Cell Cellphone Theft Spree: San Francisco Police Suspect Group of Teenagers

A string of cellular phone robberies concentrating on ladies in a handful of San Francisco neighborhoods have been attributed to a bunch of youngsters.

Police data from June 23 to July 4 present 22 reported cellular phone robberies, with 9 incidents reported on June 26 alone. The Normal’s assessment of data discovered the robberies occurred throughout town with clusters of three cellular phone robberies within the Yerba Buena a part of SoMa, the Tenderloin, Union Sq. and Noe Valley. Fifteen of the robberies focused ladies, and 6 of these allegedly concerned juvenile suspects.

Richard Corriea, a retired San Francisco police commander, famous that cellular phone thefts are frequent and that it is smart that robbers goal prosperous areas and ladies, particularly.

“Folks concerned in felony exercise do a certain quantity of threat administration,” Corriea stated. “Would they go after a 240-pound grownup male, or somebody smaller or lighter than them?”

One sufferer, who spoke to The Normal on the situation of anonymity, stated she was robbed of her telephone in NoPa by somebody who seemed to be a young person. She later tracked her telephone to West Wind Coliseum Swap Meet, a flea market in Oakland.

“I’ve reevaluated my relationship with my telephone,” she stated. “It’s not an enormous monetary loss; it’s simply unhappy that it occurred.”

One other sufferer, who requested to be recognized by her initials out of worry criminals would retaliate, stated that her telephone was stolen on the nook of Sanchez and Clipper streets on June 26 round 5:15 p.m. C.W. stated she tracked her telephone’s location to the identical Oakland flea market.

Officers searched the world the place they tracked her telephone to and did not find it, police stated.

“I might care much less about my telephone,” C.W. stated. “I’m nervous about these folks repeatedly attacking ladies.”

San Francisco police stated that 11 robberies have been related to a single group of teenage suspects. One suspect, who was beneath 18 years of age, was arrested and is believed to belong to that group.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents Noe Valley, stated that he’s conscious of “at the least three” incidents in that neighborhood related to that group of youngsters.

The variety of youth reportedly arrested for robberies has plummeted in San Francisco over the previous few many years. There have been 537 minors arrested for robberies within the metropolis in 1995, in line with FBI crime information; by 2010, juvenile theft arrests had dropped to 188, and between 2019 and 2021, there have been fewer than 30 yearly.

READ MORE: ‘Tremendous Dissatisfied’: SF Juvenile Corridor’s Future In Limbo

SFPD didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark and didn’t affirm different cellular phone theft incidents.