to its original owners tonight we're doing a little progress report with one of the good samaritans joining us now is mark dietrich. he lives in the richmond mark.

we had you at once during the pandemic. nice to have you back on the program. are you still finding luggage in your neighborhood and if so, how often, yeah. thanks for having me back, raj, not as often, it's definitely down, that data is exactly what we're seeing and feeling in the neighborhood. our neighborhood tends to be where a lot of that, you know, that that stolen luggage is dumped, but the, my it's coincidentally the latest, luggage find we found was yesterday. so it's, while it's down, it's, it's still happening. i remember from a couple of years ago, basically, the thieves go by and just kind of dump it out of the car and keep driving. right. and it just happens to fall right, right in your right on your streets. yeah. we live, the richmond district somewhat geographically, convenient, and close to so many of these hotspots. golden gate bridge lands and the palace of fine arts. the legion of honor, the golden gate park. that's where so many of these break ins, happen. and yesterday, it was one from alamo square, and you

know what happens is, you know, they break in, they take they take the luggage. and while they're driving away, they're rifling through it all and they take out the laptops, the electronics, any money that they find and they just dump the rest of it, when they get, you know, they pull into a kind of a parking spot or some secluded spot and they just dump it out. that's a picture of what we found yesterday. a neighbor found it, and we've got a little group of us when we find it, we contact each other and we try to get it back to the owners. that's amazing. what's the response when you call someone and say, hey, i got your luggage, do they believe you? what are they thinking, so yesterday, one couple from, nashville absolutely believed. and they were. and they were so grateful, and they, you know, they, they, they want to get their stuff back. and, you know, obviously the family from florida, yesterday they were a little suspicious. they thought maybe i was trying to scam them. so they actually called sfpd. and then sfpd called me and the police officers came over to, to

my house and picked up all their belongings. so, so sometimes they are i mean, they just experienced a serious trauma. so, so it's understandable that they're suspicious. certainly. i believe you used to meet with sfpd. are you still doing that? and what are they telling you about the drop in numbers or is that what they're telling you at all? yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. so i go to a lot of the community meetings of sfpd, and, you know, they think the, you know, some of the sting operations that they're doing are working, the da having consequences and prosecuting these crimes is definitely part of the reason why these, break ins are declining. i don't want to delve too much into politics, but you're certainly keeping an eye on the mayoral race this november. any candidates stand out to you, right now that could help reduce this type of crime? you know, it's, i it's going to be it's kind of pretty much the number one issue, coming up in november because, you know, everybody is still feeling the

effects of all, you know, the crime that has been really high the past couple years. you know, i just think we just, you know, we need to elect officials who are a little bit more practical, a little less ideological leaders, some of them, you know, have, you know, my supervisor in particular, campaigned on dismantling the police, and we just don't have enough police. so the staffing, you know, the people who are in these roles are going to be, you know, it's their job to, to work on making sure that we have enough police officers. marin mark, you're a good samaritan. we appreciate it having you back on the program. thanks for your time tonight. and i believe you have a boy scout meeting to go to tonight. so. so we'll get out of your hair. thanks, roger. all right. take care. up next here at 7:00. how did a family end up in a stranger's pool? it all ties back to an imposter using a backyard rental app. it's kind of like airbnb for pools. we investigate. and a lot of excitement tonight. this is the oakland ballers, a live look at the official watch party. this

is the new baseball team, minor league baseball here in the bay area you're wahing nbc baytc

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on an app like airbnb. i get a text from my pool guy saying, do you know there's people at your pool? obviously i was quite shocked and said, no, i didn't. yeah, this happened at the los gatos home of eric thune. beautiful home here. he tells us he put the house up for sale and moved down to santa barbara. so the property was vacant the day he got a phone call, though, from his pool guy, his security cameras snapped photos of that family walking in who rented the home on an app called swimply. we found the listing on the app for 46 bucks an hour. the photos came from eric thune's real estate listing. how could somebody post a listing without verifying that they actually own the property? very good question . let's bring in our consumer investigator, chris chmura. chris, nice to see you. i'm fascinated by this story. love it. okay. so really we have we have two victims here. yeah. eric, who owns that home right

in the south bay, and then the unsuspecting family who rented the home and brought in the kids for a nice picnic. and we're accused of trespassing. yeah, on the spot. oh do we find the scammer? who's the bad guy here? we don't know. we tried to book a swim in eric's pool and then the scammer, well, ghosted us. essentially. i disclosed i was a reporter, and then he didn't respond at all. we did contact swimply, and swimply said it would take down the listing. it did okay. that's good. it also told us this is a very rare case . okay then moving on. you and your investigative team created your own fake listings. is that right? yeah. we wanted to test the fences. kick the tires, so to speak. so. yeah, that's our intern, grace. and so what we did was we posted a property that we didn't have permission to rent, that that home down in los angeles. and whose property was that? someone we know. somebody we know. okay. got it. simply never asked grace whether she owned the place or whether she had authorization. swimply originally told us, oh, you know, it's not visible, it's not bookable. but in fact, it was visible and it was bookable. and

