To carry, or not to carry, that is the question (car theft & break-ins) [ADMIN WARNING: NO POLITICS]

[wibornz]

Each of us value life differently, I can comfortably tell you, my wife will shoot a person and continue to shoot them before I would. She is highly aware of how cheap her life is to a criminal.

The thing is we like to think that we know what criminal think and we attempt to think that they think like we do. That is far from the truth. None of us would ever think about or actually throw our grandma to the kitchen floor and beat her for $10 dollars and come back and do the same thing over and over again. That is just not acceptable for most people. There are people out there that this is perfectly acceptable behavior.

I had access to prisoner files for decades and have read some horrible things. Mind you reviewing a prisoner file often fell into a job duties or responsibilities for aspects of my position. I have read things that 99% of the population would haunt them for the rest of their life. My wife did intake classification for people entering the prison system. She handled all gang members and gang related crimes, and her and one other person handled all sex crimes. She also dealt with other crimes like murder, drunk driving fraud, and every type of crime, some funny, some crazy and some that are so extreme, we would have to sit down and discuss things like hey 99.999% of the people in this world are good people and the world is not like this guy in general. My wife would tell you we don’t need electric chairs, we need electric bleachers.

Sponsored

 

[txj2go]

None of us would ever think about or actually throw our grandma to the kitchen floor and beat her for $10 dollars and come back and do the same thing over and over again

People will do what they can get away with, whether criminals or employees or politicians or whatever. If they can steal catalytic converters and not get caught, they think they can keep doing it. If they can walk out of the store with a new toaster they will keep doing it. If they learn that when they walk into a restaurant to rob it and someone shoots them like what happened on the tv news, they might decide they can't get away with that anymore. If they find that they violate their parole one time and they get sent to prison, that might get reduced too.
The big area where I live has high crime rates and the departments in the big city complain about manpower but yet they will dedicate a lot of manpower to enforcing traffic laws rather than property crimes or crimes against persons. I don't know if this is a problem with politicians or police leadership. I have no way of knowing but I wondered if this was part of the problem at Uvalde.

 

[allyone]

@AFD - Another option that is available: https://www.libertateapentrufemei.r...ii-atunci-cand-isi-cumpara-electronice-241166

And, no, I don’t leave it there unattended when I’m not in the Jeep.

I like the idea about the panel for the weapon.

 

[Spartan99]

Another year has passed with crime and general lawlessness on the rise nationally. My home state of Colorado interestingly has the dubious distinction of being the #1 car theft state in the country. The below image shows the very clear trend, it's the highest it's ever been in the era of Cars with built in anti-theft tech. Fully expecting the slope to increase again in 2022 and 23, although Jeep is not the most popular vehicle for theft and break-ins, it remains a desirable target.

That all said, I'd appreciate feedback from the group regarding these conflicting realities for Jeep owners. Always being prepared (and stocking your jeep with various supplies), vs. not leaving items of value. Very hard to be simultaneously prepared for every day challenges, unexpected emergencies, being able to help those in need on the roadside, and prepared as best you can for whatever may come - while also not having stuff worth stealing while you leave your Jeep in the parking lot.

I've seen media stories recommending people leave cars unlocked so that when thieves want to steal your stuff they don't also have to break your window to do so. That will NEVER be me, and I can't believe we live in a society where they constitutes advice.

Just curious others thoughts on this and how you are approaching in daily life.

Be safe out there! Happy Jeeping.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-vehicle-theft-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/

I don’t see anything in this post about weapons. Not sure how we got to weapons lol.

A thief would have to be a bad one if he had to break a window to get into a Jeep. They are so easy to get into. I live in the Bay Area and spend lots of time in Oakland and San Francisco, been here almost all my life, and I have never had my car broken into. I’ve never worried much about it but I just usually don’t leave anything valuable inside and if I have to I try to keep it hidden. I lock my doors. I’d never get into a life threatening altercation over a car. I don’t own any weapons but I support those who do. I get it. For the first time in my life, I had multiple threats hurled at me for being dark skinned, many times, between 2015 and 2020. At one point I was running for my life to escape an angry violent redneck who thought I looked too middle eastern. That would have been a great time to be armed. Thankfully those days are over and I no longer feel like my life is in danger as I don’t get such threats any longer, but if it kept going I’d definitely carry. The furthest I got was a baseball bat that I kept on my dashboard. “GO BACK TO IRAN YOU TERRORIST!” and I’d lift up my bat. Off they’d go. Steal my car I don’t care my concern is being killed by an angry motorist over my olive skin, big nose and dark beard lol.

