West Seattle Crime Watch: Car vandals; double theft; phone grab

2 short Crime Watch reports to share tonight – one just in from Anne-Marie, reporting car vandalism not far from the car-egging report published here earlier:

We had vandalism done to our car tonight. 39th and Thistle [map]. I saw two young teens in baseball caps run after kicking the side mirror off the car. Police have been called.

And from Joseph:

My son’s Huffy Mongoose kid’s bike (orange/gold) and silver Razor scooter with red handlebars/trim was stolen today from our carport that faces the alley behind the West Seattle Baptist church, right off California and Genesee [map]. It happened between 8:30 am and 4:00 pm. Wanted folks to know.

ADDED 1:21 AM: One more Crime Watch report – a phone grab at a West Seattle bus stop – read on:

Val e-mailed:

Just wanted to let the neighborhood know that I was at the bus stop by Wells Fargo in the Junction this afternoon and a young man asked me the time and snatched my phone out of my hands in broad day light. There were no weapons involved. I was not hurt, just angry and shaken up. The phone had a security lock, so it auto locks withing 1 minute rendering it useless to pretty much anyone. I also filed a police report so if anyone else has any similar thing happen, please call SPD and file a report.

I just wanted to let folks know that this happened and to keep an eye out for themselves and their belongings.

7 Replies to "West Seattle Crime Watch: Car vandals; double theft; phone grab"

  • alki resident March 23, 2010 (8:16 am)

    My sons mongoose(blue and black) was stolen a week ago.We live on Alki.Weve since recovered it.The stickers were taken off but no damage was done to it.Joseph-youre right in the area of Torn,which is in the junction and a kid known to do this hangs out at.I highly suggest you come down to Alki and people watch for a few days and also at whale tale park you may just find the kid on your bike.Good luck.

  • MAS March 23, 2010 (10:13 am)

    Just FYI, the autolock on your doesn’t make it useless. For most phones, there’s a way to manually reset the phone (which deletes _almost_ everything) back to factory presets which doesn’t require knowledge of the code.

    In most modern phones, the subscriber identity module (SIM card) isn’t all that well protected, and could be pulled out and read, or used in a phone that isn’t locked.

    You should call your carrier and report ASAP to avoid charges from using that SIM in another phone.

  • cleat March 23, 2010 (1:52 pm)

    now thats very helpful info MAS … thanks!! I had no idea such a thing could happen…

  • phone grabee March 23, 2010 (5:57 pm)

    Thanks for the info MAS. I did find out that locking it isn’t the highest security feature, but I was able to disable the phone within a few minutes and it made me feel better for a bit.

    I’m hopeful that AT&T can block reactivation of the iemi which is device specific. There’s also a feature that allows you to erase the contents of the phone after 10 wrong security code tries.

  • Scott C March 23, 2010 (6:11 pm)

    SIM cards are only used in GSM service, such as T-Mobile or AT&T (shudder….) or on a “world phone” (aka quad band phone) from Verizon.

    Meaning, that if you are a typical Verizon phone customer = no SIM card.

    Verizon uses the ESN (Electronic Serial Number) of the phone itself instead of tracking the SIM card.

  • Anne March 24, 2010 (9:49 am)

    This past Friday (3/19) night (am to Sat 3/20) we saw broken glass on the sidewalks of both sides of the California Ave SW at Mills Street. It appeared that a couple of cars had their windows broken. Any reports?

  • Chris Pirillo March 30, 2010 (2:46 pm)

    If the person had MobileMe, they could have / should have activated the “Find My iPhone” feature before it was lifted.

    A *MUST* for the iPhone.

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