The Burlingame Voice

Hillsborough shooting: Reward goes up

The Hillsborough PD are still looking for the shooter that hit an officer in their parking lot on Feb. 22nd.  We're a month in.  The state has stepped in with an additional $50K of reward money to add to the H'borough $100K.  Oddly enough the Comicle didn't mention the first $100K but did run the drawing of the suspect.  Here it is

Crime Stats: 2024 trended in the right direction

B'game PD collates the crime year-in-review annually and we bring it to you with historical context in an easily consumed format.  Last year's post highlighted the decline in catalytic converter theft; a trend that continued in 2024 almost to the point of vanishing.  It just goes to show that when you go after the buyers, the sellers have nowhere to sell.  Vehicle burglaries also declined a lot and a new category--Organized Retail Theft--was blessedly low.

The big news of last year and this month was the two shootings--one fatal and the other luckily not fatal at the H'borough Police station.  Let's hope that trend does not continue to the point where we need to add a category.  The attempted abduction that was foiled by two Good Samaritans and quick police work gave us all pause but verified that license plate readers are valuable.  Chief Matteucci retired late last year after 33 years on the force and he one guy who is able to say that he "went out on a low note"--one of the few jobs where that is a good thing!  Here are the stats for 2024 and a photo of the retirement.

Monthly Average                 2020     2021     2022     2023    2024

Residential Burglaries             2         2         3             2        1

Vehicle Burglaries                 20       25        24           23        13

Thefts from Unlocked Vehicles 14     8          5             6        4

Commercial Burglaries           6         5          5            4        2

Construction site theft           1         1         1             2        <1

Package thefts                       4         2         2             4        3

Catalytic Converter Theft       6         9        11            4        <1

Robberies                              2         2         1             1        <1

Stolen Vehicles                      9         7         8             8         6

Vandalism                             13     13         13           11        11

Organized Retail Theft                                                        <1

 

Hillsborough Shooting: Still at large

I knew something was up yesterday just after 4pm as a helicopter made its fourth circular pass over my house.  There had been some sirens as well and there were many more to follow as police cruisers raced up ECR for the next hour or more.  Around 7:30 I spotted a Mountain View cruiser parked in from of St. Catherine's lying in wait.  The SF Chronicle is reporting

Hillsborough police continued to search Sunday for an assailant they say ambushed and shot an officer in the police department’s rear parking lot Saturday afternoon before fleeing on foot.  The violent incident occurred at 3:49 p.m. Saturday, when an “unknown individual” began firing and struck the officer in the lot at 1600 Floribunda Ave., near Hillsborough Town Hall. The officer returned fire as the assailant took off. Police did not know whether the assailant had been hit.

Paramedics transported the wounded officer — who has not been identified — to San Francisco General Hospital as law enforcement began searching the area and “pursuing active leads'” to make an arrest, according to statements from the police department Saturday night.

That sounds far from random to me and is probably the basis for the "active leads" bit.  I was also reminded of the snafus around the tsunami warnings last December noted here.  Why?  Because the SMC Alert to shelter in place didn't arrive until 9:54pm!  What's up with that?  I checked X, but BPD hasn't posted anything to its account there since August of 2023.

Not wanting to drop into the rabbit holes that are Facebook and Nextdoor, I just kept listening to the chopper, and later a fixed wing plane, circle until well after dark.  I doubt you can see much looking for someone on foot in a neighborhood at 8pm from an airplane.  This makes two shooting in three months (see here), so we really have to get the public alert systems synchronized and operating in a timely fashion.  More to follow.

Update:  An eagle-eyed reader provided this flight view of the Cessna 206 that circled endlessly.  The helicopter is not shown.

