>> san francisco has to all we're here in fisherman's wharf, a very popular destination for tourists in san francisco, not too far from the high school that i went to galleleio high school. and this is frequently visited by tourists for people to enjoy the businesses, a lot of the restaurants, to ride the cable car which i'm so happy that all of these things are continuing to open. and they're opening because we're fortunate in san francisco that we are seeing a change as it relates to covid. at least 83% of san franciscans

are fully vaccinated, so we should be very proud of what we've done from the very beginning of this pandemic to where we are now. so thank you all so much for getting vaccinated. and it's not too late. we always make it easy for folks to get vaccinated so please do your part to continue to keep everyone safe. but san francisco is a beautiful city and the golden gate bridge, this is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and people come to visit from all over the world because it's magical, but we do have challenges. like any other major city we have serious challenges around car break-ins like fisherman's wharf, like the palace of fine

arts, like alamo square. just imagine going to visit the most beautiful city in the world and coming back to your car and actually witness someone breaking into your car and sadly as we just saw holding you hostage to gun point, how terrifying that would be tragic. it is tragic. it's really embarrassing for our city. it's frustrating and it gives people the impression that it's not safe to come here. now, we have been implementing a lot of great policies including our tourism, deployment plan which since july when we announced it who

may be able to replace all of the valuables which may not cost much in the resell market, but it means everything to them. this is what we're dealing with. yes, we've seen a reduction, but there's more, of course, that needs to be done. so while we have deployed our police officers and some of our community ambassadors and many of those high traffic barriers. and today, we're announcing that more. what we're announcing today because of the leadership of people like commissioner laguana and others are partners

with enterprise rent a car is a program that will allow $100,000 rewart for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of those who are stealing the items, but also those who are reselling the items, we're here to target everyone involved in those crimes because we have to get to the root of what is causing the issue. because the items are stolen, but where are they going. they're going on to platforms like amazon and other places, there's a market for reselling these items that need to be targeted as well. so we want people who are perpetrating these crimes to know we're watching, we're aware. we will per sue with every tool

we have within our criminal justice system. those who commit these crimes, we will hold them accountable and make sure we do what we can to make these large rings which chief scott will talk about a little bit, but they are dealt with because this is not just an individual. this is about a whole group of people who were targeting san francisco for this purpose. in order to get these items that belong to others and resell them to make money, to make a profit off of someone el's tragedy and that's the thing that we have to address. with that, i want to appreciate sharky and the work he's been doing and he'll talk a little bit later, but in the meantime, talk about where we are and

what we'll continue to do around vehicle break-ins is our police chief bill scott. >> thank you. thank you, mayor breed. so, first, let me that our mayor for pulling us together and her leadership and making things better for our city, but i'll start where she ended. we have a whole lot more things to do. when we announced this in july, one of the things that we talked about was sustaining this effort and we have sustained this effort and we will continue to sustain this effort because we're not going away. we are committed to making our city safer and better and we're not going away. i also want to say thanks to sharky laguana and you'll hear

from our partnership with enterprise rent-a-car on this. really exciting adding this car break-in issue in our city. this is a privately funded cash reward as the mayor said for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved and organized criminal fencing operations. and the word i want you to remember is organize. we have seen through our investigations that much of this is organized, not all of it, but a significant part of it and the most damaging part is organized. we know this organized effort and this area that we're standing in has been one of the most heavily impacted. when we rolled out our tourism deployment plan that the mayor talked about, we introduced that with the addition of 26 additional officers. the majority of those officers are working in this area and this is where we've seen a significant amount of reduction

and burglaries, car burglaries since we rolled this out in july. so today's announcement adds a new tool to our arsenal. we know the profit motivates what's happening in our city, and we know that fencing is the infrastructure that fuels all this work that these folks do when they come into our city or in our city and they break in cars so this enables us to benefit from a financial incentive. an incentive to do the right thing and the right thing is put a stop to this madness. the right thing is let's focus on the people that are doing this and these incentives will help get them in custody and prosecutor them to the fullest extent of the law. and this buildses on mayor breed's recent expansion of our community based ambassador's

program and this includes upward take of our community ambassadors, and these are retired police officers who walk these streets and work in concert with our on duty uniformed officers and their job is solely to observe and report what they're seeing and if they believe that something's amiss, they call us, we come, we investigate and we've been able to prevent crimes from happening by doing what i just described. lastly, i will just talk a little bit about the bigger picture. what's more amazing and this is a piece of good news is we've experienced this 37% reduction while our city is re-opening and one of the things that the mayors committed and really directed the police department and me and all of the city departments is we want to

re-open the city the right way. as you saw just last week, we had fleet week. we had the giants playoff game. we had chase center. we had a lot of people in the city again for the first time in two years and it was great. it was outstanding. it got national coverage. our city was on the national spotlight and people came here and enjoyed themselves. that's what we want. that's dwr we're doing this work. so this work will continue. we will sustain it and i would like to say also, again, you know, we don't want to make ourselves easy targets and as you walk around this area, particularly this area, you will see on the parking meters, you'll see signs that say 'park smart' and what that means is don't make yourself an easy target. these are the folks that are being victimized the most.

