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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael As mentioned in the last Rundbrief 12/2021, it is now normal here in San Francisco for petty crime to no longer be pursued by the police and the district attorney. Recently, thieves have been crawling under parked cars in broad daylight, using battery-powered saw to tools cut off the catalytic converter, and selling the part along with the precious metals it contains to shady scrap dealers. The photo in illustration 1 was taken by a resident who noticed the activity; however, despite an immediate emergency call, the police only arrived hours later, by which time the thieves were long gone. In such cases, the car owners affected have to pay several thousand dollars for a new catalytic converter, depending on the vehicle type, plus an equal amount to repair the damage caused to the exhaust system by the rough sawing. It costs an additional $400 if the owner hires a workshop to weld a specially designed steel cage around the catalytic converter to prevent another criminal from stealing the replaced converter using the same method a week later.
The thieves know that the police here in San Francisco have by now given up patrolling the streets, and should they happen to arrest wrongdoers by chance, our criminal-friendly district attorney Boudin won't press charges and, following his broken political ideology, immediately releases them, because no people were injured during the crime.
A new catalytic converter costs between $1,000 and $3,000 depending on the car brand, and including labor hours, a victim, or their insurance coverage, can quickly end up paying $4,000 to $5,000 for the repair. It is suspected that some workshops partially buy back the stolen catalytic converters through dubious channels and sell them to unsuspecting customers. The thieves only get a fraction of the original price for a stolen catalytic converter from shady scrap dealers. But earning a few hundred dollars with five minutes of work, without the risk of being held accountable for illegal activities, is incentive enough for an increasing number of criminals. That it would come to the point where things would be like in the post-apocalyptic film "Mad Max" here, no one would have dreamed of ten years ago. You never stop learning.
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