Sep. 15—San Francisco police are looking for clues to an alarming nighttime burglary on the city's waterfront, in which thieves apparently hopped aboard a Fire Department boat and stole radiation detection equipment.
The incident at 3 a.m. on May 9 marked an escalation in a wave of break-ins and robberies happening throughout the bay, terrifying a tight-knit community of sailors and houseboat dwellers. Many say they have witnessed perpetrators cruising around harbors in dinghies, often using bolt cutters to burglarize boats, or to pry open the fiberglass "dock boxes" where estuary residents keep supplies.
Four months after the Fire Department vessel was targeted, police are still investigating and have made no arrests. Lt. Jonathan Baxter, a spokesperson for the department, said the boat — one of the flaming-red watercraft at Fire Station 35 on the Embarcadero — was not damaged, and that the pilfered device functions "like a smoke detector," presenting no threat to the public.
But the theft troubled San Francisco firefighters, one of whom spoke out Thursday at a meeting of the state's Harbor Safety Committee at the Port of Oakland.
The firefighter, Erik Brown, later said in an interview that break-ins have become a chronic problem at Station 35, many of them occurring "on the land side," with people jumping fences and climbing through windows.
One such crime took place this week, Brown said, when a thief shimmied through a bathroom window. In this instance, the person stole only turnout gear — the bunker coats and pants that firefighters wear to battle a blaze.
Fire officials have begun discussing the problem at government meetings, where they search for solutions.
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