COMMENTARY: News Reporter Robbed at Gunpoint While Covering Crime in San Francisco

The flailing liberal haven of San Francisco is being ravaged by a catastrophic crime wave, thanks to the one-two punch of extended coronavirus shutdowns and police defunding.

In the latest harrowing incident, a local reporter for KPIX-TV was robbed at gunpoint Wednesday while doing a story on the recent rash of car break-ins in the area.

KPIX 5 reporter Don Ford was preparing to do an on-air interview with local homeowners when a sedan with four men inside pulled up and one pointed a Glock in his face.

“The car came up here while we were about to do an interview. Three guys jumped out,” Ford recounted. “One had a gun, put it up to my face and said, ‘We’re taking the camera.’”

For the record, crime-addled San Francisco has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country. Yet those laws failed to deter this robbery at gunpoint. What a shocker.

Ford said his top priority was to remain calm because he didn’t want to get killed in broad daylight over a camera.

“My whole thought at the moment was, ‘Let’s be calm,'” he said. “‘Let’s not get this guy excited. He’s got the gun. I don’t.'”

The homeowner Ford was preparing to interview added, “I just looked and I said , ‘I’m not going to get shot today.'”

Ford remained traumatized hours after the robbery. “I’m not sure my adrenaline has settled down yet,” he said.

The local resident who asked to remain anonymous told KPIX 5 that crime has escalated dramatically over the past few months.

“I was worried that this is what’s gonna happen, because as thieves get more and more brazen, they do more and more brazenly things,” the man said.

San Francisco and other Democrat-run cities are under siege by criminals as murderers and thieves exploit the shutdowns and police pullbacks stemming from the left’s inane “defund the police” hysteria.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, the city has experienced a stunning 62 percent increase in burglaries in the first six weeks of 2021.

Store owners whose businesses were destroyed by extended shutdowns are now suffering further due to the mushrooming crime spree.

San Francisco hair-salon owner Cirrus Blaafjel reopened her shop recently — only to get robbed.

“We’ve been open four weeks now and restocked the whole salon so we can get back to work and then it was all gone,” she told KPIX-TV.

Despite this, San Francisco is considering slashing police budgets in a move that could force 11 percent of the force to be laid off, according to SFGate.

Police pullbacks are fueling an explosion in crime because a lack of law enforcement emboldens criminals.

Similarly, the extended shutdowns that Democrats have rabidly pushed contribute to more lawlessness as thieves use vacant storefronts to rob adjoining shops.

“Crooks are making good use of the Big Apple’s empty storefronts — breaking through walls to get into businesses that are still up and running next door,” the New York Post reported.

“With nearly half of small businesses closed citywide due to the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, crafty crooks are taking advantage by using shuttered shops to hit open stores after hours.”

While Democrats encourage more crime by opening our borders, emptying our jails and defunding the police, they’re simultaneously trying to take your guns.

Any way you look at it, this is a recipe for disaster.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.