A silver Audi tied to an attempted robbery in San Mateo County sped past a police traffic stop on the San Mateo Bridge yesterday, kicking off a cross-county tracking operation that ended with four people in custody near Emeryville — without a single high-speed chase, a crash, or an injury.
According to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, the incident began around 3:50 PM when San Mateo police attempted to stop the Audi as it crossed into Alameda County via the San Mateo Bridge. The driver failed to yield, and the Sheriff's Office says San Mateo police chose not to pursue, instead broadcasting a be-on-the-lookout alert for the silver sedan connected to an attempted robbery in San Mateo County. From there, the case shifted into the hands of Alameda County's Real-Time Information Center, which used automated license plate reader technology to relocate the Audi and notified the Sheriff's Office airplane, ALCO 2, to pick up the chase from above.
A Plane in the Sky, Not a Car on the Ground
ALCO 2 monitored the Audi from the air as it moved through the East Bay, eventually tracking it to Grand Avenue and Lake Park in Oakland, per the Sheriff's Office. Rather than have ground units close in on the vehicle directly, deputies positioned themselves nearby while the aircraft kept eyes on the suspects — a strategy consistent with the county's broader approach to avoiding high-speed ground pursuits, which KALW has reported is central to how the Sheriff's Office's Real-Time Information Center operates.
The Audi's occupants ultimately abandoned the car and climbed into an awaiting black Mercedes, according to the Sheriff's Office post. ALCO 2 then shifted its focus to tracking the Mercedes, feeding live location updates to ground units as it moved. Deputies initiated a traffic stop on westbound Interstate 80 near Powell Street in Emeryville, and the Mercedes driver yielded without incident.
Four Taken Into Custody, No Force Reported
Deputies conducted a high-risk stop on the Mercedes, and its occupants complied with commands, the Sheriff's Office says. Four occupants were taken into custody. The Sheriff's Office reported no uses of force, no collisions, and no injuries to either community members or personnel throughout the entire sequence — from the initial failed stop on the bridge to the arrests in Emeryville.
San Mateo police remain the primary investigative agency and are still working out the circumstances surrounding the attempted robbery that triggered the alert, according to the agency's account relayed through the Sheriff's Office. Officials have not yet said what additional case details, including formal charges against the four detained individuals, will be released.
A Regional Team Effort
The operation drew in several agencies beyond San Mateo and Alameda County. The Sheriff's Office says San Mateo police coordinated with the California Highway Patrol's Oakland office and the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department as the vehicles moved across jurisdictions. Ground units from the Sheriff's Office positioned themselves near Washington Avenue and Spring Lake Drive in San Leandro at one point during the tracking effort, before ALCO 2 confirmed the Audi's location there and the pursuit shifted north into Oakland.
This kind of layered, technology-driven response has become something of a pattern for Alameda County. Just weeks earlier, on August 4, the Real-Time Information Center and ALCO 2 ran a similar operation, locating a vehicle wanted by Redwood City police for burglaries and mail theft before guiding ground units to an arrest on Cherry Way, per the Sheriff's Office. In late May, the same aerial and license-plate-reader combination helped officers track a Fremont burglary suspect to San Leandro's Bay Fair Center, where ground officers used spike strips rather than a pursuit to make the stop.
The Technology Behind the Tracking
ALCO 2 is a fixed-wing airplane operated by the Sheriff's Office's Aviation Unit that provides high-altitude reconnaissance and live telemetry to patrol units across the East Bay, and it has assisted municipal departments, including Berkeley police, in past vehicle-tracking cases. The aircraft works in tandem with the county's network of over 100 automated license plate reader cameras from Flock Safety, which the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to keep funding with a roughly $300,000 contract extension in April, according to KALW.
San Mateo police operate a comparable setup of their own, running a Real-Time Information Center equipped with license plate readers and Drone-as-a-First-Responder tools to coordinate cross-jurisdictional crime response, the department has said. The attempted robbery that set Thursday's events in motion comes as San Mateo has reported broader declines in commercial theft, with reported incidents dropping from 1,267 in 2024 to 1,058 in 2025 following organized retail theft task force operations.
Under California law, the initial failure to yield on the San Mateo Bridge could expose a driver to misdemeanor evading charges under Vehicle Code Section 2800.1, which applies when a driver knowingly flees a marked patrol vehicle with lights and siren activated, according to the Shouse Law Group. If investigators determine the driving involved willful or wanton disregard for public safety, prosecutors could pursue felony reckless evading charges under Vehicle Code Section 2800.2, which carries a potential state prison term of 16 months to three years, per Eisner Gorin LLP. No charges had been announced as of Thursday night.
