Modern advances give thieves an advantage

A story in today's Wilson Times repeats the usual advice: Lock your cars, remove valuables from the vehicle overnight, report any suspicious activity. What ought to be common sense in this day and age has been written before and has become a mantra as a series of vehicle break-ins has plagued nearly every area of the city.

At a neighborhood meeting earlier this month, Wilson Police Chief Harry Tyson expanded upon the common-sense advice he's been offering to shine some light on why vehicle break-ins have become such a problem. Since he made these comments at a public meeting, I don't think I'm compromising police work by passing along these observations. These break-ins have not been limited to Wilson, Tyson said. Police from Raleigh to Greenville have been experiencing the same problems. Investigators suspect the crimes might be the work of a single group of perpetrators. The thieves take advantage of unlocked vehicles, of course, but they also have been savvy enough to bypass car alarms by breaking out the rear window of vehicles instead of jiggling door locks, which would set off the alarm. It seems too complimentary to call thieves who lurk in dark driveways "sophisticated," but these thieves are shrewd.

Portable GPS devices, cell phones, iPods and anything that is easily removable and quickly sold have been filched from cars. The thieves have figured out a better way of fencing the material. Instead of heading to the local pawn shop or the drug dealer on the corner, this new generation of thieves have discovered e-Bay and Craigslist, Tyson said. That makes tracing the stolen items much more difficult. Detectives can check the inventory at the pawn shop but has a harder time identifying stolen goods offered on the Internet.

Wilson police are working with other law enforcement jurisdictions to solve these crimes and make arrests, but even if the current band of thieves is charged and convicted, it won't be safe to leave your laptop in your car overnight. The popularity of small, portable electronic devices and the accessibility of an eager market in cyberspace create a new paradigm for property crimes. Burglaries have always been difficult to solve, and this new environment has made police work even harder. Just as people who once never locked their doors now have to, people everywhere will have to get used to clearing their cars of portable electronic devices every night.

Call the police, and check out their statistics

Call the police. That's the advice that Wilson Police Chief Harry Tyson and other officers provided Tuesday during a meeting with volunteers from Preservation of Wilson. If you see suspicious activity, call it in. Don't hesitate. Although it might seem unimportant or inconsequential, that tidbit could give investigators the lead they need to solve or prevent serious crimes.

Preservation officials had asked for a meeting with the police to discuss the erroneous perception that the downtown historic areas have high crime rates. Not so, police said, pointing to crime maps and statistics pinned to the meeting room walls. A list of criminal problem areas did not include any of the historic areas Preservation is involved in. You can check it out yourself at the city's Web site, where crime statistics are searchable by address. Click on the Police2Citizen link and you'll get a new screen with crime data, including the actual incident reports. The data are available thanks to the department's new OSSI law enforcement software. You can also request a daily bulletin of all crime reports for that day. (A few sensitive ongoing investigations and sex crimes are withheld from public view. It's a pretty amazing development, considering the difficulty in the old days of going to the police station and copying crime or accident reports.

The point, for Preservation officials, is that Wilson's crime rate is relatively low, and little of the crime that does occur happens in the historic areas where Preservation is focusing its efforts. Downtown is one of the lowest-crime areas of the city. Homeownership is one key. Neighborhood involvement is another. More transient, mostly rental areas, even in new developments, are more likely to have crime problems. Homeowners, who have a financial stake in the neighborhood and who expect to be around for the long term, are more likely to take an interest in what's going on around them. They're more likely to call in suspicious activities, and that helps police solve and prevent crimes.