 

[Pig-Pen]

A few years ago LAPD came under fire for intentionally under reporting violent crimes.

https://www.dailynews.com/2017/11/0...-crime-stats-despite-her-raising-concern/amp/

 

[txj2go]

I live in the Bay Area and spend lots of time in Oakland and San Francisco, been here almost all my life, and I have never had my car broken into.

As they say- YMMV.
I've had two cars broken into and one car stolen, both incidents were a long time ago. I think where you are is important, not just what state or city but what neighborhood or what parking lot. Your odds are better if you stay away from questionable places. There are work situations and so forth where you can't help it.

At one point I was running for my life to escape

If possible it is always better to run away than confront someone.
Someone is breaking into your car you don' t have to walk out and confront them. If you must confront them do it from a distance. Try not to be in situations where someone can surprise you from up close, be aware of your surroundings and if you see someone getting too close tell them to stay away or you start moving away. If you are moving away and someone is pursuing you then you know this is not a good situation and you either run or you defend yourself.

A police officer told this story 25 years ago- a lady he knew was carrying a gun in her purse. She was in a big parking lot and she saw a man watching her and walking towards her, then she noticed 2 other men coming from other directions. She told them to stop and they didn't so she started shooting. The police officer asked her if she hit any of them and she said "no but I hit a lot of cars". It's a funny story now but could have ended badly if she had hit an innocent bystander, or OTOH if she had not had the gun and she ended up in a river somewhere. As the story was told it didn't appear that she had the option to run.

 

[The Chubbernaut]

I disagree with the claim that crime rates have remained “stagnant” since 2006.

First, as you’d expect, the trends vary dramatically by area. What matters most to most folks is what is going on in their immediate vicinity, and many areas have seen very sharp increases in violent crime. Interestingly, (from my perspective), those increases are often reflected in local police databases, but not in the FBI annual reports which purport to summarize the data for the same area.

Then there’s the question of how crime is measured. Most crime categories are poorly measured these days, for a variety of reasons. In Oregon, for example, felony drug crime is “way down”, while both drug seizures and narcotic overdose deaths have trended sharply up for three years running. How is that possible? Oregon decriminalized controlled substances, including methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, and psilocybin. The rate of use and possession are sharply up but “crime” is down.

A few months ago I arrested a serial car thief out of a stolen car. At the time of the arrest the thief was already on supervision for car theft (a felony), and he was in possession of meth, heroin, and stolen ID and credit cards belonging to more than a dozen victims. He was released from jail the same day, with no consequence, because the DA has no staff to prosecute property crimes. In fact, shortly after the arrest, the DA’s office sent a letter out to all the county law enforcement agencies explaining that, with few exceptions, only violent crimes would be prosecuted. The county is roughly the size of Connecticut, with a population of about 375,000 people…

These stories, and thousands like them, are convincing citizens that there is no point in reporting most crimes. Sexual assaults have always been dramatically underreported, but now dozens of serious property crimes aren’t reported either. The primary incentive for reporting is the desire to make an insurance claim, but for the many without insurance, another group which continues to grow, that incentive isn’t there either.

Then we should consider the crimes that are discovered by police or committed in the officers’ presence. Of course, when you have declining numbers of police, which is the case in most jurisdictions, there are fewer such encounters — and even if the encounter rate remains constant, the response rate from police is sharply declining, as proactive, aggressive, and effective law enforcement is no longer appreciated by most communities, and such encounters represent a very real safety and liability risk for the officers involved. Simply put, national trends, police vilification, and a push to treat police officers as criminal suspects has changed modern policing.

I recently spoke to a nationally recognized expert on use of force who told me that, when faced with risk of physical conflict most officers now think first about their own criminal liability, then about potential fallout for their family if they make a human error (or get it right but are thought to be wrong by people who know nothing of the applicable science)… then about being disciplined by their own department. The forth thing to flash through their minds is the very real imminent risk to their own personal safety. Because of this, more police are choosing to stay out of the more dangerous areas, where policing is needed most, and when they are in those areas they are hunting crime with less enthusiasm and intensity.

