San Francisco Mayor London Breed claims the city is a ‘punching bag’ from crime headlines in the Bay Area as it grapples with 40,000 homeless people and brazen smash-and-grab robberies

Mayor London Breed has denied blame for viral videos that appear to show smash-and-grab incidents in San Francisco, claiming they don’t always happen in the Golden Gate City.

Despite nearly 40,000 people experiencing homelessness and more robberies and car thefts reported by San Francisco police than the same period last year, Breed said the “city has changed.”

Speak with Yahoo Finance LiveBreed – who took over in 2018 – said her beloved San Francisco had essentially fallen victim to false advertising.

“Sometimes (negative stories and videos)… that you see go viral, they’re not always just in San Francisco,” Breed preached desperately.

“We’ve been accused of things that have happened in other cities in the Bay Area, and even as far away as Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we have been the punching bag.’

Breed said the negative press hasn’t clouded her view of the city she claims is the “tech capital of the world.”

“In fact, eight of the world’s 20 largest artificial intelligence companies are right here in San Francisco,” she noted, seemingly ignoring multiple reports of accidents, chaos and traffic jams caused by the introduction of self-driving vehicles into the area.

“People still want to be here. They start their businesses here, their businesses.”

While she proclaimed her delusions as fact, the numbers tell a contrasting story, with street drug use and retail crime still a daily problem for many living in the city.

According to crime data recorded between January and September 2023, robberies increased by 15.9 percent compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, car thefts rose 10.8 percent as viral videos of violent theft circulated online.

According to a recent McKinsey survey, 70 percent of San Francisco residents list homelessness as one of the city’s top three problems.

Every night, 38,000 Bay Area residents are homeless, the study found, Yahoo reports.

However, Breed did acknowledge that there were some problems in the city, particularly drug use.

“Fentanyl has really devastated many American cities in a way we’ve never seen before,” Breed explained.

“Methamphetamine has also taken over parts of rural America in recent years. And so our ability to deal with these issues has been very challenging.

“What we’re actually doing here in San Francisco to combat that is making the difficult decision to arrest people for public disclosure and intoxication — and there are a lot of critics of that.

She said, “The goal is to get people into treatment.”

‘We know it’s not easy. We know it’s hard to have an addiction, but we can’t just say ‘business as usual’. There is help and treatment,” she explained.

The pandemic that is driving away office workers and leaving buildings empty due to inflation is being blamed for the struggles seen in the city.

Although Breed is adamant that the videos are not shot in the city. A video circulating on Reddit Thursday outside Felix F. Schoenstein & Sons Pipe Organs in San Francisco tells a different story.

Two men are seen jumping out of a car, smashing a window and stealing the contents of the vehicle.

You hear the person filming yelling, “Yo, get the fuck out of my way.”

Kathryn Shortsleeve, from Boston, was targeted after just two days in San Francisco when she stopped to get a burger at an In-N-Out on her way to the airport.

Within seconds, a gang of four men had entered her rental car and made off with her suitcases, leaving her planned move to Bali in tatters.

“All I have with me is what I’m wearing and I love this hat and that little bag that doesn’t really have anything in it,” she said in a TikTok video from the airport.

“This is such a problem in San Francisco and it’s really scary and really sad and I don’t know what the solution is.”

Earlier this month, tourists visiting San Francisco’s Ocean Beach had all their belongings stolen by thieves who went from car to car, forcing their way inside and looting the contents in just 10 minutes.

A family from Malta was only on their second day in the city when they were forced to consider cutting their holiday short after losing their passports, cameras, phones, iPads, laptops and luggage.

Last month, thieves in San Francisco were caught on camera driving through the streets in a Lexus, stopping at parked cars to smash windows and steal valuables.

One SUV even had a person sitting in the back when the windows were smashed, but the thief still grabbed the victim’s bag before fleeing in the waiting Lexus.

Signs can be seen throughout the city warning residents and tourists not to leave anything in their cars, but the crime rate has remained stubbornly high.

Tourist areas such as North Beach, Japantown and Presidio have the highest rate of car burglaries per 10,000 residents.

Last year, Lt. Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Federation, became a victim of the crime herself.

Her car was parked on the 1200 block of Franklin Street, between Tenderloin and Japantown, on March 23, 2022, while she was visiting a relative at CPMC Van Ness Campus hospital.

McCray said she was parked for less than 30 minutes, but her car was still broken into.

She wrote a blog post titled, “Hell, They Got Me Too!”

In 2011, police arrested only about 2 percent of reported car burglaries. Today that figure is below 1 percent.