BPD shooting: First in a long time

Oddly enough I was talking to a retired BPD chief last month about the last time a BPD officer had to draw their gun, never mind discharge it.  We seemed to recall it had been much more than a decade.  Even the Wells Fargo robbery and murder on the Ave. may not have caused a weapon to be drawn as the robbers were quick.  That streak came to an end on Saturday as the Comicle is reporting: 

Around 2:53 a.m., officers responded to a 911 call reporting possible gunshots on the 800 block of North San Mateo Drive, according to the San Mateo Police Department. Officers found a man walking near the intersection of Jefferson Court and State Street. He pointed a firearm at the officers, causing them to move out of the line of fire, and then ran north on Jefferson Court, police said. 

The officers, “fearing for their lives,” requested additional police units before chasing after the man, but they lost sight of him, police said. A Burlingame police officer located him a quarter-mile away, near the intersection of Bayswater Avenue and Myrtle Road, where he was holding a gun and standing in the middle of the roadway, police said.  Officers said they tried to deescalate the situation by giving the man verbal commands and discharged a rubber projectile to prompt him to drop his firearm, but he did not comply. At 4 a.m., one San Mateo officer and one Burlingame officer shot and struck the man, causing him to fall to the ground, police said.

The man was reported to be in stable condition after the hour-long engagement.  The usual follow-up:  administrative leave for the two officers and investigations by BPD, SMPB and the DA will eventually tell us the rest of the story including the part that gets glossed over--the original "possible gunshots".

Attempted abduction-- license plate readers prove out

It's been two and a half years since the B'game city council voted 3-2 to install license plate readers in town.  You can read about Michael Brownrigg's and Emily Beach's opposed votes here.  Now we have stunning evidence of the wisdom of applying this technology in town.  As issued by BPD and repeated here in its entirety:

On Saturday, November 2, 2024, at approximately 3:33 PM, officers from the Burlingame Police Department responded to a report of an attempted kidnapping involving an adult female near the intersection of Burlingame Avenue and Occidental Avenue. It was reported that a male suspect driving a dark-colored SUV approached the victim as she was walking. The suspect exited his vehicle, brandishing a black handgun, and ordered her to get into the SUV.

The victim screamed for help as another vehicle passed which startled the suspect, causing him to flee the scene. A nearby witness heard the commotion and observed the suspect’s vehicle speeding away. This witness was able to provide a partial license plate number. Further investigation utilizing local Automated License Plate Reader cameras yielded photographs of the suspect vehicle and a complete license plate.

At approximately 7:40 PM, with assistance from the Belmont Police Department, the suspect vehicle was located in the 500 block of O'Neill Ave in Belmont. An 18-year-old resident of San Mateo, found in possession of a black BB gun, was arrested and subsequently booked into the San Mateo County Jail for attempted kidnapping.

The Burlingame Police Department urges anyone with additional information regarding this incident to contact the lead investigator, Sergeant Mike Bolanos, at 650-777-4142.

That's four hours from incident to arrest.  What is not mentioned is that this attempt was apparently the second in a week or so by what is believed to be the same perpetrator.  The majority of Californian's have reached the breaking point on crime--small, medium and crazy dangerous like this one.  Prop. 36 is cruising to a win with a 70%+ margin even as our Gavinor claims it doesn't reflect our "California values".  Time for a gut check there.  But the craziness goes on.  Just last month this lawsuit was filed over Flock ALPR use in Virginia:

A federal lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice against the Virginia city of Norfolk, challenging the city’s widespread deployment of Flock Safety Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras.  The lawsuit argues that the city’s installation of more than 170 cameras on public roads constitutes an unconstitutional, warrantless surveillance program that monitors every motorist, raising questions about digital privacy and government overreach.

Some people have a very weird idea of what constitutes justice. 

Poll: 70% say Bay Area quality of life has declined

When I read headlines like 7 in 10 residents say the region’s quality of life is getting worse, I think about how bad the roads have become (looking at you, El Camino), how poorly many government agencies are being run, how much traffic there is, how we are losing control of our local voting and zoning, and public safety.  School quality, water security, utility costs---the list is long.  Having spent years in market research, I know a poll can be tweaked in any number of ways from who gets polled to how the questions and multiple-choice answers are phrased to who does the analysis of the results.  The Merc reported on the latest public sentiment here.  It notes

According to the poll, 70% of registered voters said the Bay Area’s quality of life has worsened over the past five years, while just 13% said it has improved. Seventeen percent said it’s stayed the same.

