According to the map and list accompanying this P-I article, one of the Lincoln Park lots has had the 5th-highest number of car break-ins reported citywide in the past 18 years. (Although the number cited during that span, 452, “only” equals out to roughly one every two weeks.)
It should be noted that those are “reported” car break ins. As anyone who has reported one can attest, you wait around for what can take a couple of hours for an officer to come take your statement. This is then used only for crime statistics. The officer will point out that there is an extremely small chance that the perps will ever be caught or your valuables returned. Indeed, they do nothing at all to try to catch the thieves or even determine if the break in was done by the same people who are breaking into other cars in the area. As a result, if one of these people are miraculously caught, they end up on trial only for the one break in and punished as a lesser offense.
Thus, filing a report ends up being a waste of time unless you need to file an insurance claim, and many break ins go completely unreported due to the known futility of it all.
So if the stats say that cars are being prowled at a rate of 2 per week, expect the real number to be two to five times higher.
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