(a) San Francisco faces a severe automobile- burglary crisis. In 2015, the City experienced approximately 25,000 such burglaries—roughly 70 a day. The City experienced a similar number of automobile burglaries in 2016. Automobile burglaries have nearly tripled since 2011, when San Francisco experienced approximately 10,000 such burglaries.
(b) Automobile burglaries pose a grave threat to the safety and security of San Francisco’s residents. San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury estimated that property worth approximately $19 million was stolen from cars in San Francisco in 2015. This lucrative revenue stream attracts organized criminal enterprises. Moreover, the proceeds from automobile burglaries empower criminals to commit other crimes. For example, in 2015, criminals stole at least 57 firearms from vehicles in San Francisco.
(c) The City has already adopted a range of strategies to address its automobile-burglary crisis. The Police Department has stepped up its enforcement efforts, and has adopted new strategies to deter and arrest automobile burglars. In addition, the District Attorney’s Office has moved to prosecute automobile burglaries more aggressively, and has dramatically increased the rate at which it charges automobile-related crimes. But the City cannot solve this problem through increased law enforcement alone. In addition to raising the costs of committing automobile burglaries, the City must find ways to make automobile burglary more difficult, and less attractive to criminals.
(d) San Francisco attracts large numbers of tourists, business travelers, and other visitors from all over the world. Visitors contribute significantly to the City’s economy. To maintain San Francisco’s status as a major destination for tourists and other visitors, and to continue to reap the economic benefits that visitors provide, the City has a vital interest in ensuring that visitors have safe, successful, and positive experiences when visiting San Francisco.
(e) Data from the District Attorney’s Office shows that many of San Francisco’s biggest tourist destinations—Alamo Square Park, the Embarcadero, Fisherman’s Wharf, Civic Center, Lombard Street, the Palace of Fine Arts—are major hotspots for automobile burglary. Visitors to San Francisco are especially attractive targets for those who commit automobile burglary, because—as the Civil Grand Jury has found, and as the Police Department has advised—they are especially vulnerable to it. Would-be burglars know that many visitors are carrying large amounts of money, electronics, and other valuables. Further, many visitors are unfamiliar with San Francisco and its hazards, and may face special linguistic and cultural barriers. Moreover, visitors may be unable or unwilling to initiate a police investigation in a city that is foreign to them and where they will not long remain, and they are often unable to return to San Francisco to testify in criminal prosecutions of suspected burglars.
(f) The City has launched a series of public-education campaigns designed to reduce automobile burglaries by warning visitors about the risks of such burglaries. Signs warning drivers to remove valuables from their cars have been installed near tourist hotspots like Fisherman’s Wharf, Alamo Square, Japantown, and the Palace of Fine Arts. San Francisco International Airport has posted signs at its Rental Car Center warning visitors of the risks of leaving valuables in rental vehicles, and has also provided rental-car companies with written warnings to distribute to customers. An announcement warning visitors about automobile burglary is also played on the AirTrain connecting airport terminals to the Rental Car Center. The Police Department, additionally, is working with local hotels and businesses to ensure that visitors are warned of the risks of automobile burglary.
(g) In addition to educating visitors about the risks of automobile burglary, making automobile burglary more difficult and less attractive requires addressing one central reason that visitors are especially vulnerable to automobile burglary: many of them drive easily identifiable rental cars. As the Police Department has advised, automobile burglars specifically target vehicles that are identifiable as rental cars. Reducing the identifiability of vehicles as rental cars would, therefore, directly address the City’s automobile-burglary crisis.
(h) Rental cars in San Francisco are easily identifiable as such. Unlike other vehicles, rental cars typically carry barcode stickers on their windshields and windows. Many rental cars also carry advertisements—for example, license-plate frames—promoting the companies from which they are rented.
(i) Eliminating these barcodes and advertisements, or making them less conspicuous, would not significantly burden rental-car companies. Although rental-car companies use windshield and window barcodes to track their inventory, these barcodes need not be conspicuous. Additionally, rental-car companies could easily track their inventory in other ways. For example, rental-car companies could place barcodes in places that were not immediately visible (such as inside or behind vehicle doors), or use other non-visible means of inventory control (such as radio-frequency identification, or RFID). Likewise, rental-car companies can, and do, advertise their vehicles in many ways that do not involve placing advertisements on the exteriors of the vehicles themselves, such as massive advertising on television, in print media, and via the Internet.
(j) Eliminating these barcodes and advertisements, or making them less conspicuous, would directly address San Francisco’s automobile-burglary crisis. Visitors to San Francisco are particularly vulnerable to automobile burglary, and making their rental cars less conspicuous is an important way for the City to make visitors less vulnerable. By making it more difficult for would-be burglars to target visitors’ rental cars, eliminating rental-car barcodes and advertisements would significantly help to combat the City’s automobile-burglary crisis.
(Added by Ord. 197-17, File No. 170421, App. 10/5/2017, Eff. 11/4/2017)