I had dinner last week with some friends at a restaurant in the River Oaks area. When I went to my car, I noticed the driver’s window was cracked in a couple of places. It was dark, and I assumed that I picked up some debris off our awful streets. But when I got home and parked in my garage where there was some light I saw that three of my side windows had what looked small bullet holes in them. It was only then that I realized someone had tried to break into my car.
My experience was just one of what appears to be an epidemic of automobile break-ins occurring around the City. HPD’s most recent monthly crime report (May 2018) shows over 5,700 thefts for the month. That is one about every seven minutes. While the HPD reports do not specify how many of these are car break-ins, the vast majority show they were committed in a parking lot. And that does not count the people, like me, that don’t even bother to report the break-in to the police because we know nothing will be done.
This tool allows a thief to break into a car and grab anything left inside within a matter of seconds.
For some reason, my thief was not able to completely break the windows and get inside the car. I have a new car. I don’t know if the glass has been improved or my thief was just incompetent. And even though he was not able to steal anything from inside my car, he still did about $2,500 worth of damage not to mention all the hassle that goes with getting the repairs done and dealing with the insurance company.
It would be great if HPD would make auto break-ins a priority. There are specific tactics like using bait cars which have proved effective. I suspect that it is a relatively small number of perpetrators committing these thefts. With 50-100 arrests I am guessing you would see a significant drop in break-ins. But considering that the City has cut about 100 positions from the HPD budget this year, I don’t think we can expect too much help from the police.
This is a crime of opportunity. If you do not leave anything in your car, there is no reason for a thief to break into it. In my case, the only thing I left was my blazer on the back seat. I guess the thief thought there might be a wallet in the jacket. I can assure that in the future, everything goes into the trunk when I get out the of car. I suggest you do the same.
They’ve been preying on that area of Houston for a long time. Nothing seems to be done. Leave an iPhone in a decoy car with a tracking device and trace it back to where the thugs take it. Easy as that. It’s gotten so bad that now I just leave my doors unlocked. The criminals have free reign to look through my car and take whatever they want. Just please don’t break the glass.
Car vandalism a priority?
Not sure what kind of car you have but if they break the window into the car they can usually pop the trunk with the button on the dash. In addition they might actually see you putting things into your trunk.
We were hiking with a group at Terry Hershey Park. There were about 10 cars and 4 cars were broken into. All 4 cars had wallets hidden in the car or the trunks. The thieves knew which cars to break into and where to look. I suspect that the thieves had scanning devices to know which cars had credit cards in them. The police response was disappointing. No police showed up for 3 hours. Finally the HPD referred the matter to the constable. The thieves took the credit cards to WalMart and bought items. Walmart has in store cameras and the thieves could be identified. The police said that car break ins are a low priority because they are misdemeanors. But what about illegal use credit card use that came with the break in and what about consecutive sentences for the break ins. As a relative new comer to the city, I think there needs to be a greater coordination with the constables. Personally I would rather have a police department or a constable because then we would know who is responsible but since that is highly unlikely, they should work on greater coordination.