it's a shame we have to say this, but we do, and we also know that this works. when people are resilient and vigilant about not making themselves easy targets, we've seen these crimes go down because there's nothing to steal. so word to the people that are doing this, we're not done yet. we will keep pursuing justice to keep our city safe and, again, i want to thank our mayor, i want to thank sharky and all of you for being here to support this work. thank you. with that, i would like to introduce sharky laguana. >> president laguana: hey guys. first i want to thank the mayor, it's always a pleasure and honor to work with you on stuff. i've heard from the mayor while we were working on auto burglary issues, i've never -- it's hard to stick to my nose

here without them. i first met the mayor when we were working together on auto burglary issues and i'll never forget, she said to me, we're going to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this. here comes the kitchen sink. chief scott, thank you for creating space in your department and innovation and trying new ideas and it's been an honor and pleasure working with your team. eric street from enterprise has been an incredible partner and i also want to thank all of the community organizations and business leaders throughout the city who also made commitments to fund this reward program so that we can finally make a serious dent in this vexing auto burglary issue. you know, i first started working on this problem when i had to chase a stolen van all over the city and i was shocked to discover that this is just a small number of people that are

responsible for most of the auto burglaries that we see in the city. it is sensing rings and their business model is they pay people to break into cars and steal from businesses and then they sell these goods overseas and online. the last major ring we busted in the bay area had $8 million of stolen goods in multiple warehouses, so this is a big business and there's folks making a lot of money. now, i appreciate what the mayor said about focusing on what's important here. i think it's important to remember that drug stores aren't the biggest victims. the biggest victims are working families who don't have the time and money to repair windows, replace phones, go find new bicycles. the biggest victims aren't the big businesses, but the small businesses. they're not the ones that have to close a couple stores, they're the ones with no stores

left to close. bikes had to shut down their operation. it took them weeks to get back online. finally, the biggest victims if we're being honest are the people that are injured and the familieses that have lost loved ones dealing with these crimes. we've made incredible progress lately. i think it's fantastic. as both the mayor and the chief said, we have a lot more work to do and, you know, i personally am sick of what anesthesia fencing rings are doing and i know the people that live here are sick of it as well and so what i like about this program is that it is a cruise missile aimed at the leadership of these fencing rings. these are the guys making lots of money fencing these stolen goods and right now they are acting with impunity and they

believe they aren't vulnerable. the people that know what they are and know what they do, that's a weak spot and this reward helps provide motivation for people to stand up and do the right thing and let us know who they are so we can shut them down. i'm excited about this program because finally i feel a sense of optimism we're going to start to tear these rings apart. i'm looking forward to it. thank you mayor, thank you chief. >> i just want to acknowledge, thank you, eric for being here from rent-a-car for providing support for this reward program. and i just want to say two things that i know the chief mentioned park smart, you know, i know there are people who come here to san francisco from places and you come from places where you are probably used to

leaving things in your car and not worrying about someone stealing from you and i'm sorry that you have to experience that in san francisco, but i do think it's important that our rental car companies and some of our hotels that we support and work with the visitors in san francisco to make sure that they are aware of what happens in many of these cases and in some of these cases, they're people who are watching people, they are following them, they know what they might be loading in their car. so when we park, for example, here, and when we put things in the trunk, i've been a victim myself when i've parked some place and put something in the trunk and i come back and my car's broken into and sadly, that is something that happens. ultimately, we know it's not an easy solution, but part of it is, yes, we need to make arrests. we need to go after those who

commit these crimes, but i also want to make sure we're doing a better job as a city of trying to protect the people who are visiting our city and providing ways in which they can protect whatever it is that they have, the valuables that they have so that they are not a victim. so park smart is a part of our program as well and i want to say also to those committing these crimes. number one, we will not rest until we are holding you accountable for these crimes, but also i want to say, you don't have to do this. the city has so many incredible employment opportunities. we're hiring muni drivers and other city employees, restaurants and places throughout san francisco, they're looking for people to hire. we're here to give people a chance. if you've never worked in tech sf. we provide stipens as you go

