80% increase in Canberra car break-ins - is this avoidable?

BenjaminRose1991 said :

A good way to tackle the issue is to work out why the thefts occur in the first place.

I think that the majority of thieves are financially challenged either being unemployed, underemployed, or in significant debt. As a society we should double-down on improving employment, helping those with debt, and help those with expensive addictions get off those addictions; reducing the need to get a few extra bucks by pinching valuables and reselling them to fund said addiction.

On a more practical front. Don’t keep anything of any real value inside your car.

I am always blown away by reports of missing laptops, phones, wallets, jewellery, etc after being left in cars. If it’s the case that these things are stolen in a moment of opportunity (i.e. just walked back into the house because you forgot something) then I can feel sympathy. However if you make it a point to store such items in your car on a regular basis then act surprised that at some point they were stolen – then you should have your head examined.

I had a visitor to my house who parked her car on the street in front of my house and left her handbag in full sight. Some time later there was a knock at the door and a policeman was standing there. He had been passing when he saw the smashed window on the car. The handbag was gone naturally. I couldn’t believe that someone could be so silly as to leave their handbag on the car seat in full sight, esp. considering the street I used to live in. I didn’t say any of this though naturally, as my friend was upset enough already.

tim_c said :

Maya123 said :

A number of years ago two cars parked at my house escaped being broken into, because they had car alarms, despite one of the cars being filled with goodies. However, the same night the neighbour’s car, without car alarm, was broken into (smashed window) for 20 cents. If they had broken the windows on my car, it would have screamed loudly.

You might as well just install a little boy to cry “wolf” every time you get in. Almost invariably when a car alarm goes off, it’s because the owner of the car is to lazy and/or simple to understand how it works.

I don’t get this comment, because the alarm I had didn’t go off without a reason, ie, someone opening the door when it was on, and because the incident I mentioned was at home in my backyard and if ever it went off (very rarely) I would naturally investigate. The only false alarms were caused by a large huntsman in the car, or once by a passenger leaving the window slightly open. After that I learnt to check when I had had a passenger.
I know the two cars with car alarms were not broken into that night because they had alarms, while the neighbour’s car without alarm was, was because my garbage bin and mob, sitting near the car, were stolen. Weird things to steal though, unless they were planned to be used in another robbery. Mop to break a window maybe, and bin to carry stolen goods(?).

A good way to tackle the issue is to work out why the thefts occur in the first place.

I think that the majority of thieves are financially challenged either being unemployed, underemployed, or in significant debt. As a society we should double-down on improving employment, helping those with debt, and help those with expensive addictions get off those addictions; reducing the need to get a few extra bucks by pinching valuables and reselling them to fund said addiction.

On a more practical front. Don’t keep anything of any real value inside your car.

I am always blown away by reports of missing laptops, phones, wallets, jewellery, etc after being left in cars. If it’s the case that these things are stolen in a moment of opportunity (i.e. just walked back into the house because you forgot something) then I can feel sympathy. However if you make it a point to store such items in your car on a regular basis then act surprised that at some point they were stolen – then you should have your head examined.

Solidarity said :

If the glovebox and centre console are bare, leave them open.

Too bad if you have a light in your glove box to drain the battery overnight 🙂

I have only had one car broken into, which was in my driveway at the time. But these clowns wanted the whole car. They smashed out the rear quarter window to open the door before popping out the three internal lights. Then they pushed the car up the street and around the corner and tried to start it. Too bad for the thieving b****ards that I was in the habit of turning the LPG off at the LPG cylinder in the boot each night! Free tip there for anyone who runs LPG in their car …

MonarchRepublic said :

Where are you getting $1,000 each from? To install security cameras you mean? Reasonable quality residential setups can be done for a couple of hundred. .

Rubbish. You need professional equipment, installed by a professional, with network access, storage, monitoring and maintenance. (Not dodgy chinese equipment off ebay that makes a call back home to HQ to file a daily report on your doings. If you don’t believe me, buy one; install it and observe the outgoing traffic to china through your home firewall.)

I was using a round figure of 100,000 for households, and even a Unit is a household that would need protecting from criminals. In actual fact, there are over 100,000 houses in Canberra, as well as close to 40,000 units.

If you want to talk about the ongoing cost of keeping 1000 scum in gaol, why not mention the ongoing cost of allowing them to roam the streets – the cost of insurance claims and uninsured losses, trauma, pain, grief and suffering, not to mention the social costs of having people live in fear and suspicious of their fellow-citizens.