A whopping 46% of respondents said they were likely to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, with two-thirds of those citing high housing costs as the main reason to consider a move. During the pandemic, people fleeing the region contributed to a 3% population drop, though that exodus has since slowed.  When asked to select ways the region might best be improved, respondents’ top choice at 39% was building more affordable housing.

Of course, that means 61% chose something other than to jam more people into the Bay Area.  See how the reporting can spin the story?  If the other choices had overlap to split the responses, 39% starts to look big.

Homeowners in the poll (note, that percentage is not revealed) also said the state’s home insurance meltdown is hitting their finances. Fifty-two percent said their home insurance premiums have increased significantly, 22% said they have avoided using their home insurance policy out of fear of cancellation or rising rates, 12% said they’ve had a difficult time finding an insurer to write them a policy and 8% said an insurer had canceled a policy.

Insurance has been slipping down a slippery slope for years with no real solution from the state. And many renters don't realize their rent is tied to the insurance on their apartment.  Then there is this bit of Sacramental hand-waving following on the heels of even more restrictions on drilling.  When you leave the state the gas prices are almost unreal---unreal low.

To prevent spikes in gas prices, state lawmakers are now considering a plan from Gov. Gavin Newsom to force oil refiners to keep minimum fuel reserves, though doing so likely wouldn’t lower overall prices at the pump.

The piece finishes off by describing some people who think Silicon Valley giants are "villains" who have "lost their moral compass".  I can't understand where that is coming from or what it has to do with the quality of life in the Bay Area.  At least the piece noted huge support for Prop. 36 to get the organized theft back under control and remove the locked plastic doors protecting shampoo and deodorant.  The big question remains how many people we should jam into the Peninsula?  The RHNA requirements are nonsense, but they are driving down the quality of life for long-time residents who look at things like this on the north end and wonder "why"?  That's the B'game police building in the front.

Smile: Tesla has you on camera

I may have finally found a reason to buy a Tesla....or not.  The Comicle is highlighting how the police use video from nearby Teslas to help solve crimes since in "sentry mode" a parked, locked Tesla will take video all by itself.  Sometimes the owner is around when the police arrive and volunteers the video as evidence.  Other times when no owner appears, the police get a warrant and tow the car to get the USB drive out of it.

In recent years, Tesla camera footage has played a variety of roles in police investigations, most commonly offering evidence after crashes but also documenting crimes perpetrated on a car’s owners or identifying a burglar who enters a car. The use of court orders related to crimes that occur near a Tesla appears to be a newer wrinkle.

“When you have these cars on the roads that are constantly capturing information, even when they’re parked, the police can look to them as a resource,” said Saira Hussain, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes in government surveillance. “That obviously puts third parties — people who are not involved at all — in the crosshairs of investigations.”

Similar issues have come up with self-driving cars now on the road in San Francisco and other cities, which are also equipped with sophisticated video capability, Hussain noted. But in those cases, police subpoena the tech company — typically Waymo — because it owns the cars and the data. Tesla drivers, by contrast, get served individually because they control their own camera footage.

The article implies several murders investigations may have been advanced with TeslaView^TM.  When the long-awaited, cheaper Tesla comes out maybe BPD should buy one so they don't have to park a cruiser in front of the Apple store all the time.  Perhaps Safeway could plant one in the parking lot to look for people poaching a space to have lunch on the Ave.  Or Caltrain could put one in front of the Burlingame station to see who is living in the ADU.  BHS could use it to catch graffitists.  Better yet, they can all chip in to buy one and share!