through city build and other training programs. so there's no reason to risk your life, or freedom or someone else's life committing a crime that just makes things worse for all of us and so i would say that think about that and take us up on an opportunity to do something different with your life because san francisco has afforded so many people an extraordinary opportunity to make a decent and honest living. once you cross that line, we have a responsibility. we have a responsibility to the public to make sure that people feel safe and so when those lines are crossed, we have no choice but to hold you accountable and that's what we will do. this reward is just another step in trying to get cooperation from the public so that we can make those arrests and we can not only hold the person who feels the items and breaks the windows and damages

the property. we could also hold those who use this as a way to make a living. those who take those items and resell them on various platforms. we can hold them accountable and we're not just going to stop here locally. we are working with our state and federal partners in order to introduce legislation that will hold people who are involved in these criminal rinks accountable for what they have created in these environments especially in major cities like san francisco. so i want to thank you all so much for being here. ultimately, there are challenges in any major city, but san francisco as i said at the beginning, it's a beautiful city and i want people to have beautiful experiences from start to finish from the time they drive here, from the time they land here on their planes

to the museums, to the locations, i want them to go home with a smile on their face and be happy that they chose san francisco as their destination. so thank you all for being here today and we will answer any questions from the press if you have any about this program. >> reporter: [inaudible] >> from the rental car standpoint, rental cars are being targeted, but yes from the residents, they're being targeted as well. from our conversations with the city as well, residents are also being impacted. that has really kind of created a bunch of businesses come together to try to privately help fund a reward.

erick street, controller. you're welcome. >> reporter: can you address the car thieves in regards to this reward program. don't you think people will say i can do better turning in my own boss rather than stealing things from cars? >> we want it to be that way. people who commit more crime, it's a lot more complicated. it's like hmm maybe, but they might think too, i'm the one who committed the act so i'm probably going to be held accountable, so the likelihood that will happen is probably not likely. it's a hope. but it's not likely. >> reporter: [inaudible] >> and i think a big part of

that is making sure that the punishment fits the crime to the point where someone feels like, you know what, i don't want to go through that again. so when i get out, as long as there's an opportunity and as you know, san francisco supports giving people a second chance and providing that opportunity, then the likelihood that someone will go back to that if there's an opportunity for them to succeed in something elsewhere they can generate income for their livelihood, the likelihood we can see them go back to committing these crimes is less likely. but people need to also be held accountable. and i think that's what's missing here in many cases because they believe they can come to san francisco, commit a crime. get arrested which our officers do a great job at investigating and making the arrest, but where's the accountability. that's the piece that needs to

stick. yes. >> reporter: i just want to clarify, you also mentioned certified retailers and stuff like that. >> well, i think it's meant to incentivize everyone. you know, sometimes like i'll be honest, one of my car break-ins, i didn't even bother to report it. it was like okay. let me get my window fixed. wasn't anything in my car. i'm not saying that should happen. we should report any crime and this is before a long time ago and part of one of the reasons of what's important to me is making sure that these crimes are reported so that we know that they're happening and also hopefully people are looking at license plates as people pull off, but then we know some of these cars may be stolen or may be connected to other people. but we're able to, if we're

able to identify the car, there's fingerprints, there's a whole investigation. so if there are people we don't want you to put yourself in harm's way, but if they're paying attention and you see a license plate or make or model or any information and you're able to share that information with us, that's important and people who are merchants as well as folks who are out here may be more willing to provide information, because the criminals are committing these acts in broad daylight in the city and the goal is to make sure that know eyes and ears are on the streets and we're not going to get them get away with it. >> reporter: when it comes to getting [inaudible] on somebody, isn't that where the d.a.'s office comes in? >> well, i can't speak for the

d.a. he's an e independent elected district attorney. i do try to work with his office on these cases. i can't force him to do something that i believe he should be doing, but we try our best to work together. i can tell you from my perspective, our police officers and our investigators, they are doing a really good job with these investigations and with these arrests and we, of course, need a layer with our district attorney, the courts and others which we don't necessarily have complete control of and this is not to make an excuse, but we need to be working together as one unit to address these problems and to hold people accountable and accountability could be a number of forms. you know, it's not just about locking someone up and throwing away the key. it can involve a number of layers of things. so my hope is that we'll get to that point. i'm hopeful. thank you.