It’s an issue all over the country: thieves smashing vehicle windows to steal anything left inside. They’re called smash and grabs, and in San Francisco, the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with car break-ins happening an average of every 17 minutes. 
 
 Inside Edition’s Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero wanted to see first-hand how bad the thefts are, so she used a $250 speaker and a Michael Kors purse as bait to lure thieves to a car rigged with hidden cameras. 
 
 What the would-be burglars didn’t know was that Guerrero and her team also hid GPS tracking devices inside the speaker and the purse. 
 
 Guerrero then drove up and parked the bait car at the renowned Alamo Square in San Francisco, where tourists flock to take pictures of the famous "Painted Ladies" row of Victorian homes. 
 
 It wasn't long before a couple of Bonnie and Clyde wannabes strolled up and peered inside the vehicle. 
 
 They waited for the sidewalk alongside the park to clear before one of them threw up his hood and tried to bust out the front passenger window with a special glass puncher. When it didn't break, he punched at the back window, which instantly shattered. 
 
 He first reached in and snatched the purse. After tossing the bag to his female accomplice, he went back in for the speaker. He struggled to pull it out at first, but finally got it out and walked off in broad daylight. 
 
 Guerrero then activated the GPS units and pursued the thieves through the streets of San Francisco with the help of a smartphone app. 
 
 The GPS showed the suspects had hopped on a local bus. When it came to a stop, Guerrero took off after them. 
 
 She eventually caught up with them at a subway entrance. 
 
 “Hey you guys, what's going on? I'm Lisa Guerrero with Inside Edition," she said. “You've got my speaker right there. You just broke into my car.” 
 
 “What?” the guy said. 
 
 “We've got it on camera,” she told him. 
 
 She followed him as he retreated into the subway. 
 
 “Five million people are gonna see you steal that," she said. "So you can choose to give it back or not." 
 
 He refused to give it back and pushed Inside Edition's camera away. 
 
 “You know what? I’m just gonna call my mother,” the man said. 
 
 “You should call your mother; that is awesome,” Guerrero replied. “Can I talk to your mom?” 
 
 He said no, and then left the speaker on the floor and walked off. 
 
 Next, Guerrero turned her attention to the female thief, who had fled in the opposite direction when Guerrero first approached them near the subway entrance. The tracking device led her to a trash can, where Guerrero recovered the purse; the GPS device was still inside. 
 
 An area resident, who did not want to be identified, showed Guerrero how his nearby security cameras captured the whole smash-and-grab theft go down. 
 
 “It all lasted maybe 20 seconds,” he said, adding that he sees smash-and-grab robberies every day. 
 
 Remarkably, as Guerrero was conducting the interview, a car belonging to the Inside Edition crew was broken into, resulting in two broken windows and the theft of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment. That robbery was also caught on by surveillance cameras. 
 
 "We actually got hit twice in one day," Guerrero declared. 
 
 Police are still investigating, but of the 31,000 car break-ins reported in San Francisco last year, less than two percent have been prosecuted, according to police. 
 
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 Inside the Wild Stunt Driving Trend That Is Taking America's Streets by Storm ||||| The Bay Area is struggling with vehicle break-ins -- in 2017, there were more than 31,000 reported break-ins, with just 2 percent resulting in arrests, according to SFGate. 
 
 It’s gotten to the point where area residents have taken to leaving notes for would-be thieves, begging them not to smash their windows, as revealed in a tweet by ABC7’s Melanie Woodrow. 
 
 Enter the TV show Inside Edition. 
 
 Be the first to know. No one covers what is happening in our community better than we do. And with a digital subscription, you'll never miss a local story. SIGN ME UP! 
 
 Reporter Lisa Guerrero led a crew to San Francisco with the intent of using surveillance gear to catch a thief in the act. Instead, the Inside Edition camera crew vehicle ended up being another statistic. 
 
 Guerrero used a car loaded with “bait” in the form of a $250 speaker and a purse, both of which were rigged with GPS trackers, according to the Inside Edition video segment. 
 
 “And for our last trick, we rigged this car with hidden cameras,” Guerrero told the camera, before leaving the bait parked in San Francisco’s famous Alamo Square. 
 
 As Inside Edition footage showed, a man was seen smashing a window and grabbing the purse, which he was seen tossing to a woman who was with him; the man then grabbed the speaker and walked away. 
 
 A man who lives nearby, and declined to give his name to Inside Edition, said his own surveillance system caught the burglary in action. 
 
