CA Car Burglaries Surging: An article in The Los Angeles Times reports that current California law appears to be encouraging increases in car burglaries.  Under existing law, the value of items stolen from a car must be $950 or more to qualify the crime as a felony and current law also requires the victim to present proof that the car was locked.  As one lawmaker noted, "It's ridiculous that under current law you can have a video of someone bashing out a car window, but if you can't prove that the door was locked you may not be able to get an auto burglary conviction." This is a statewide problem and in the past few months it has gotten worse. Data shows that there were 243,000 automobile burglaries across California last year.  Though the number of car break-ins was higher during the peak year of 2017.  San Francisco saw car burglaries spike by 24% from 2016 to 2017. So far this year, the numbers remain on track to be higher than pre-2017.  Other Bay Area cities experienced similar increases in recent years. From 2016 to 2018, San Jose experienced a 20% increase in car break-ins, according to a recent report by the San Jose Mercury News.  The good news for proponents of sentencing reform is that fewer criminals are in prison.  The bad news for the rest of us is that more criminals are free on the streets committing crimes.