Making Our City Safer

As we enter the new year, I want to take a moment to celebrate some recent wins that are making San Francisco safer for everyone.

We’ve made tremendous progress under SF Mayor Daniel Lurie’s leadership. Thanks to new legislation he and I partnered on, the City will have new tools to make our streets even safer, as of this month.

On public safety, I’ve consistently taken the position that a compassionate city must also be a safe one. San Francisco’s current challenges – from open-air drug markets to car break-ins – have undermined residents’ trust and harmed our quality of life. In recent years, I’ve authored and passed significant public-safety laws for San Francisco, with a particular focus on holding perpetrators accountable making our streets safer and more vibrant for everyone.

Specifically, we’ve been able to pass laws to hold auto burglars accountable and put a stop to the sale of stolen goods on our street.

Better Accountability for Auto Break-ins

Car burglaries have long been a maddening problem for San Franciscans and tourists – I know this from personal experience – and I’ve fought for years to pass common-sense legislation to tackle the problem by closing a massive loophole in California’s auto burglary statute. We finally got it done last year, and it is helping reduce auto break-ins. Indeed, in 2025, car break-ins are down 44%, an absolutely stunning improvement resulting from strong coordination among the mayor, police, district attorney and my office.

Specifically, the law I authored, Senate Bill 905 eliminates the so-called “locked door loophole” for auto break-ins. It took me multiple attempts to pass it, and persistence paid off. Under longstanding California law, it wasn’t enough for the district attorney to prove that someone had broken into a car. To get a conviction, the district attorney also had to prove that the car doors were all locked. So, even if the district attorney had strong evidence that the person broke in, without proving the doors were locked, the prosecution was no longer viable.

What this meant in practice was that even clear cases of auto break-in could fall apart because the owner didn’t recall whether they’d locked the doors or, in the case of a rental car, the visitor wasn’t going to fly back to San Francisco to testify that they’d locked the car doors. This loophole was nonsensical and undermined public safety and the ability to hold auto burglars accountable.

By passing SB-905, we put an end to this nonsense. Closing this loophole empowers prosecutors to protect both residents and tourists from one of the most common and frustrating crimes in the City. Since SB-905 went into effect this year, numerous cases have already been filed by the District Attorney’s Office for unlawful entry into vehicles. I’m pleased to see the law’s immediate impact and strong implementation by SFPD and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

Putting a Stop to the Sale of Stolen Goods

I also worked with local street vendors and community organizations to pass legislation giving San Francisco a new tool to crack down on the sale of stolen goods (known as “fencing”) on our streets and in our public plazas. After two years of effort, I was able to pass SB-276 – the SAFE Streets Act – through the Legislature, and Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed it into law. I recently joined Mayor Lurie as he advanced San Francisco’s local implementation of SB-276.

The SAFE Streets Act gives SFPD a new tool to address the sale of stolen goods on our streets. The sale of stolen goods has become increasingly common and disruptive across the City, especially in Chinatown, South of Market and the Mission. Thieves steal goods from Walgreens and other retailers and turn around and sell the same goods on the sidewalk outside. Perpetrators often became violent, and the city workers charged with confronting this problem had to be issued bulletproof vests. Moreover, our amazing permitted street vendors, who make our City a better place, have been pushed out by the people selling stolen goods. The Mission Street Vendors Association advocated strongly for this new law, and I’m so grateful for our collaboration on this effort.

At one time, this rampant retail theft required the City to issue a temporary moratorium on street vending in the Mission. But doing so undermined the economic livelihood of legitimate street vendors and created an unsafe situation for our small business community.

No more. As of this month, SFPD has a new enforcement tool that allows misdemeanor charges for those selling stolen goods. City workers with the Department of Public Works and SFPD will be issuing warnings and infractions to violators. After three offenses, violators will be charged with a misdemeanor.

San Francisco should be a place where people feel safe, where families have great public schools, where laws are enforced and where compassion is paired with accountability. I’ve spent years fighting for that vision, and I’ll continue to do so as your next member of Congress.

Scott Wiener represents San Francisco and northern San Mateo County in the California State Senate. He chairs the Senate Budget Committee and co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus. He previously chaired the Senate Housing Committee and the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus. He can be reached at 415-557-1300.