Plane, surveillance and two K-9 units fail to catch backpack thief at Stanford Mall

One of the five cameras part of a monitoring system that gives a 360 degree view of the surroundings of a police car in Palo Alto, California, on Friday, July 24, 2015. One of the five cameras part of a monitoring system that gives a 360 degree view of the surroundings of a police car in Palo Alto, California, on Friday, July 24, 2015. Photo: Brandon Chew, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Brandon Chew, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Plane, surveillance and two K-9 units fail to catch backpack thief at Stanford Mall 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

The officers had been watching the suspect from a distance. The car, a white BMW, was moving leisurely around the parking lot of Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto's upscale, open-air mall.

Then, right under the nose of surveillance, the suspect did the expected. He exited the vehicle, assessed the interior contents of a few parked cars, stumbled upon an opportunity, and smashed.

Then he took off with the backpack.

The event on the night of Aug. 2nd., was, in some ways, an ubiquitous scene for the Bay Area, where burglaries — and car break-ins in particular — are commonplace.

Tourists, locals, Redditors and NextDoor-ians, are primed, at this point, to associate the Bay Area with broken glass. In San Francisco alone, there were more than 31,122 reported incidents of car break-ins in 2017 — a historic high.

But what was perhaps more uncommon was the Palo Alto Police Department's response to last week's smash and grab. What began as a rudimentary auto-burglary spun into a nightlong, county-wide manhunt, complete with police dogs and a highway patrol aircraft.

The officers observed the car cruising the mall's parking lot around 8:27 p.m. Once they prepared to arrest to him, the suspect dropped the stolen backpack and ran across El Camino Real, a busy thoroughfare. One team chased after him on foot, and the other team arrested the getaway driver, Nakiyah Shereese Polk, 20, of Vallejo.

"They had the female half," Wayne Benitez, Palo Alto Police Department PIO, said. "But they wanted this guy, too."

Officers, still on foot, chased after the suspect, who had run into a creek. Then they called in at least two dog teams, including the Menlo Park and Mountain View departments.

15 minutes after the burglary, a CHP airplane was sent in from Napa to aid in the search. The aircraft had to refuel in Oakland. It arrived nearly two hours later. 10 minutes after they issued the call for the plane, police detained a man in Menlo Park but almost immediately released him; he was not connected to the car burglary.

20 minutes after the aircraft arrived, police called off the search. The dogs went back to their departments. The suspect, who had stolen and subsequently abandoned a backpack with valuables totaling $300, was not found.

The items were returned to the bag's owner.

Benitez said he wasn't working at the time of the crime, and therefore could not comment on the supervising officer, Nicolas Martinez's "thought process," as it related to the police's response, but did state that utilizing an aircraft for a "simple property crime" was not a typical response for their department.

Sergeant Nicolas Martinez did not respond to a request for interview by the time of publication.

Benitez said he thought it was probably a "very aggressive approach," but that in the context of Palo Alto's upward trend of car break-ins, the supervising officer most likely thought an aircraft would be a quicker and more efficient way to make an arrest.

Benitez said the driver, who was arrested, had a violent criminal history, but those crimes occurred when she was a juvenile, so he could not comment on the details.

The suspect in question, according to the department's news release, was described as a skinny black man with a shaved head, about 6 foot 3 inches tall. There was no evidence he was carrying a firearm, or posed a larger threat to the community, Benitez said. All that the officers knew was that he ran into a creek, which bordered a residential neighborhood, thereby making the issue one of "community safety," Benitez said.

"I don't know what else [the officers] saw or anything like that," Benitez said. "Yes, we don't have anything to say that this guy was a violent criminal, or he had warrants or was on parole or on probation, because we don't know who he is. We get criticized for an under-response; we get criticized for an over-response."

As of Monday, the suspect still has not been found, which makes his record a mystery. But, Benitez said: "Usually the people who commit these crimes aren't the class valedictorians either, so we have to do our due diligence on either side for community safety."

It's unclear how much the entire operation cost. Shaun Bouyea, a CHP flight officer, estimated the cost of the aircraft used to aid in the search at $200 / an hour, but the figure depends on maintenance and other factors.

The aircraft cost is covered by CHP, Bouyea said.

In March, a weekend-long manhunt for two teenage boys who fled from a stolen car included a CHP helicopter crew and a canine unit from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, Palo Alto Online reported.

Bouyea estimated the hourly cost of a CHP helicopter as anywhere between $500 to $1500.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the police department's 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent via text message or voice mail to 650-383-8984.

Read Annie Vainshtein's latest stories here. Send her news tips at avainshtein@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @annievain.