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A San Francisco Burglar Escaped in a Robotaxi - and Police Still Can't Find Him (sfchronicle.com) 49

Posted by EditorDavid from the seen-of-the-crime dept.
A burglar took a self-driving Waymo taxi to rob a San Francisco yoga studio this past January, reports TechCrunch — "and police have still not caught them."

Even the police officer assigned to the case thought it would be easier to solve, notes The San Francisco Chronicle, since Waymos are outfitted with multiple high-definition cameras and require users to make accounts with their credit card numbers: It's common for officers to seek video footage of a crime from any of the Waymos, Teslas and other high-tech vehicles that record their surroundings. That information can be crucial for identifying suspects or creating a reliable timeline of events. At times, police will go so far as to obtain search warrants to tow the vehicle "witnesses" to ensure they don't lose valuable video evidence. In the Hot 8 Yoga burglary case, San Francisco police issued a search warrant that forced Waymo to turn over information on the account that ordered the ride and video footage from the white Jaguar that served as the getaway car, police records show.

Faye said that he couldn't discuss certain details of the case, but that the Waymo user's account information didn't lead police to the suspect. In general, he said, it's not unusual for a criminal to order a service with stolen information or a burner phone. The video evidence didn't help much either, Faye said. He said that the company had not retained interior footage of the car by the time the search warrant was filed in April and that it had kept the faces seen outside the car blurred for privacy reasons... Waymo does not publicly disclose how long it retains video footage. The company blurs faces and license plates in the public-facing images it uses in a database designed for research....

Last year in Los Angeles, a person allegedly robbed a grocery store before hopping in a Waymo. Officers were able to chase down the vehicle after the suspect got inside, and the car pulled itself over after police turned on the car's emergency lights, according to Los Angeles-area news outlets.
"Farah Issa, studio manager of Hot 8 Yoga, showed the Chronicle a copy of the surveillance video from her phone, noting how the Waymo dropped off the suspect and waited for him to finish the burglary before taking off again."

A San Francisco Burglar Escaped in a Robotaxi - and Police Still Can't Find Him More | Reply

A San Francisco Burglar Escaped in a Robotaxi - and Police Still Can't Find Him

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  • Preservation letter? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Monday June 08, 2026 @04:15AM (#66180066)

    Typically a preservation letter is sent out to let the recipient know that a court order will be forthcoming, and to preserve all files, metadata, images, etc. If you Google "sample preservation letter" one such example is https://www.cliffordlaw.com/wp... [cliffordlaw.com].

    If the SFPD got this case in January, all they had to do is have some admin send some such letter to Waymo (and any nearby businesses with surveillance cameras) and then in March when they got their fat donut-eating asses on the case the evidence would be there. But they didn't bother.

    That's police work in the US these days. They can't be bothered to do police work. Someone has to walk in and hand them a ribbon-wrapped case for them to be bothered to look at it. "Solving a case" isn't like on TV. On TV they have an hour to investigate, collate, deduce, confront, and arrest. In real life that's 3 months of donuts and sitting around watching your ass get all triangle-like, THEN blame Waymo.

    Disgusting. I'm sure the Yoga studio is overjoyed.

    • You're making assumptions. Normally warrants do not take long to get filed or issued. There's nothing in TFS to indicate that they just sat around waiting for months. It could very well be that the use of the Waymo didn't become evident until much later in the investigation.

      Also the police didn't blame Waymo, you made that up in your head.

      And you just said they sat and ate donuts, sort of implying you think investigators are the same ones that drive the beat.

      Your bias is showing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You're making assumptions. Normally warrants do not take long to get filed or issued. There's nothing in TFS to indicate that they just sat around waiting for months.

        I don't think any assumptions were made. The robbery happened in January. The warrant wasn't filed until April. That's a three month lag.

        It could very well be that the use of the Waymo didn't become evident until much later in the investigation.

        The business owner had surveillance footage of the Waymo, the police knew at the onset. That's why they thought it would be easy to solve.

