{"id":118488,"date":"2026-01-03T07:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T07:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/118488\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T07:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T07:49:09","slug":"san-jose-police-recover-15000-in-stolen-tools-from-encampment-on-new-years-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/118488\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose police recover $15,000 in stolen tools from encampment on New Year’s Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Jose police say a New Year’s Eve bust at an encampment uncovered $15,000 in stolen tools.<\/p>\n

City leaders say it’s proof that the new Neighborhood Quality of Life Unit is working.<\/p>\n

Police recovered and returned thousands of dollars of stolen tools to a San Martin plumber and arrested everyone involved.<\/p>\n

“This is just a great example of the work we wanted our Neighborhood Quality of Life Unit to be doing,” Mayor Matt Mahan said.<\/p>\n

The brand new unit was a priority for Mahan, a way to proactively enforce the city code of conduct to combat the growing number of homeless encampments throughout the city, among other issues.<\/p>\n

MORE: San Jose mayor wants to allow juveniles to waive Miranda Rights without lawyer | Here’s why<\/a><\/p>\n

An important role of the Neighborhood Quality of Life Unit is to enforce strict “no encampment” zones spread throughout the city — including one at Maybury Road at Highway 101, where the bust took place.<\/p>\n

“In this case, the team stumbled upon a cache of stolen equipment,” Mahan said. “It’s not a crime to be homeless, but we expect people to accept shelter, housing services when they’re available. And when they’re not, to at least be abiding by our basic laws.”<\/p>\n

Unhoused Advocate Shaunn Cartwright said the bust highlights the larger problem of criminal street gangs using encampments as a sort of front to commit crimes.<\/p>\n

While she doesn’t know who is at fault yet, she says the announcement of this bust may represent the city wrongfully placing the blame on the homeless.<\/p>\n

“The city needs to decide: are unhoused people all drug-addicted mental patients with no gumption, or are they criminal masterminds?” Cartwright said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Jose police say a New Year’s Eve bust at an encampment uncovered $15,000 in stolen tools. City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2903,4421,62831,88,90,89,17060,62830],"class_list":["post-118488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-encampment","tag-matt-mahan","tag-new-year39s-eve-bust","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-police","tag-stolen-equipment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}