San Francisco police are seeking a man who pretended to be a police officer and then stole a cellphone at knifepoint in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood on Tuesday.
The 23-year-old male victim was sitting in his car near Ellis and Hyde streets at about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a man approached, showed him a leather wallet with an oval badge in it and told him to get out of his car because he had to search it, police said.
The victim complied and the man, described as being in his 20s or 30s, then picked the victim’s cellphone up from the car’s center console and asked for the phone’s passcode, saying he needed to search it, according to police.
The victim again complied, giving him the code, and the man said he was taking the phone for evidence. He then began to walk away and when the victim started to follow him, he turned around and pointed a knife at him, police said.
The suspect then fled east on Ellis Street and had not been found as of this morning. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Police Department’s anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444 or to send a tip by text message to TIP411 with “SFPD” in the message.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
