{"id":324218,"date":"2026-05-20T07:06:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/324218\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T07:06:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:06:22","slug":"san-francisco-police-arrest-three-people-on-theft-charges-in-chinatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/324218\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco police arrest three people on theft charges in Chinatown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Brief<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officers were able to identify the suspects&#8217; car on Saturday using Automated License Plate Readers and a drone unit, according to the San Francisco Police Department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The three suspects were arrested on theft-related charges and booked into the San Francisco County Jail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A search warrant was carried out in Vallejo by SFPD where they recovered more stolen items and more than $14,000 in the home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">SAN FRANCISCO &#8211; The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktvu.com\/tag\/us\/ca\/san-francisco\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:San Francisco;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;San Francisco&quot;}\" class=\"link \">San Francisco<\/a> Police Department arrested three people on Saturday in connection to several cases of alleged theft and pickpocketing, including one case where a victim lost about $4,000 worth of property.<\/p>\n<p>Chinatown pickpocketing<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">What we know<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Business owners and community members in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktvu.com\/tag\/us\/ca\/san-francisco\/chinatown\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Chinatown;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Chinatown&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Chinatown<\/a> reported multiple theft incidents in April, which led SFPD to launch an investigation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officers were able to identify the suspects&#8217; car on Saturday using Automated License Plate Readers and a drone unit, according to the San Francisco Police Department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Capt. Chris Del Gandio described how the suspects allegedly carried out these thefts in the community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;They open up their coats, they try and block it from view, and it&#8217;s a very quick duck into a business,&#8221; he said, &#8220;Or if someone does feel something, by the time they turn around, it&#8217;s gone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officers in plainclothes and a drone above them saw the suspects working together to steal items from community members, leading officers to arrest all three of them, the department said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The suspects were identified as Stefan Ruest, 35, Marian Constantine, 30, and Florin Matei, 26, all from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktvu.com\/tag\/us\/ca\/solano-county\/vallejo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Vallejo.;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Vallejo.&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Vallejo.<\/a> The suspects were brought to San Francisco County Jail on the charges of grand theft, conspiracy, and possession of stolen property.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In a statement Tuesday, San Francisco Police Chief Derrick Lew thanked the city&#8217;s Central Station for working with the Chinatown business owners to arrest the suspects.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Criminals targeting Chinatown, or any other community in San Francisco, is simply unacceptable,&#8221; Lew said. &#8220;I want to thank members of the Central Station for their continued partnership with the merchants to demonstrate the highest level of community policing that keeps our city and Chinatown safe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The police department said officers recovered all the stolen belongings and gave the items back to the victims.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The following day, a search warrant was carried out in Vallejo by SFPD where they recovered more stolen items and more than $14,000 in the home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The investigation remains active and open.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Source<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">San Francisco Police Department<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief Officers were able to identify the suspects&#8217; car on Saturday using Automated License Plate Readers and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[13005,5524,101,48216,103,102,18816,104,106,105,3627],"class_list":["post-324218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-chinatown","tag-community-members","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-county-jail","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-police","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-vallejo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324218","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=324218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}