we know because we tried it all out. they told us, oh, you know, our fraud detection will find it in 24 to 48 hours. we kept it up for 96 hours, checked in with grace. she said, oh, it's still up, raj. it was up for weeks. so grace the intern does not own that beautiful spot, but she's renting it out on swimply. he rented that one out in san jose. that's our boss's pool. it was also listed. it was also bookable. and that went for weeks. and weeks. okay, so i presume you've reached out to swimply and said, hey, we've just done this because that would be nbc policy. and what was their response? because we're hoping that they'll make changes and swimply did concede that some fraud is getting through, but it committed to changing its policies. it's going to do verification phone calls going forward. in some cases, it's going to do more identification and bank info checks, and there's going to be a new button. eric's going to like this, a new button to report a post that is suspicious because eric said he tried to contact swimply and was getting nowhere. so he contacted us, swimply said. we responded in a

timely manner within 24 hours, eric said. that's a long time for somebody to get hurt, for somebody to drown or for something else to happen. and he feels that he would have been on the hook no matter what, because it was still his house. okay, so swimply is making changes, they say. is it a successful company right now? do we know where they're based or their leadership down in la? yeah, it appears to be pretty successful. there are a lot of listings on there. okay well hopefully you've you've made prompted them to make some big changes here. we'll check it out okay. thank you chris. welcome. well got something you want our consumer team to look into? kris is a watchdog here. scan that qr code on the screen right there. you see it? it'll take you right to our consumer complaint form. fill it out. and chris and his team guarantee it will start digging. well, how's this for a deal? money for your mileage. caltrans is launching a pilot program. it'll give you $400 in gift cards if you allow caltrans to track your car's mileage, you would also pay a gas tax that's per mile instead of per gallon.

here's why. it's happening right now. the gas tax you pay at the pump is used to fund road maintenance, but with more people driving electric cars and bypassing those gas pumps, caltrans revenue is starting to dry up and it's going to get worse, potentially ten years from now. we'll see, a $4.4 billion loss in revenue because of these issues. here are the details of the pilot program. you have to sign up for six months. caltrans will send you a transponder to install in your car. if you don't want to do that, you can just take photos of your odometer and upload them. you'll be charged about $0.03 per mile to drive that you drive. drivers will then receive up to $400 in gift cards. they'll also get reimbursed for any gas tax that they pay at the pump. we put a link on how to sign up and for more details, just go to nbcbayarea.com. all right. we are making history tonight. it's the debut of our new minor league baseball team, the oakland bay oilers. the a's

they want out of oakland, but the b's want in. this is a live look at the season opening watch party at the oakland athletic club. hey we got some beers. we got some food and some fans. a lot of the fans really just turning their anger of the a's leaving into love for the ballers. the ballers are an independent minor league team in the pioneer league. as soon as i found out that the ballers were in existence, i couldn't wait to be part of it. knowing that oakland is a proud and vibrant place and bringing that to the city is just a phenomenal thing, and i really want to support it. pretty cool gear there as well. while the first home game is still a couple of weeks away, the season officially began tonight. it's happening in a game in montana right now against a team near whitefish, montana. the ballers are down 4 to 2 in the fourth inning. ballers home openers at raymond park in west oakland on june fourth. all right, let's take you outside our live look in sunny san jose. jeff is going to

join us with our forecast as we head into memorial day weekend.

us right now. yeah. it was amazing out there today. look at these temperatures. santa rosa up to 89. well above that average of 76. livermore 85 average. right there at 76. we're going to stay with this sunshine here as we head through tomorrow from this area. high pressure keeping the storm track

primarily to the north. but this smaller system over the pacific northwest that's going to move a little bit closer, drop temperatures a few degrees tomorrow. also bring back a little bit of morning fog. let me show you more details right now in that microclimate forecast. and as we started off, we're going to begin here with temperatures in the 50s. with that chance of some patchy fog near the coastline, maybe a little bit near the bay. all in all, comfortable here as you head out on that wednesday morning, then through the afternoon from that smaller system to the north, it's going to drop temperatures 4 to 8 degrees. it's going to put us, i think, more in the comfortable range. today may have been just a little bit too hot for you out there. i'll bring us back down to 80 in napa, 79. martinez, 78, in san jose we got some low to mid 70s for a lot of the peninsula and san francisco right there at 67. now, if you're doing any traveling, i did want to get this in here. we'll see another round of severe weather that could bring more tornadoes from dallas to little rock, right near saint louis, and even some strong thunderstorms. columbus louisville, down towards nashville. back here at home,

the next weather change we'll see is by saturday. cold front drops down and man, you are going to feel it. look at this 7-day forecast down to 67 on saturday. thankfully won't last all weekend long. we're back up to 73 on sunday and memorial day. monday 77. so a little bit of cool weather on the way. that's a big drop. thank you jeff. here's what's coming up in prime time here on nbc. it's a big night. the finale of the voice. the three hour special begins at 8:00, and then we hope you'll join us for our late news , live and local, at 11 p.m. that's going to do it for us here at seven, for everyone here at nbc bay area, including our content producer, katie marzullo. thanks for joining us. we hope you enjoy your evening. we hope to see you back

tonight on "access hollywood" -- >> it's something about the jennifer lopez of it all. >> her fans were there. her cast was there. but why