        Also the police didn't blame Waymo, you made that up in your head

        Let me summarize what the police is saying: "Sorry, we can't catch the robber because Waymo did not retain has the footage that can help us catch them." The blame is implied. They don't need to say it out loud, the blame is implied.

        And you just said they sat and ate donuts, sort of implying you think investigators are the same ones that drive the beat.

        Bro,

        • I don't think any assumptions were made. The robbery happened in January. The warrant wasn't filed until April. That's a three month lag.

          You just made an assumption, specifically about what information was available at what time and to whom. There's nothing in TFS or TFA or the article linking them that gave any indication of when the knowledge of a Waymo being used was known, only that a warrant was granted (not filed) in April.

      • You're making assumptions. Normally warrants do not take long to get filed or issued. There's nothing in TFS to indicate that they just sat around waiting for months.

        FTFS:

        A burglar took a self-driving Waymo taxi to rob a San Francisco yoga studio this past January, reports TechCrunch

        and

        by the time the search warrant was filed in April

        If it took three months to figure out it was a Waymo, they weren't working on that case for most of that time. Perhaps they were working other cases, but not doing some quick preliminary work when new cases come in to see if they can be moved forward is fucking up by definition.

        • You're stating facts, not information. We know the burglary happened in Jan, we know the warrant was filed in April. Everything else about timelines in between are complete assumptions. It could very well have been that the Waymo being used was new information discovered in April and that the police jumped on it the day it was discovered. We don't know, you don't know.

          If it took three months to figure out it was a Waymo, they weren't working on that case for most of that time.

          Literally no case gets worked most of the time for that duration. Information trickles in over time and is followed up on. In most robberies

    • Re: Preservation letter? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday June 08, 2026 @09:20AM (#66180378)
      This has nothing to do with police competence. Like every organization and company nowadays, police departments are very short of manpower. This incident involved a guy stealing an armful of hot yoga pants. No violence, low property damage and very low value stolen. In terms of priority, this would rank above robbing a vending machine but lower than literally every other crime. Dealing with this stuff take time, and each cop only has 8 hours per workday. You do the math and this kind of thing gets neglected or straight up ignored. They choose to focus on the violent crime, drug stuff, and higher dollar value things.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        A lot of forces won't even investigate most misdemeanors any longer because there aren't enough prosecutors to even file the case much less pursue it. I heard a cop who was told about a stolen bicycle the victim had located, "Go steal it back tonight. Then buy a better lock." because they wouldn't dispatch anyone for a bike which valued less than a felony warrant.

    • Disgusting. I'm sure the Yoga studio is overjoyed.

      Tip of the iceberg with disgusting behavior. Just wait until insurance gets into a 3-year long pissing match with local law enforcement in the finger pointing game, while arrogantly demanding the business maintains their insurance premiums or else the cut-of-the-corrupt-profits Vinny DaLandlord gets a call.

      I imagine those still trying to operate a for-profit no-fraud business within the liberated state of Kalifornia either have blind devotion for the environment they've voted for, or they don't hate it eno

  • What is the story here? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday June 08, 2026 @06:22AM (#66180176)

    That the police does not care enough to invest any real effort to find a burglar?

    • Re:What is the story here? (Score:4, Funny)

      by gijoel ( 628142 ) on Monday June 08, 2026 @07:49AM (#66180268)
      The suspect was reported to have screamed "You broke my cover" during a past lives guide meditation session, and then jumped through a glass window. He then reported boarded the robot taxi, tore out the Waymos synthetic customer relations model prototype and commandeered the taxi. The suspect is still at large, but police have asked SpaceX and Blue Origin for assistance.

    • That the police does not care enough to invest any real effort to find a burglar?

      Given that the police filed a warrant to gain footage after their investigation showed a Waymo was used, what makes you think they aren't investing effort given that there's actual evidence to the contrary?

      I mean other than your well known hatred for police?

      • Given that the police filed a warrant to gain footage after their investigation showed a Waymo was used, what makes you think they aren't investing effort given that there's actual evidence to the contrary?