 “It all lasted maybe 20 seconds,” he said, according to the Inside Edition video. 
 
 Guerrero and her crew then tracked down the man and confronted him. 
 
 “5 million people are going to see you steal that,” Guerrero warned the man in the video. 
 
 The man set the speaker down and walked away; Guerrero said her team later found the purse in a trash can. 
 
 But it was while reviewing surveillance footage of the bait car break-in that Guerrero received an unpleasant revelation, according to the video. 
 
 “Hey, wait a second, that car looks familiar. It’s our crew car,” Guerrero said, as she watched footage of a second break-in happening. 
 
 “Unbelievably, when we were inside conducting the interview (with the man who lives nearby), thieves came out here and they broke into our crew truck,” Guerrero said in the segment. “And they stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment.” 
 
 But if there’s any consolation for Guerrero and her camera crew, at least the thieves didn’t kill their pet Chihuaha. 
 
 A San Francisco woman recently was sentenced to three years in prison after she threw a Chihuahua off of a seven-story parking garage to its death after she found it in a vehicle she was breaking into, as McClatchy reported Sept. 7. ||||| TV crew reporting on car break-ins in SF has both bait car and camera crew vehicle robbed 
 
 Shattered glass from a recent car break-in remains on the sidewalk on Bay Street near Kearny Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015. Police officials say auto burglaries have doubled from last year, especially along Bay Street in Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square and the Embarcadero. less Shattered glass from a recent car break-in remains on the sidewalk on Bay Street near Kearny Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015. Police officials say auto burglaries have doubled from ... more Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 2015 Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 2015 Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close TV crew reporting on car break-ins in SF has both bait car and camera crew vehicle robbed 1 / 27 Back to Gallery 
 
 A television production crew investigating the car break-in issue in San Francisco inadvertently played themselves when thieves broke into not just a bait car, but the camera crew's vehicle as well. 
 
 Inside Edition, a CBS-affiliated news program, brought a car to Alamo Square with a Michael Kors purse and a $250 speaker in plain view inside. Both items had been fitted with GPS tracking devices. As anticipated, the car was broken into by a woman and a man soon after they parked. The crime, they later noted after reviewing footage, took about 20 seconds. 
 
 The two allegedly fled to a bus before ending up at the 16th Street Mission BART station, where Inside Edition Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero approached the man. Speaker still in hand, the man then attempted to head into BART. 
 
 "Five million people are gonna see you steal that," Guerrero said on camera. "So you can choose to give it back or not." 
 
 After being further pressed, the man told Guerrero he was going to call his mother before putting the speaker down on the BART platform and walking away. Guerrero later traced the purse to a garbage can nearby on Mission Street. 
 
 The reporter later caught up with an Alamo Square resident whose surveillance camera caught the break-in. But, to Guerrero's shock, the story continued; Inside Edition's camera crew van was broken into while she was conducting an interview inside the neighbor's residence. 
 
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 "They stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment," she said, opening the SUV door to shattered glass. "We actually got hit twice in one day." 
 
 San Francisco and Oakland are currently fighting a car break-in epidemic. In 2017, break-ins hit a historic high, with 31,122 reported incidents. Only 2 percent of cases saw arrests. 
 
 Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.
– They anticipated the first burglary, just not the second. While reporting on the epidemic of car break-ins in SanFrancisco, Inside Edition crew members watched as a man broke into a bait car fitted with hidden cameras. Reporter Lisa Guerrero began Wednesday's report by parking a car near San Francisco's Alamo Square with a designer purse and $250 speaker in full view. It wasn't long before a man smashed a rear window and grabbed the items, which had hidden GPS trackers. The purse, thrown to a female companion who slipped away at a subway station, was eventually found in a trash can, but Guerrero discovered the speaker still in the man's hand, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. "Five million people are gonna see you steal that," Guerrero told him. When he dropped the speaker and walked away, Guerrero went to interview a neighborhood resident whose surveillance camera captured the burglary, which he described as a daily occurrence. But Guerrero returned to the crew's SUV to find "we actually got hit twice in one day." The same surveillance camera spotted thieves smashing two of the vehicle's windows and making off with "thousands of dollars worth of equipment," Guerrero said. Per Inside Edition, "the problem has reached epidemic proportions, with car break-ins happening an average of every 17 minutes" in the city. Desperate residents have actually taken to leaving notes for would-be burglars, the Fresno Bee reports, via a reporter's tweet.