Author Shelby Steele loses $30,000 worth of camera equipment in a San Francisco car burglary

Conservative author Shelby Steele and his filmmaker son Eli were welcomed to San Francisco when vandals broke into their car on Wednesday and stole about $30,000 in camera equipment while they were in the city filming a documentary.

Eli she said They had parked their rented SUV for just 10 minutes at the end of the city’s famous Lombard Street and returned around 11 a.m. to find three broken windows and missing equipment.

“You hear how bad San Francisco is. “I was filming a recording of my dad, Shelby Steele, and in the 10 minutes we were gone, our SUV was broken into and almost $15,000 worth of cameras were stolen,” the younger Steele tweeted, alongside photos of the broken-in Window.

He later said he found that in addition to the damage to the rental car, other equipment had been stolen — totaling between $25,000 and $30,000.

Eli claimed the police did nothing.

“I called 911 and hung up twice,” he tweeted. “…SF police do nothing. It’s so bad my friend is calling gang members for help.”

As they surveyed the damage, they saw other suspected robbers pull up in a Mercedes and peer into parked cars, he said.

“We yelled at them. They pointed a gun at my friend,” Eli tweeted. “He is now submitting his report. Not a single police officer showed up.”

A few hours later, the documentary maker shared an update from the police station claiming everyone there was there for the same reason – all had been broken into.

The father-son duo filed their complaint with a police officer, who took all of their information and allegedly told them not to expect anything out of the complaint as San Francisco police had been “exposed,” according to Eli.

The Twitter thread caught the attention of platform owner Elon Musk.

“Many Twitter employees feel unsafe coming into downtown SF for work and their car windows have been smashed,” Musk replied to the thread. “Also, they got so little response from the police that they hardly bother to report crimes anymore because nothing happens.”

Eli said he doesn’t blame Musk employees “one bit”.

“But when are we going to say enough is enough and demand the services that we pay for with our taxpayers’ money?” he replied.

San Francisco has been hit by escalating property crimes in recent months, including car break-ins and shoplifting, prompting numerous large retailers to lock up products or pull out of the city altogether.