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If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft from parked cars is the number on

If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods. An alarm is still a good deterrent for people who do not park their cars in a garage.

thelean12 6y ago
The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to near zero. Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in a few seconds anyway.
- Areading314 6y ago
  Right. The alarm makes them only target the easily available junk that is in plain view. With no alarm, the thief could quietly spend 30 minutes "working on" the vehicle so they could clear out your trunk, and maybe even a few parts like the radio/GPS
  - haser_au 6y ago
    No thief is going to spend 30 minutes on a suburban street rifling through a car. If it's in a secluded parking area, or behind a building, maybe. But not on a main street with neighbours and traffic.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    AFAIK, people don't really steal stock radios anymore. Or at least, it's not very common. Your trunk should also be empty of anything valuable. There's no reason to keep much back there overnight. I guess thieves could steal my tire chains and donut right now, but that hardly seems worth the trouble.
    - issamehh 6y ago
      Jokes on any thief that tries to steal from my trunk. I don't really care about any of the junk in there other than maybe my jumper cables and tool set. Have fun sorting through all of the extra stuff to find them in time
    - olyjohn 6y ago
      Thieves stole my chains, first aid kit, and my cheap ass toolkit that I kept in the trunk. No value on any of that shit so I’m not sure why they took it. But they also left an envelope that had a piece of paper in it with scribbles in it, and a roof rack mount from a different car. Thieves aren’t always stealing things because it’s logical.
      - grogenaut 6y ago
        had someone smash my window and rifle through my stuff. Window was $70. I found a uncached $375 check on the passenger seat I had lost in all of the checks from work (back when you got physical checks). So... yay!
  - tinix 6y ago
    Even with an alarm... our car was stolen from our (detached) garage. If anything, the garage gave them ample cover to work in privacy, actually. Still not sure exactly how they did it... Our vehicle has physical keys, no wireless fobs or keyless entry, so it wasn't a relay/clone attack. They basically just stripped out the ignition, and busted out all the interior lights, and did something in the fuse box (probably pulled a fuse or something to disable the alarm while they worked on the ignition cylinder). We have them on video driving away in our car... Apparently Kia really sucks at anti-theft. We still had all keys in our possession, too. Normally, if you unlock or open the door from inside, while it's locked, the alarm goes off. The car was recovered only a few blocks away, parked in an alley, blocking someone else's garage. I got videos of the thieves walking away down the alley after ditching it. They left actual valuables in the car/garage like tools, sunglasses, camping gear, etc... and destroyed a lot of nonsense things. The only valuable thing they took was the dash cam. As it stands, the garage, the alarm, the steering lock, key requirement, and video recording did little to stop them. The garage was locked too, and very well lit with motion activated flood lights. I don't know what else we could have done other than have the garage secured with motion/door sensors and a very loud exterior siren/strobes... to protect our shitty 2011 Kia. lol, right... Basically, thieves gonna thieve, and vandals gonna vandal. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/12/05/denver-police-kia-thefts/ https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/12/05/denver-police-kia-the...
    - asveikau 6y ago
      That long story and it didn't look like they got much out of it. At that point you start to wonder about the motive. Drugs? Plus not having a lot of intellegence or skill?
      - meowster 6y ago
        Probably needed a disposable car for a crime.
        asveikau 6y ago
        Hm. Maybe I am wrong on this, but then you would expect them to dispose it near a potentially faraway crime scene, not close to where it was stolen.
- spideymans 6y ago
  My friend had a thief steal her microwave in a smash and grab. She stopped to go into the gas station for nor more than a few minutes to pay for gas. Store your stuff in the trunk. Always. We all think it won't happen to us until it does.
- mmmBacon 6y ago
  Unfortunately your suggestion is only a half measure and a significant number of break ins are to steal parts off the car itself. Theft of airbags is very common as is theft of catalytic converters. Airbag theft: https://wjla.com/news/local/the-dc-area-has-become-a-hot-spot-for-airbag-theft-insurance-crime-expert-says https://wjla.com/news/local/the-dc-area-has-become-a-hot-spo... Catalytic Converter theft impacting Prius owners. https://www.torquenews.com/8113/toyota-prius-owners-are-asking-have-their-cars-recalled-due-theft-catalytic-converters https://www.torquenews.com/8113/toyota-prius-owners-are-aski...
  - cyberlurker 6y ago
    Can confirm and was going to make this exact comment. My entire life I made sure my car was spotless and nothing of value was visible to make it a less attractive target. The one time it got smashed into was to steal the airbag. It was infuriating.
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
    Also anything with clearance. Had one cut out of my Land Rover in Venice, took them like 3 minutes. We checked NextDoor in the morning and it seemed like dozens had been taken that week.
- thallium205 6y ago
  ArE yOu ViCtIm BlAmInG!?
- asdff 6y ago
  I subscribe to that philosophy, too. Still, it didn't stop someone from breaking into my car anyway and throwing all the crap in my glovebox around the car and leaving trash everywhere. The police didn't even want to file a report.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  Yes. The only time I've had a car broken into I had left a suit jacket on a hanger next to a rear window. Perhaps they thought the jacket might have had a wallet in it. They didn't find my emergency cache of 'petrol money' I keep in my car in case I forget or lose my wallet and need to fill up. This was a hotel car park in the UK town of Bedford. If you do put stuff in the boot (trunk) you should do this before you park, otherwise it is a dead giveaway that you are hiding something valuable.
chrisseaton 6y ago
I don't get what people are stealing from parked cars? You can't remove radios anymore. What are they taking? Surely nobody's leaving a laptop or a purse in a car?
- fortran77 6y ago
