How do I get that $100,000 reward reporting fencing operations connected to San Francisco Car break-ins?

Here’s how you can get up to $100,000 for your information.

Earlier this week San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a new cash reward system for information leading to the arrest of key individuals connected to fencing operations that largely fuel most car break-ins that plague the city.

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If information you provide leads to the successful arrest and conviction of top-level individuals connected to these criminal fencing operations, you can collect up to $100,000.

So far, $250,000 has been added to what should be a $1M reward pot when San Francisco’s Tourism task force funding goal is reached.

How do I go about reporting information to get a reward?

The mayor’s press release does not make it clear how you’d go about reporting information leading up to an arrest and conviction but a good place to start is contacting a representative from the San Francisco Police department, possibly their special investigation unit, to put you in touch with someone who can connect you specifically to the bounty program targeting car burglaries.

Here’s some possible places to get you started

SFPD Contact Us with non-emergency number listings
SFPD Special Investigations
SF Office of small business
President of SF Office of Small Business via Twitter

What kind of information is this tourism task force looking for?

The key paragraph in the press release for the kind of information they’re looking for is,

The new cash reward system…, will provide monetary incentives in exchange for information regarding high-level leaders of organized auto burglary fencing operations. Individuals that provide accurate and transparent information will be compensated up to $100,000 pending the arrest and conviction of individuals involved.

Note, this task for is looking to take down high level leaders!

Don’t expect, if you’re a regular citizen, to report a single car break-in with all relevant information, including their license plate number, video and photo evidence, to get any type of reward for that, even if they’re arrested.

If you do witness or are a victim, at the very least report the break-in to SFPD’s non-emergency line to get the ball rolling on your own police report and for statistics purposes.

As CBS Local and the President of the OSB points out,

“…it is just a small number of people who are behind most of the burglaries and thefts we see. SFPD believes it is less than a dozen criminal fencing operations behind *most* of these crimes.“

“These fencing rings aren’t committing the burglaries themselves. They pay street criminals to do that work for them. It’s a big business. The last major ring busted had over $8M of stolen goods in *multiple* warehouses.“

This task force is looking for specific information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of leaders and key players of those “less than a dozen criminal fencing operations.”

To get up to $100,000, you’ll probably have to provide information that ultimately leads to taking down an entire fencing operation.

From when you report the information to when you actually get the reward, it may take over a year (or several years.)

At the time of this writing, it looks like this specific task force is in the beginning stages of operation.

I’ll update this blog post on how to report your information as I found out.