Captain Richard Corriea of the San Francisco Police Department has a twitter account where you can watch the report flow of smashed auto windows.

3/18 11PM and 3/19 @1:00AM at the Beach Chalet parking lot-window smash auto burglary of a Ford Explorer. Loss: Computer.

3/18 btwn 1230 & 200 PM-1000 blk Pt. Lobos-window smash auto burglary on Ford Escape. Loss: Laptop computer.

03/18, early AM, 400 blk Euclid, 2500 Calif, 3000 Pacific, window smash on autos, cameras, I-pods, laptops, I-phones taken.

03/17-3:45pm to 8:50pm, 700 blk of Parker, window smash on Toyota Sequoia, gym bag with clothing & toiletries taken.

I wonder how many realize that leaving anything of value in sight in a vehicle in San Francisco is a very high risk gamble.

A few months ago I stopped to help a woman and her family in Golden Gate Park after their rental car window was smashed in the middle of the day and all their valuables stolen just 50 feet from where they were standing to admire the Windmill. When she called the police they told her to file a report and there was nothing more that they could do. That is the same area as the above incidents.

Window smashing has been a plague in San Francisco for years in practically all neighborhoods. Here’s an example video from 2009

Literally every day I have been on a San Francisco street I see an auto with a smashed window like this and safety glass on the sidewalk. The latest news suggests that the scenic area of Hwy 1 near the edge of Golden Gate Park is a particularly high risk (attackers hide in the bushes — if you see a hole in a chain-link fence, don’t park near it with anything visible inside your car. Alternatively, leave your doors unlocked and windows open).

Last week the SFPD announced that they are facing a “tremendous” problem. Perhaps the tweets have been setup to reach out for help?

…there were more than 13,000 auto break-ins last year, a trend police say they are aggressively trying to curb.

“The numbers are tremendous,” Supervisor David Chiu said during the board’s Monday Public Safety Committee hearing. “We need to do everything we can to attack the crime.”

Chiu said he’s so concerned about the auto theft problems in his district, which includes North Beach and Chinatown, that he’s considering drafting legislation that would require parking garage operators to increase security at lots citywide.

That is an average of 36 auto windows smashed a day. If you start your loss estimate with the window replacement itself (~$100) and then add in lost productivity plus missing contents…it’s easy to see how the numbers quickly add up to a serious financial burden.

It makes me wonder if the SFPD Twitter data stream, which could distribute data close to real-time, will inspire do-good vigilantism. Another data stream is from phone apps that relay police scanners. Will this technology lead to masked cyclists riding in the park at night with video to stop attacks? Or will Craigslist build an app to help quietly flag suspected stolen goods (description match) from smashed windows? After years watching the problem grow, SFPD seems open to suggestion.