Grand Theft Auto…
Not Quite, but a Win for the ‘Hood
In our neighbourhood we have experienced a lot of auto thefts over the past months. One even occurred to our next-door neighbour. Basically — right under our noses, as we were getting up one morning.
The old smash and jump-start the target car methods have changed, and modern-day car thieves use sophisticated electronic devices to get into and start the target vehicle.
Sadly this has happened a lot around here.
Many of our neighbours have security cameras installed on our homes, but so far mostly we have seen punks breaking into cars to steal whatever they can get from the glove compartment, but they are long gone by the time the video footage is reviewed. We have plenty of footage showing punks skulking along the sidewalk checking things out too, but only one remarkable instance where someone was caught. (That is for another story.)
This morning we were feeding the cat and having our wake-up juice and reviewing the security video from overnight. (Yes, we are paranoid old people with nothing better to do …LOL.)
Lo and behold, the video footage showed two cars slowing down and parking on our street, actually one parked right outside our place. This happened at 3:10 A.M.— not too long before our alarm goes off.
A guy jumped out of one vehicle and proceeded to take photographs of the front of the vehicle in front of our house. He then went back to his car, and the driver of the car in front of our place jumped out and joined the other guy. They drove off.
We thought this looked pretty suspicious. We noted that the car was still in front of our place when we checked. Once we were fully dressed and breakfast was done, I grabbed the camera and went out to get pictures of the plate.
Then I messaged our neighbour across the road (who is kind of the unofficial neighbourhood watch coordinator) and let him know what we had seen on the security footage. He checked his and also had images showing the activities. We concurred that this looked a lot like a stolen car situation, where the thieves grab a few cars, hide them around quiet streets, and come back later to get them.
The police were notified and sent out an officer to check. It turned out that our guess of the vehicle being stolen was right on.
The police officer arranged for the stolen car to be towed to a police location so that they could run fingerprint checks on it.
The owner of the stolen jeep was notified and will be getting the car back once the Police are done with it. This made us very happy.
So, that’s one for the ‘Hood, and zip for the scummy thieves. A tiny drop in a large bucket of car thefts, but a win nonetheless.
Let the good guy win once in a while (Apologies to Billy Preston).