  They will not hesitate in San Francisco to break a $300 window to steal the change out of your ashtray.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    That's just a figment of local law enforcement policy and doesn't really speak to broader trends. Places like Boston and DC have car break ins but they're not rampant like in SF Edit: For those unaware SF downgraded a ton of (formerly felony I believe) property crime to low level misdemeanors with very light sentencing guidelines (termed "catch and release" by many) which results in nearly zero law enforcement action being taken against them . The result of this is that all sorts of petty theft and theft adjacent behavior (like breaking into cars) is far more rampant than in many other cities because (obviously). I support treating petty property crime as petty but you can't accidentally allow "crime with a victim" type crime to go unenforced in the process. Victimizing other people can't be an activity that has positive ROI in the long term.
    - pengaru 6y ago
      > That's just a figment of local law enforcement policy and doesn't really speak to broader trends. You don't know what you're talking about.
    - jfim 6y ago
      That's California Proposition 47 [0] from 2014. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
    - athms 6y ago
      In San Francisco, those types of property crimes were going up before Prop 47. That is not to say 47 didn't exasperate the problem. The city also had diversion programs for non-violent crimes, both misdemeanor and felony, before the proposition was enacted. SF has had an epidemic of car break-ins for the last decade and the organized shoplifting rings have been a thing for generations. I never experienced drug or grocery stores locking up merchandise until I was visiting a friend in SF in 2007. Then again that was also the first time I saw used condoms and needles in the gutter, a person taking a dump between two parked cars, and two men humping in the bushes of Golden Gate Park.
monadic3 6y ago
Ehh, you can smash and grab before people realize what's going on. Personally, I don't think I've ever checked to see whether a car alarm is mine. What's the point?
deleted 6y ago
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nitwit005 6y ago
Do people call the police and have the police show up if something like that happens? Here people don't even turn their heads when an alarm goes off, and the police will show up, but far past the actual event.
- olyjohn 6y ago
  Depends where you are. In Seattle they won’t even talk to you when someone hits your car and takes off and you have their license plates.
- athms 6y ago
  One of the many benefits of living in Beverly Hills, the police actually show up, even for petty crimes.
jeffbee 6y ago
I am amused that you think a realistic understanding of crime statistics can be formed by reading NextDoor.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  GP said they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods GP isn't saying that's the only crime problem in the world, or the worst. GP is saying that this is the number one problem in neighborhoods. Based on what I'm seeing in my neighborhood (SV), this is 100% true. People are also stealing packages, but the monetary loss in those cases is much less than the cost of replacing or repairing vehicles that have been stolen or broken into.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Petty crime has some pretty big regional variations. Statistics from SV don't apply well to some random suburb of Buffalo.
greggman3 6y ago
> theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods You forgot to add "in the USA" (or some other country). Where I live (Japan), AFAIK, theft from cars is practically non-existent. Leaving things in your car visible is not an issue. I don't think I've ever seen a pile of glass from a car window busted the entire time I've spent here (14 yrs) where as in SF, several times, I'd walk by Dolores Park or down Folsom and see a pile of glass every 3rd car space. Once you get used to it living without such theft it's hard not to see places that have lots of theft from car issues as more 3rd world like than 1st. And it's sad that people get so used to it they take it as normal. I used to. In California had my car broken into 5 times and even stolen once.
- kenhwang 6y ago
  I've lived all over California and it pretty much never happens outside of SF. Smashed car windows and poop on sidewalks are kinda still uniquely SF things, not general California things. Other places with rampant car theft tends to have more elegant methods of getting into cars that doesn't involve the noise of smashing a window. Like a slim jim.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jojobas 6y ago
  You're talking about an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, which are in short supply these days.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    Kicking out all the immigrants of San Francisco and keeping only the native Americans Ohlone may fix the car thefts issue indeed. Because that would be very few cars. About ethnicities and theft, correlation does not imply causation.
  - buran77 6y ago
    Consider that crime might be higher in areas with a concentration of immigrants simply because those areas intrinsically offer good opportunities for both immigrants and criminals. Good jobs/pay for people (immigrants included) also means better stuff that criminals can steal.
astura 6y ago
But everyone just totally ignores car alarms, so they don't function as any sort of deterrent in practice. Thieves will still take your shit even if an alarm is going off. When was the last time you ran outside to confront a possible theft when you heard a car alarm go off?
- james-skemp 6y ago
  I didn't run outside last week, but that's because we can get a good view of the circle we live on from our front window. We've had a number of thefts in our city, especially since the pandemic started, so we've been keeping an eye open for our fellow neighbors. (Thefts have mostly been kids, seemingly using them for temporary transportation, joy riding, and a case earlier this year of a possible ring taking nicer vehicles. One from today: https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/18-year-old-3-juveniles-arrested-after-crashing-stolen-car-on-the-east-side/article_8fa7fd2e-6a96-5b67-9ad1-db7a14ace52f.html https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/18-year-... I believe earlier today I saw mention of them, or another stolen RAV4 going 120, likely on our beltline.)
  - astura 6y ago
    Okay, you keep your eyes open for your neighbors - then what? Your eyes don't magically stop break-ins - you looking out the window doesn't stop people from breaking into cars, just like actual cameras don't stop them.

