Preventing Christmas Time Car Thefts

Preventing automobile break ins


I have a piece from a local news source talking about how people turned up in force to help out a crime victim who had lost $1,500 worth of Christmas presents because some a-hole broke into his car and stole the stuff destined for kids with cancer and other folks in need.

Sure, I hope karma finds the dude and has her way with him.  He should get double karma credit for it being a holiday crime.

But aside from the obvious, I have to wonder if the automotive break-in could have been avoided?

Sure, if an evil-doer is focused on breaking into cars, he'll do it.  But these cretins don't like to draw attention to themselves.  They don't like spending too much time in the same spot.  And I'm willing to guess that they don't like breaking into a car if they don't know what they are after.

Example:

I used to live at the Avalon Silicon Valley Apts, located at the intersection of Lawrence and the 101 in Sunnyvale, CA.  It's a nice enough place, but it had its issues.  Almost every week a car in my section of the garage was broken into.  (I could not attest for any other section.)  The cars to the immediate left and the immediate right of mine were all broken into.

Me?  I draped a "sun protecting" towel over my dashboard, hiding my gear, and had draped stuff over anything that might sit in my vehicle's seats or moved stuff to under my seat.  There was never anything to see inside my vehicle.

Another example is how a friend of mine had his car window broken out and the burglar took a bag full of dirty baby clothes.

-

So from what I've seen, it's what they can see that they'll take.

At this point, are you guessing where I'm going with this?

Yes... the age old adage of do not leave things in plain site in your car.  Toss a coat or sweatshirt over things, or better yet, leave stuff in your trunk.  (The coat or sweatshirt might be something the evil-doer might be looking for.)

If you leave iPods, ipads and other iThings laying around on your car seats, you are only inviting someone to liberate those things (and the files on them) from your possession.

It's your call.  But I know I like making the call and keeping folks out of and away from my s*!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Follow or subscribe to Consumer Bits on

Comments