        The business owner had surveillance footage showing that a Waymo was used as the getaway vehicle, which I'm going to assume was shared that with the police early on in their investigation. Despite that, the search warrant wasn't issued to Waymo until 3 months after the crime took place.

        I guess we can quibble over whether that's enough to say that they aren't "investing effort" into the investigation. They certainly don't seem to have treated it as a priority and that lack of action allowed potentially key

    • That the police does not care enough to invest any real effort to find a burglar?

      Take a guess as to where a Yoga studio reporting a B&E with no injuries stands in the daily priority list at a California police dispatch, in a state that requires a business to carry an insurance policy.

      Also known to law enforcement as the Get Out Of Work Free card.

      "Waymo" is the only reason we're reading about this here. No one gives a shit about a thief who got away with it in a state that turns a blind eye to it otherwise.

  • Just.

    Drive.

  • Seems an odd place to choose.
    Inside job or weirdo looking for sweaty workout gear?

  • Note to law enforcement: (Score:3)

    by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Monday June 08, 2026 @08:34AM (#66180314)
    He's the one who seems a little too pleased with how clever he is. Oh wait, did you say San Francisco? Never mind, you'll never pick him out of that crowd.

  • Pilates was still on his to-do list for the week

  • AI is Stealing Jobs! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jpatters ( 883 ) on Monday June 08, 2026 @08:43AM (#66180330)

    Not even getaway drivers jobs are safe!

  • He said that the company had not retained interior footage of the car by the time the search warrant was filed in April and that it had kept the faces seen outside the car blurred for privacy reasons.

    Did Waymo wake up on the Fuck The Police side of the bed that morning or what? Since when is it company policy to comply with a legal court order and valid search warrant to obtain evidence in research of a crime, and you provide civilian-censored footage that essentially blurs every ability for the police to do their job?

    And before the privacy advocates go nuts, I'm all about privacy. But tell me how much we expect to have in a taxi with no fucking driver. Seriously. "Robbing" you of your privacy is ba

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      No, it's because in the real world storage, network bandwidth and compute power all cost money. People who think that Ring and Alexa are retaining the minutia of your daily life don't seem to understand that either.

      • People who think that Ring and Alexa are retaining the minutia of your daily life don't seem to understand that either.

        It's one thing to retain all of the video forever. It's another thing to analyze the video and store notes about what occurred forever, and store any interesting video forever. They can be and probably are doing both things because it would be valuable AI training data.

      • No, it's because in the real world storage, network bandwidth and compute power all cost money. People who think that Ring and Alexa are retaining the minutia of your daily life don't seem to understand that either.

        It takes less effort to provide the raw uncensored footage to law enforcement.

        In your scenario the acceptable answer would have been "We no longer have the footage". They didn't do that. They actually had the footage requested. And they censored it.

        IANAL but I'm guessing if a civilian did this, they would be charged with multiple crimes, to include evidence tampering and obstruction of justice.

    • Lacking evidence that someone decided to defy a court order, interfere with a police investigation, and risk the associated jailtime, I'm going to assume that Waymo simply doesn't retain the raw footage for longer than it takes to do the processing to anonymize faces. And given that it took 3 months for the police to get around to issuing them a warrant, that retention period may not even be particularly short.

      And, from a privacy angle, good on them. I don't see how being able to identify a person's fac

    • He said that the company had not retained interior footage of the car by the time the search warrant was filed in April and that it had kept the faces seen outside the car blurred for privacy reasons.

      Did Waymo wake up on the Fuck The Police side of the bed that morning or what? Since when is it company policy to comply with a legal court order and valid search warrant to obtain evidence in research of a crime, and you provide civilian-censored footage that essentially blurs every ability for the police to do their job?

      My guess is that the face blurring happens on the car, before the data is even uploaded to Waymo, as a way to protect the privacy of random passersby from Waymo and Waymo employees. They likely never had possession of imagery with unblurred exterior faces, so there was no way they could provide it.

      There's no way that Waymo is just defying a court order.

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