thelean12 6y ago

The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to near zero. Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in a few seconds anyway.

Areading314 6y ago
Right. The alarm makes them only target the easily available junk that is in plain view. With no alarm, the thief could quietly spend 30 minutes "working on" the vehicle so they could clear out your trunk, and maybe even a few parts like the radio/GPS
- haser_au 6y ago
  No thief is going to spend 30 minutes on a suburban street rifling through a car. If it's in a secluded parking area, or behind a building, maybe. But not on a main street with neighbours and traffic.
- thelean12 6y ago
  AFAIK, people don't really steal stock radios anymore. Or at least, it's not very common. Your trunk should also be empty of anything valuable. There's no reason to keep much back there overnight. I guess thieves could steal my tire chains and donut right now, but that hardly seems worth the trouble.
  - issamehh 6y ago
    Jokes on any thief that tries to steal from my trunk. I don't really care about any of the junk in there other than maybe my jumper cables and tool set. Have fun sorting through all of the extra stuff to find them in time
  - olyjohn 6y ago
    Thieves stole my chains, first aid kit, and my cheap ass toolkit that I kept in the trunk. No value on any of that shit so I’m not sure why they took it. But they also left an envelope that had a piece of paper in it with scribbles in it, and a roof rack mount from a different car. Thieves aren’t always stealing things because it’s logical.
    - grogenaut 6y ago
      had someone smash my window and rifle through my stuff. Window was $70. I found a uncached $375 check on the passenger seat I had lost in all of the checks from work (back when you got physical checks). So... yay!
- tinix 6y ago
  Even with an alarm... our car was stolen from our (detached) garage. If anything, the garage gave them ample cover to work in privacy, actually. Still not sure exactly how they did it... Our vehicle has physical keys, no wireless fobs or keyless entry, so it wasn't a relay/clone attack. They basically just stripped out the ignition, and busted out all the interior lights, and did something in the fuse box (probably pulled a fuse or something to disable the alarm while they worked on the ignition cylinder). We have them on video driving away in our car... Apparently Kia really sucks at anti-theft. We still had all keys in our possession, too. Normally, if you unlock or open the door from inside, while it's locked, the alarm goes off. The car was recovered only a few blocks away, parked in an alley, blocking someone else's garage. I got videos of the thieves walking away down the alley after ditching it. They left actual valuables in the car/garage like tools, sunglasses, camping gear, etc... and destroyed a lot of nonsense things. The only valuable thing they took was the dash cam. As it stands, the garage, the alarm, the steering lock, key requirement, and video recording did little to stop them. The garage was locked too, and very well lit with motion activated flood lights. I don't know what else we could have done other than have the garage secured with motion/door sensors and a very loud exterior siren/strobes... to protect our shitty 2011 Kia. lol, right... Basically, thieves gonna thieve, and vandals gonna vandal. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/12/05/denver-police-kia-thefts/ https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/12/05/denver-police-kia-the...
  - asveikau 6y ago
    That long story and it didn't look like they got much out of it. At that point you start to wonder about the motive. Drugs? Plus not having a lot of intellegence or skill?
    - meowster 6y ago
      Probably needed a disposable car for a crime.
      - asveikau 6y ago
        Hm. Maybe I am wrong on this, but then you would expect them to dispose it near a potentially faraway crime scene, not close to where it was stolen.
spideymans 6y ago
My friend had a thief steal her microwave in a smash and grab. She stopped to go into the gas station for nor more than a few minutes to pay for gas. Store your stuff in the trunk. Always. We all think it won't happen to us until it does.
