San Francisco bank robber gets 7 years for spree, carjacking
A 7-year federal sentence closes the loop on a Bay Area bank robbery spree that hit San Francisco, Rohnert Park and the Tenderloin escape route.
James Michael Garrison will spend seven years in federal prison after a Bay Area robbery spree that moved from a Rohnert Park bank to a San Francisco branch and then into the Tenderloin, where the getaway turned into a carjacking.
U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin sentenced Garrison to 84 months on June 4, ending a case that tied together three bank robberies, a rideshare carjacking and a trail of fear across the North Bay and San Francisco. He pleaded guilty on Feb. 12 to three counts of bank robbery and one count of carjacking, following a federal grand jury indictment on June 17, 2025. He will also serve three years of supervised release.
Federal prosecutors said the spree began on Dec. 5, 2024, when Garrison robbed a Westamerica Bank in Rohnert Park. He returned to the same bank on Jan. 2, 2025, and also robbed a bank in San Francisco on Dec. 27, 2024. Across the three robberies, prosecutors said, he stole about $20,000.
The details matter for San Francisco readers because the city was not just one stop on a wider crime pattern. Prosecutors said that during the San Francisco robbery, Garrison held a knife and threatened to shoot "everybody." After that robbery, police spotted him in the Tenderloin, one of the city’s most heavily watched neighborhoods and one where street crime and transit safety are watched closely by residents, merchants and public-safety officials alike.
From there, prosecutors said, Garrison carjacked a rideshare driver while fleeing. In the back seat, he allegedly threatened the driver with a black knife shaped like a handgun. Earlier investigative work linked the robberies through surveillance photo comparisons and clothing found in a dumpster near the first Rohnert Park robbery, helping Rohnert Park police, San Francisco police and the FBI connect the Bay Area pieces into one case.
Garrison has been in custody since his 2025 arrest and will begin serving the prison term immediately. For bank employees in Rohnert Park and San Francisco, and for the rideshare driver caught in the Tenderloin escape, the sentence closes a chapter on a fast-moving spree that crossed city lines but ended in federal court.
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