SAN FRANCISCO – California lawmakers are urging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would allow rental car companies to use GPS technology sooner to find stolen rental cars faster.
San Francisco leaders say this would also prevent the cars from being used for theft and trafficking.
When a rental car isn’t returned on time, as California state law stands today, companies are required to wait 72 hours to use GPS to find it.
“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Matt Haney, a California Assemblymember said.
Haney authored a bill that would shorten the window down to 24 hours instead.
And now, he’s urging Governor Newsom to sign the bill.
“Many of these rental cars, when they’re stolen, are actually used in other crimes,” he said. “Someone doesn’t want to use their own car in a crime because it can be traced so they take a rental car, they steal it and they go commit other crimes.”
He claims over the past three years, rental car companies have reported a 266% increase in rental car thefts.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins says those stolen rental cars are frequently used to commit other crimes like organized retail theft.
“Often times, they are driving vehicles through the front doors of business stores, they’re not driving their own vehicles through those doors. They’re driving stolen rental cars because they don’t mind damaging those cars,” Jenkins said.
She claims cutting the time down will make it easier for police to do their jobs.
“Once that car is entered into the system as stolen, we will have another technological way to make sure that SFPD can do what it needs to, to pull over that car and make an arrest in that situation if necessary,” she said.
“This information officers will be using to immediately apprehend suspects,” Derrick Jackson, the acting San Francisco Deputy Police Chief said.
Jackson says if the change is made, it would also make the city’s 400 newly installed license plate readers more effective.
“With the ability to better track stolen rental vehicles, we can be more effective in identifying criminal suspects and continue to keep driving down crime,” he said.
Governor Newsom has until the end of September to sign or veto the bill.
I used to manage a fairly large U-Haul center in the Bay Area.
When one of our tracked vehicles was reported stolen, we’d receive a call from corporate shortly after letting us know that the vehicle had been “seen” at such and such intersection. The company would send someone out to do a “drive-by” and if the vehicle was still there, police would be contacted. We’d attempt this every day or so until the vehicle was recovered.
We were instructed to inform law enforcement that the vehicles did not have gps tracking, when in fact most of the smaller and newer vehicles did.
I had no idea about this 72 hour law, but it makes some of the weird stuff they asked us to do in these situations make a bit more sense.