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Car safety never assured
By Adam Johnson
The St. Cloud Police Department knows that safety is a relative thing. Smart students can keep themselves and their homes safe, but when it comes to car security, there's only so much that can be done.
"If you leave anything of value in your vehicle in plain sight overnight, the odds are that eventually your car will be broken into," Crime Prevention Specialist John Justin said.
In the past 90 days, 135 instances of theft from vehicles have been reported in the city of St. Cloud. That statistic is slightly below the city average, which can be partially attributed to the extreme cold.
"When the temperature is well below zero, even the bad guys stay inside," Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said.
However, the police urge students not to allow the frigid weather to lower their guard for potential break-ins, as they can occur at any time. In fact, leaving valuable items in a car now can make that car a potential repeat target for thieves.
"It's like feeding the bears," Justin said. "They will go back to the same place where food has been left out from force of habit."
Break-ins tend to come in waves, but typically thefts are more likely in good weather and after paydays, when people tend to carry more goods in their vehicles.
Prevention
In order to prevent your car from being broken into, it's important to know why your car would be targeted in the first place.
Justin said that there are three things thieves look for in a potential target.
The first is the volume of cars in the area. The more cars there are, the more anonymous the thief becomes, making it easier to break into multiple cars without drawing attention.
The second factor is opportunity. If the cars are isolated or poorly lit, it makes it much easier to break in undetected.
The third thing thieves look for is who owns the car. Unfortunately, college students are the main target of theft in the St. Cloud area.
"Younger adults tend to have a lot of things in their cars that can be pawned real easily like CDs, cell phones and stereo systems," Justin said. "Also, the current generation of music tends to fetch a better price on the stolen market than my oldies."
In response, many students have invested in car alarms to deter criminals, but Justin warns that they should not always rely on the devices to protect their valuables.
"The problem is that when people get alarms, they get more confident about leaving things in their cars, which is just asking for trouble," Justin said.
Instead, the most important thing is to keep the car locked and keep any items of value hidden from plain sight.
Reporting the Crime
Many times, the victims of theft fail to report it to the police because only about 20 percent of the perpetrators of these crimes are ever caught, Sanner said. Despite this fact, he urges students to report crimes as soon as they occur.
"If law enforcement doesn't know about crime, it's not happening," Sanner said. "The apathy of the victim plays right into the suspect's hands. (Thieves) bank on the fact that these are not going to get reported because they seldom get solved."
However, when the police do catch a thief, they may solve hundreds of cases at once, as most break-ins are committed by small groups of people that commit dozens of thefts at a time, Sanner said.
In the end, a criminal will find a way into a car no matter what owners do to prevent it. The only way to keep your car safe is to avoid tempting thieves, because they are constantly watching and will break in if the chance presents itself.
"On average, three times a week while (students') heads are on their pillows, there's probably somebody driving through to see if there's an opportunity to break into their car," Justin said.
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