If the car is unoccupied at the time of the offense, it’s a burglary, not a robbery. I know most people don’t make that distinction but it’s a particular pet peeve of mine.
There were recently several car burglaries in my neighborhood on a Saturday night. The police went door to door on Sunday morning informing people- including myself that someone had burglarized cars in driveways. Including mine, which I had accidentally left unlocked.
Only the unlocked ones, though. The neighborhood is very quiet.
The burglars were very concerned with not making noise. So concerned that they didn’t even fully close the car doors of the cars they burglarized. That’s how the cops knew what cars had been hit. The doors were pushed closed just enough to turn off the interior lights but not latched. The cop I spoke to said this was very common, and it’s how they knew which cars had been burglarized.
I only had two things in the car worth stealing, and whoever was checking cars didn’t take either one. One was a charging cable for my phone. The other was a handicapped placard that I keep in my car because a handicapped family member is an occasional driver and frequent passenger. I think the burglar was probably a teenager from the neighborhood. Mostly because I think an adult would’ve taken the handicapped placard.
In my life, I have had my car burglarized about a half dozen times. Every single time I forgot to lock it. I have never had anyone break a window to burglarize my car even though 99% of the time my car is locked when I’m not in it.
While I will concede that a broken window is a pain to deal with, I also believe that the number of people that would steal something from an unlocked car is VASTLY larger that the number of people who would break a car window to take something from a car.
Yes, and I think the cops locking cars would be out of line.
That’s similar to spates of auto burglaries we’ve had in our neighborhood. The only cars entered are those that were left unlocked and the only thing taken is money - usually loose change which we used to all leave in our cars until the parking meters in this town started taking credit cards. I have been locking my car doors for 40 years and have never had my window broken. About 30 years ago someone stole my stereo after they jimmied my door.
And I’ll say again, there are places where thieves are much more likely to break a window than other places. And the people who park in those places are often aware of it.
Why do you think that is? Is it a regional thing? I’ve lived in cities and rural areas on the West Coast my whole life and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this reason for leaving your car unlocked. Is it different crooks or different surroundings?
I think there are places where people perceive the risk of broken windows to be higher, for example the article I linked to was focused around San Francisco which has a particularly bad problem with “smash and grab” car thefts. But even there the experts advised locking your door and if you’re really worried about your window carry a $0 deductible auto insurance plan.
Uh, no, I would pay more than twice as much to get phys dam as I pay to just carry liability. I never carry phys dam on an older car, and generally recommend against it.
There is the same law here (Australia) but locking the ignition is considered sufficient since it means your car is locked against illicit use. You can leave the doors unlocked.
How does the German application of this principle apply to convertibles?
I’ll go back to my example of a car parked at a remote Hawai’ian beach. The same would apply to a car parked anywhere fairly remote, such that a thief knows he is unobserved and has plenty of time. He’s going to get into your car to see if there’s anything to steal whether it’s locked or not. If you’ve wisely ensured there’s nothing valuable in your car, leaving it locked will result in a broken window. Leaving it unlocked means you lose nothing. The risk assessment is obviously different than if you’ve parked it in downtown Chicago.
That is a good question, I can only guess that they should only be open while driving and must be closed when parking. Makes even more sense when it rains
ETA: This is the kind of law that seems to me to be in place to allow policemen to do as they please avoiding any responsability. I doubt it gets much used for the stated purpose, but it is useful to have in case the cop wants to mess around with somebody.
Doesn’t even have to be remote. In my city (and I’m sure lots of others), we have “Park and Rides”. They’re typically active during the festival season. You park at a lot, typically within a few miles of your house, hop on a city bus that does nothing but drive back and forth, all day, between the parking lot and the festival grounds. Sure, each person pays to ride the bus so it costs more than one person paying to park a car load of people, but it’s easier than fighting the traffic all the way to the festival, finding parking and fighting traffic all the way back.
In any case, the problem is that some that wants to rifle through cars knows that most cars are going to sit there, unattended, for almost the entire day. As long as they don’t catch the attention of other people in the lot and keep their face (and their license plate) out of view of any cameras, they usually get away with it.
Every year, the police tell people to lock their doors and don’t leave any valuables in sight, or even in the car. In fact, a lot of people will just have a friend drop off and pick up their group at the park and ride so they don’t even have to leave their car there.
After 174 posts I will just say that I think it’s an idea that may have slightly good intentions, but overall is a bad idea. Why would they even want the liability of having police officers inside people’s cars? My Nickelback CDs and keys were in there, now I’m locked out of my car with no Nickelback CDs.
As I mentioned before, I have had my car window smashed, and a friend staying over had his smashed, as well. That said, common advice is to still lock our car doors here (Chicago.) I stick to it, as most break-ins I’ve heard about have been by far with people who have left their doors unlocked. Most thieves do not want to draw attention to their thievery if they don’t have good reason to.
Sounds like an excuse for the cops to conduct brief passive searches of cars. Gotta open the door to lock it, and who can help glancing around the interior and maybe seeing or smelling something that constitutes probable cause. Just no. They need to enforce laws and keep their grubby paws off my stuff. It’s not like they spend a whole lot of time solving vehicle break in crimes anyway. Intimidation and overreach, plain and simple.