Prop. 47 Shenanigans around the ballot

You know things are getting bad in Sacramento when even the SF Comicle starts calling out the legislature as "shady".  An initiative to reverse Prop. 47, which was approved by our clueless electorate a decade ago to reduce the penalties on drug offenses and theft, is headed for the November ballot.  As we noted, the action on the ballot this Fall is in the initiatives.  The shady bits to stymie the initiative are slowing coming out as even Emily Hoeven at the Comicle has caught on:

Earlier this year, lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan package of bills that would, among other things, create a new crime for serial retail thieves, allow prosecutors to combine certain low-level thefts when charging offenders, permit courts to issue retail theft restraining orders and institute sentencing enhancements for those who steal, resell and destroy especially large amounts of property.  Thus far, the package has been smoothly chugging through the Legislature. 

But Democrats have now cooked up a scheme to kill most of their own bills if voters approve a ballot measure to reform Proposition 47 — the controversial 2014 initiative that reduced penalties for some drug and theft offenses — which formally qualified Tuesday for the November election.

Last week, news leaked that Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire planned to amend the Democratic public safety package to make it effective immediately upon Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, rather than the customary first day of the new year, and then repeal it if voters approved the Prop 47 reform measure. 

It was a crafty, if cynical, strategy that effectively left ballot measure supporters with a choice: Either they could support the package of bills, which were all but guaranteed to become law in a matter of weeks, or they could take their chances with the ballot measure, which voters might or might not approve and which would require millions of dollars in campaign funding.

Click through to the Comicle piece for all the dirty little moves, the virtue signaling about "mass incarceration", demonizing district attorneys and whatever else our betters in Sac who have the super majority can throw against the wall.  It really is appalling.

Election 2024: The action is in the initiatives

Dan Walters at Calmatters.org has distilled the upcoming election for us noting that the candidate-based voting is a forgone conclusion, but the numerous initiatives is where the action will take place.  I grew up in "Taxachusetts" but my home state has nothing on California.  Squeezing more blood from the middle-class stone is on-going and the question is will this be the election where the backlash arrives?  As Walters writes

The scale of the conflicts is most evident in an initiative, sponsored by the Business Roundtable and anti-tax groups, that would make state and local tax increases markedly more difficult to enact.  It hits Democrats and their allied public employee unions where they live and they have mounted a two-pronged effort to block passage: a lawsuit, now pending in the state Supreme Court, to strike the measure from the ballot, and a competing proposition that would impose a higher and potentially prohibitive vote threshold on the tax measure.

On crime, he notes the ballot will include an "initiative that would modify Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that reduced penalties for many crimes."  I think of it as the "Walgreen's initiative" after hearing multiple instances of people walking out of the store on B'way with a garbage bag full of stuff.  You want shampoo?  Call a clerk to unlock it.  Today's Comicle has a piece about some Safeway taking out the self-check kiosks and it ain't because they want to hire more checkers.  Walters expects the backlash initiative to qualify.  Further down the ballot:

Other high-profile measures either qualified or likely to qualify include a business-sponsored initiative that would repeal the Private Attorneys General Act, a two-decade-old union-sponsored law that makes class action lawsuits against employers relatively easy to file. Others include a third effort to make it easier for local governments to enact rent control, a boost in income taxes on high-income Californians to finance pandemic prevention, and an increase in the state’s minimum wage.

Talk about dumb and dumber.  Let's mess up the rental market, the entry-level job market and kill the Golden Goose all in one fell swoop.  There are five months to go.  We shall see if the voters have had enough or if we get more of the same.  Stay tuned.

Was Shiffty underdressed on Broadway?

The Voice is hearing that the luggage-deficit Adam Schiff made his local fundraising appearance right here in our B'game burg.  After having his luggage stolen, the Schiffster is reported to have attended his fundraiser in short sleeves and the "puffy vest" so loved by the cognoscenti of fashion.  But in the true tradition of the Earl of Ess Eff reporting, Herb Caen, the Voice is hearing that the affair in question was at Rocca on B'way.

The Shadow's Nose is hearing from an eyewitness that the soon-to-be US Senator was a shivering Schiffty on B'way.  Details are emerging as we speak that reinforce the less-than-stellar vehicular burglary stats in our environs, but let's hope the suitcase shift was at an SFO parking garage of perhaps in Millbrae.  More to follow.