There are a dozen other influences deflecting data trends, including agency failure to report To the FBI and other data repositories. There isn’t much incentive for the smallest police agencies to report at all, and many of the largest agencies are completely overwhelmed by the workload associated with data collection, analysis, and communication. My agency is pretty good at this work, and much of it is automated now, but external interest is invariably focused on race, not crime, and the hunger for related data has multiplied the time required to process every case. Our reporting forms take forever to complete, and all that extraneous data collection takes time from police work. For example, thirty years ago a simple DUI case would take an officer off the road for about two hours. The officer would take notes, record the intoxilizer result (or refusal), and retain the related printout and audio/video of the stop. On a busy night, like New Years Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, or Super Bowl Sunday, it was common for DUI specialists to arrest three drunk drivers in one shift, and at least once or twice per year somebody would arrest four. Once, about twenty years ago, a buddy of mine arrested five drunk drivers in one shift. These days, drivers are more impaired than ever. The driving is terrible, and our state fatality rate continues to climb in spite of great improvements in vehicle design and safety. Our highways are a target-rich environment for cops looking for impaired drivers, but the arrest and processing now takes closer to four hours than two. Because of that, I haven’t seen an officer get more than two drunks in a shift in at least five years. Still, some bean counter somewhere is probably concluding that impaired driving is down when the opposite is actually true.

I tell the community that one sure way to drive the drunk driving arrest number to zero is to get rid of all the cops. Many communities seem to be moving in that direction without thinking or intending to do so, because they can’t hire cops, and the ones they do hire are quickly overwhelmed with volume and administrative duties, so they’re not out in circulation encountering and preventing crime. When they are out, they’re under pressure to be less active. And even when they are active, trends in search and seizure law have made investigative work beyond the initial stop extremely difficult (at least in Oregon). And, even if all the above challenges are overcome and the arrest is made, there’s a very good chance the case will not be prosecuted. And if it is, the felony crimes that used to result in multi-year prison sentences, now result in no meaningful punishment at all, so cops and victims are less sure about the point of the whole exercise.

I hear the people telling me crime is “static”, but talk to any cop or coroner/medical examiner in Portland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Seattle, Miami, or … you’ll get an answer that sounds more like what you are actually experiencing.

Portland has had some drug and gang problems since the 80s, but the riots and soaring violent crime problem is new. That friendly little city now averages over 100 shootings per month. And it’s not just shooting up vacant building and other property. People, and lots of them, are getting injured and killed. The “flash mob” large-scale retail thefts are new too, as is the largely unreported shoplifting of every type of goods, from clothing to electronics and groceries. The retailers, also often vilified, are reluctant to stop shoplifters because of liability concerns, and there’s often no point in filing a police report, so they eat the cost and then pass it on to the rest of us. Think that’s BS? Ask anybody you know who has been involved in retail for a few decades…

We’re not in Kansas anymore…

On the flip side this is how Michigan reduced its recidivism rates. In Michigan, if you were on parole and violated any conditions of your parole, to were sent back to prison. Don’t show up to see your parole officer, back to prison, commit a new crime, fail a drug test, back to prison. Violate any condition of your parole, back to prison.

Now in Michigan, they will not send you back to prison for almost anything. You can now be on parole, on probation and be in jail and still not get sent back to prison. My wife did intake classification for the Michigan prison system. Meaning that if you was on parole and sent back to prison you would be interviewed by her upon your return to prison. Her or one of the other 12 or so people in her department. I remember her one day coming home and she was frustrated because a guy returning to prison had 18…yes 18 arrest and or parole violations before they violated his parole and sent time back to prison to serve more time on his original conviction.

She was like WTF. Why after 18 times, why is 18 the magic number, how about 5 violations or 9 or maybe 12 violations, why all of a sudden is it at 18, the Michigan Department of Corrections decided that this criminal was no longer manageable in society? Yet there is more. When she retired the record was 28 parole violations before a criminal was sent back to prison for violating his parole.

And that is how you change your state recidivism rate from 48% to 29%. Statistics are only as good as the person entering the information. If the agency decides to not keep track of certain information or changes their policy or policy and enforcement practices, it can dramatically impact statistics and not actually reflect what is truly happening.

It is all about how it is reported. For instance when a prisoner, during transportation, gets out of restraints during the transportation, kicked the window and steel mesh out of the door climbs out of the vehicle, while being sprayed with chemical agent, and officers have to chase him and tackle him, to gain control of him, bringing him back into custody. He has officially escaped. Watered down he has attempted to escape. Nope, that carries a new felony and counts against the department escape number. The prisoner was charged with assault on an employee. Not even charged with the damage to the vehicle. No report for the statistics of prison escape…….

If for one second you don’t believe that statistics are not agenda driven, you are a fool. Spend 30 years working in the criminal Justice System and I can say statistically speaking, q100% you will change your mind.

There's a lot to respond to here, so I apologize in advance that this is going to be fairly brief in comparison. First of all, thank you both for your service. