While sheriff deputies gathered inside City Hall Friday night for a rowdy and lengthy Police Commission meeting that ended in the seven members approving a new weapon — Tasers — for the SFPD, a thief outside stole from an open and unmarked squad car.
The SFPD described the car — parked on Jones Street in the Tenderloin, only four blocks from City Hall — as belonging to “an outside agency, unmarked police car.”
The car belonged to an off-duty San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputy, Detective Sal Zuno, a spokesperson for the department, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The suspect stole a shotgun, a rifle, ammunition, a Kevlar vest and a jacket from the vehicle, according to police.
This burglary comes in the middle of the trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who is charged with killing Kate Steinle in 2015. The gun used in the killing was stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger’s vehicle.
In response to that killing and other instances of firearms being stolen from officer vehicles, last year, Gov. Brown signed SB 869, requiring law enforcement officials who leave firearms in their vehicles to lock them in safes inside a locked vehicle.
Police say the suspect is still unknown. The investigation is ongoing and anyone with information is asked to call the SFPD Tip Line at (415) 575-4444.