No – locking up the known scum who commit 90% of all crimes would be an enormous benefit to society. (It is puzzling why lefties show so much support for crime and criminals. What is their problem?)
$60million is far too much of course, we should outsource our criminals overseas somewhere where gaoling them would be cheaper, just like we’ve done with illegal immigrants

Maya123 said :

A number of years ago two cars parked at my house escaped being broken into, because they had car alarms, despite one of the cars being filled with goodies. However, the same night the neighbour’s car, without car alarm, was broken into (smashed window) for 20 cents. If they had broken the windows on my car, it would have screamed loudly.

You might as well just install a little boy to cry “wolf” every time you get in. Almost invariably when a car alarm goes off, it’s because the owner of the car is to lazy and/or simple to understand how it works.

HenryBG said :

creative_canberran said :

HenryBG said :

Installing CCTV might deter many of these events, .

So you are advocating we spend $100million building security systems to protect us from the 1,000-or-so known miscreants who commit 90% of these crimes.

Sensible security is security applied closest to the source of the threat: in this case, building a secure facility for the 1,000 known miscreants and locking them up in there would reduce Canberra’s crime rate by 90%.

If that would cost less than $100million then we are well ahead.
If it costs more than $100million, then you would have to balance that cost against the value of averting tens of thousands of victims of crimes.

I’m going to pre-empt any such analysis by saying we should just round-up all the scum and lock them up permanently so the rest of us can live in peace.

Not sure where you got that $100m figure from. But your alternative of just locking people up would have a starting price of $60m a year. Wise investment? Never.

100,000 households at $1,000 each. I’m quite certain it is an underestimate.

And last I looked, $60m < $100m.
With the added benefit that any scum kept in pokey won't be breeding more scum.

Where are you getting $1,000 each from? To install security cameras you mean? Reasonable quality residential setups can be done for a couple of hundred. And have you factored in that many households are part of apartment complexes, which would reduce the cost per household dramatically?

Finally – $60m PER YEAR, after a little more than a year and a half, is > $100m once off cost.

I believe that the courts do need to come down harder on offenders, and cameras can deter some offenders, and aid the identification of some others.

Your argument appears to be based on some very flawed assumptions.

creative_canberran said :

HenryBG said :

Installing CCTV might deter many of these events, .

So you are advocating we spend $100million building security systems to protect us from the 1,000-or-so known miscreants who commit 90% of these crimes.

Sensible security is security applied closest to the source of the threat: in this case, building a secure facility for the 1,000 known miscreants and locking them up in there would reduce Canberra’s crime rate by 90%.

If that would cost less than $100million then we are well ahead.
If it costs more than $100million, then you would have to balance that cost against the value of averting tens of thousands of victims of crimes.

I’m going to pre-empt any such analysis by saying we should just round-up all the scum and lock them up permanently so the rest of us can live in peace.

Not sure where you got that $100m figure from. But your alternative of just locking people up would have a starting price of $60m a year. Wise investment? Never.

100,000 households at $1,000 each. I’m quite certain it is an underestimate.

And last I looked, $60m < $100m.
With the added benefit that any scum kept in pokey won't be breeding more scum.

HenryBG said :

Installing CCTV might deter many of these events, .

So you are advocating we spend $100million building security systems to protect us from the 1,000-or-so known miscreants who commit 90% of these crimes.

Sensible security is security applied closest to the source of the threat: in this case, building a secure facility for the 1,000 known miscreants and locking them up in there would reduce Canberra’s crime rate by 90%.

If that would cost less than $100million then we are well ahead.
If it costs more than $100million, then you would have to balance that cost against the value of averting tens of thousands of victims of crimes.

I’m going to pre-empt any such analysis by saying we should just round-up all the scum and lock them up permanently so the rest of us can live in peace.

Not sure where you got that $100m figure from. But your alternative of just locking people up would have a starting price of $60m a year. Wise investment? Never.

Installing CCTV might deter many of these events, .

So you are advocating we spend $100million building security systems to protect us from the 1,000-or-so known miscreants who commit 90% of these crimes.

Sensible security is security applied closest to the source of the threat: in this case, building a secure facility for the 1,000 known miscreants and locking them up in there would reduce Canberra’s crime rate by 90%.

If that would cost less than $100million then we are well ahead.
If it costs more than $100million, then you would have to balance that cost against the value of averting tens of thousands of victims of crimes.

I’m going to pre-empt any such analysis by saying we should just round-up all the scum and lock them up permanently so the rest of us can live in peace.