A filmmaker took to Twitter to blast San Francisco police and crime after his car was broken into and $30,000 worth of camera equipment was stolen Wednesday near Lombard and Hyde streets, a wealthy area popular with tourists.
Filmmaker Eli Steele first tweeted that he had lost around $15,000 worth of camera gear after his rental car windows were smashed at around 11 a.m. near the famous winding street.
Upon further inspection, he said $25,000 to $30,000 worth of filming equipment was taken in the theft. He told The Standard via text message that a total of $30,000 worth of equipment had been stolen.
“SF police do nothing,” wrote Steele on Twitter. “While dealing with our situation we see more robbers pulling up in a Mercedes and looking into cars. We yelled at them. They pulled a gun on my friend. He’s filing his report now. Not one police officer showed up.”
San Francisco Police Department confirmed Steele reported the crime and did not comment on the criticism aimed at them in the tweet thread. Police said no arrests have been and the investigation remains ongoing.
Later in the viral tweet thread, Steele said a police officer at Central Station expressed sympathy for the theft but told him the police had been “defanged” and that nothing would likely be done to help recover his equipment.
Near the end of the California Insider video we linked to yesterday with former Levi executive Jennifer Sey, she told her interviewer that in her last months living in San Francisco before moving to Denver in 2021, she notes that her car was broken into “five times in two months. I mean is it the worst thing in the world? I guess not, but I’ve lived in Denver now two and a half years, I’ve never had my car broken into. It’s just not a tenable way to live to have to spend $500 to get your back windshield fixed every other month. That’s not acceptable; no one wants to live like that. But rather than listen to people and actually kind of embrace the broad range of views and experiences and try to make it better, anyone who expresses concerns or complaints about the current situation is called a racist.”
Related: Speaking of movies and San Fran, “Cinemark Holdings, Inc. is shuttering its downtown San Francisco theater, becoming the latest major firm to high-tail it out of the troubled California city…The theater is located in the Westfield San Francisco Centre, whose owner, shopping center giant Westfield, announced Monday it would be handing the property back to a bank due to ‘the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco.'”
More: San Francisco’s Union Square Shopping Area Has Lost 17 Retailers Since 2020.