mmmBacon 6y ago
Unfortunately your suggestion is only a half measure and a significant number of break ins are to steal parts off the car itself. Theft of airbags is very common as is theft of catalytic converters. Airbag theft: https://wjla.com/news/local/the-dc-area-has-become-a-hot-spot-for-airbag-theft-insurance-crime-expert-says https://wjla.com/news/local/the-dc-area-has-become-a-hot-spo... Catalytic Converter theft impacting Prius owners. https://www.torquenews.com/8113/toyota-prius-owners-are-asking-have-their-cars-recalled-due-theft-catalytic-converters https://www.torquenews.com/8113/toyota-prius-owners-are-aski...
- cyberlurker 6y ago
  Can confirm and was going to make this exact comment. My entire life I made sure my car was spotless and nothing of value was visible to make it a less attractive target. The one time it got smashed into was to steal the airbag. It was infuriating.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Also anything with clearance. Had one cut out of my Land Rover in Venice, took them like 3 minutes. We checked NextDoor in the morning and it seemed like dozens had been taken that week.
thallium205 6y ago
ArE yOu ViCtIm BlAmInG!?
asdff 6y ago
I subscribe to that philosophy, too. Still, it didn't stop someone from breaking into my car anyway and throwing all the crap in my glovebox around the car and leaving trash everywhere. The police didn't even want to file a report.
KineticLensman 6y ago
Yes. The only time I've had a car broken into I had left a suit jacket on a hanger next to a rear window. Perhaps they thought the jacket might have had a wallet in it. They didn't find my emergency cache of 'petrol money' I keep in my car in case I forget or lose my wallet and need to fill up. This was a hotel car park in the UK town of Bedford. If you do put stuff in the boot (trunk) you should do this before you park, otherwise it is a dead giveaway that you are hiding something valuable.

chrisseaton 6y ago

I don't get what people are stealing from parked cars? You can't remove radios anymore. What are they taking? Surely nobody's leaving a laptop or a purse in a car?

fortran77 6y ago
They will not hesitate in San Francisco to break a $300 window to steal the change out of your ashtray.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  That's just a figment of local law enforcement policy and doesn't really speak to broader trends. Places like Boston and DC have car break ins but they're not rampant like in SF Edit: For those unaware SF downgraded a ton of (formerly felony I believe) property crime to low level misdemeanors with very light sentencing guidelines (termed "catch and release" by many) which results in nearly zero law enforcement action being taken against them . The result of this is that all sorts of petty theft and theft adjacent behavior (like breaking into cars) is far more rampant than in many other cities because (obviously). I support treating petty property crime as petty but you can't accidentally allow "crime with a victim" type crime to go unenforced in the process. Victimizing other people can't be an activity that has positive ROI in the long term.
  - pengaru 6y ago
    > That's just a figment of local law enforcement policy and doesn't really speak to broader trends. You don't know what you're talking about.
  - jfim 6y ago
    That's California Proposition 47 [0] from 2014. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
  - athms 6y ago
    In San Francisco, those types of property crimes were going up before Prop 47. That is not to say 47 didn't exasperate the problem. The city also had diversion programs for non-violent crimes, both misdemeanor and felony, before the proposition was enacted. SF has had an epidemic of car break-ins for the last decade and the organized shoplifting rings have been a thing for generations. I never experienced drug or grocery stores locking up merchandise until I was visiting a friend in SF in 2007. Then again that was also the first time I saw used condoms and needles in the gutter, a person taking a dump between two parked cars, and two men humping in the bushes of Golden Gate Park.

monadic3 6y ago

Ehh, you can smash and grab before people realize what's going on. Personally, I don't think I've ever checked to see whether a car alarm is mine. What's the point?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nitwit005 6y ago

Do people call the police and have the police show up if something like that happens? Here people don't even turn their heads when an alarm goes off, and the police will show up, but far past the actual event.

olyjohn 6y ago
Depends where you are. In Seattle they won’t even talk to you when someone hits your car and takes off and you have their license plates.
athms 6y ago
One of the many benefits of living in Beverly Hills, the police actually show up, even for petty crimes.

jeffbee 6y ago

I am amused that you think a realistic understanding of crime statistics can be formed by reading NextDoor.

gnicholas 6y ago
GP said they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods GP isn't saying that's the only crime problem in the world, or the worst. GP is saying that this is the number one problem in neighborhoods. Based on what I'm seeing in my neighborhood (SV), this is 100% true. People are also stealing packages, but the monetary loss in those cases is much less than the cost of replacing or repairing vehicles that have been stolen or broken into.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

Petty crime has some pretty big regional variations. Statistics from SV don't apply well to some random suburb of Buffalo.

greggman3 6y ago

> theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods You forgot to add "in the USA" (or some other country). Where I live (Japan), AFAIK, theft from cars is practically non-existent. Leaving things in your car visible is not an issue. I don't think I've ever seen a pile of glass from a car window busted the entire time I've spent here (14 yrs) where as in SF, several times, I'd walk by Dolores Park or down Folsom and see a pile of glass every 3rd car space. Once you get used to it living without such theft it's hard not to see places that have lots of theft from car issues as more 3rd world like than 1st. And it's sad that people get so used to it they take it as normal. I used to. In California had my car broken into 5 times and even stolen once.

kenhwang 6y ago
I've lived all over California and it pretty much never happens outside of SF. Smashed car windows and poop on sidewalks are kinda still uniquely SF things, not general California things. Other places with rampant car theft tends to have more elegant methods of getting into cars that doesn't involve the noise of smashing a window. Like a slim jim.
deleted 6y ago
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jojobas 6y ago
You're talking about an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, which are in short supply these days.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  Kicking out all the immigrants of San Francisco and keeping only the native Americans Ohlone may fix the car thefts issue indeed. Because that would be very few cars. About ethnicities and theft, correlation does not imply causation.
- buran77 6y ago
  Consider that crime might be higher in areas with a concentration of immigrants simply because those areas intrinsically offer good opportunities for both immigrants and criminals. Good jobs/pay for people (immigrants included) also means better stuff that criminals can steal.

astura 6y ago

But everyone just totally ignores car alarms, so they don't function as any sort of deterrent in practice. Thieves will still take your shit even if an alarm is going off. When was the last time you ran outside to confront a possible theft when you heard a car alarm go off?

james-skemp 6y ago
I didn't run outside last week, but that's because we can get a good view of the circle we live on from our front window. We've had a number of thefts in our city, especially since the pandemic started, so we've been keeping an eye open for our fellow neighbors. (Thefts have mostly been kids, seemingly using them for temporary transportation, joy riding, and a case earlier this year of a possible ring taking nicer vehicles. One from today: https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/18-year-old-3-juveniles-arrested-after-crashing-stolen-car-on-the-east-side/article_8fa7fd2e-6a96-5b67-9ad1-db7a14ace52f.html https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/18-year-... I believe earlier today I saw mention of them, or another stolen RAV4 going 120, likely on our beltline.)
- astura 6y ago
  Okay, you keep your eyes open for your neighbors - then what? Your eyes don't magically stop break-ins - you looking out the window doesn't stop people from breaking into cars, just like actual cameras don't stop them.