West Seattle Crime Watch: Car break-in; duck theft on cam

| Crime | West Seattle news

Two Crime Watch stories to share. First, from Tara:

… my truck (was) broken into tonight at the junction. I was having dinner and was parked in the lot behind West 5. One hour later, I returned to our truck and the driver’s side lock was broken into and my backpack was stolen. I’m a teacher and my classroom keys were inside, along with my Seattle Public Schools badge. I’m so upset. Since there wasn’t anything valuable, I’m thinking the thief/s will probably get rid of it quick and I’m hoping everyone could keep an eye out for it.

Tara says it’s a gray backpack. Meantime, Ron at Lowman Beach wrote to call attention to his latest post in the WSB Forums — it links to what he says are surveillance photos and video of someone who was caught not only stealing something from his famous duck display by the park, but also prowling cars in the area. Here’s his post with those links.

Ken June 5, 2009 (10:03 pm)

Come on, people, don’t leave stuff like backpacks in your car!

alki_2008 June 5, 2009 (10:14 pm)

In the careers I’ve been in, it’s just about an automatic termination if employer’s stuff (like keys, id, laptops, etc) are stolen in such a fashion…ie, leaving stuff in a personal vehicle.
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Not trying to blame the victim, but Ken’s point is a good one.

WSB June 5, 2009 (10:27 pm)

Yes, but victim-blaming is getting a little old here. I don’t have a rule against it but it might be worth pondering. Doesn’t mean everyone has to get all fuzzy and sympathetic if you think a victim did something wrong, but you also can just say nothing. I personally hate that it’s come to the point where we can’t leave anything in a car for five minutes … I have to take the laptop almost everywhere because you never know when it might be needed for breaking news (note the Alki situation below) and because I’ve seen so many police reports about laptops getting stolen from cars, it means that while we’re out and about, even if I just have to run into the store for a minute, that clunky bag goes over my shoulder (laptop, cameras, three batteries, etc., gets heavy). And yet I’m sometimes tempted, “just this once” …
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Crime is wrong. Let’s reserve our scorn for the lawbreakers.

Ken June 5, 2009 (10:36 pm)

I purposely tried to make my comment general enough that it didn’t seem I was blaming the victim — more of a general reminder to everybody.

Of course you should be able to leave your stuff in the car for a while without worrying about it, but apparently you can’t. It seems to me like it should be common sense not to leave stuff in the car — I wasn’t trying to be harsh about it.

alki_2008 June 5, 2009 (10:43 pm)

I took Ken’s comment as a general statement…ie, hey everybody, let this be a reminder that we shouldn’t leave backpacks visible in our cars. We should all learn from these types of incidents, both how to protect ourselves and how to protect each other.
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Honestly, there have been plenty of times that I’ve left valuables in my car, but I usually put anything more expensive than a jacket into the trunk so that passersby won’t see them. Of course, if they see me putting the stuff in the trunk…then it’s pointless. :-(

Laura June 6, 2009 (7:50 am)

My Jeep was broken into Wed. night in the 7500 block of 29th Ave SW. The thief went at the ignition with a screw driver but must have given up or been scared away. A wire appears to be cut by the handy work that makes it possible to turnover the Jeep but it won’t keep running. I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t actually stolen but it will be costly to fix. Nothing was stolen (wasn’t anything of value inside).

Wilson June 6, 2009 (8:03 am)

Totally agree with WSB….quit with the victim blaming…he/she put the post out there to ask for help in retrieving his stolen items and to inform his/her community of what happened…if you can do no more than insult and scold, then zip it – you’re adding no value to the post.

KatherineL June 6, 2009 (8:31 am)

Victim blaming reduces anxiety about crime. “It can’t happen to me because I’m not careless like those people.” Let’s deal with our anxiety quietly. Losing a backpack or laptop drives home the point much more forcefully than any blog comment.

sam June 6, 2009 (9:30 am)

it can get tiresome to empty your car every time you go someplace. I’ve been picked up from work and taken to the junction for food, and have to drag all my bags with me into a restaurant. a diaper bag, a pump, and a work bag.

sometimes you just say to heck with it and want to leave your stuff in the car. think I might have felt that way and once left one of the bags in the car. it never got stolen, but if so would have loved to see the thief’s face when they opened up the bag.. what the.. what’s all this – milk, ice pack, tubes, ..wtf?

sometimes, you have bags, you don’t know where you are going to end up, and you don’t want to drag them around with you everywhere.

Naive Nulu June 6, 2009 (9:39 am)

Victim blaming is also an outlet for the frustration at the blameless state and naivete of so many crime victim reports on WSB.
Maybe if WSB just published an all inclusive Lost/Stolen/Missing Category sparing us the constant stream of naive confessionals and embarrassing details of how items end up there.
News is the business of reporting the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Exposition of these leads invariably back to the victim, the one providing the information and the inevitable second guessing that contributes tension, resonance, drama and mystery to the (now) story.
Tara’s account begs so many questions.
Why? Why? Why?
So many Whys.

BMC June 6, 2009 (11:54 am)

Did anyone hear 2 blasts (gunshots, fireworks or otherwise) this AM at 4:30? I’m in the Belvidere area. It could’ve been from the Port, but I’m thinking it was to the West.

Michael June 6, 2009 (5:00 pm)

Let’s reserve our scorn for the lawbreakers.

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Reminding people of their roles to help us all AVOID crime never “gets old.”

WJC June 17, 2009 (9:03 am)

Gruesome as it is, I remember a rash of auto thefts in the vast parking lot of our college campus. Having lost two CD players stolen, one student decided to add a deterrent. He taped razor blades to the underside edge of his player. Ooops..the thief was arrested at the hospital and the thefts stopped. How about a few bait cars with dye packs?

Sorry, comment time is over.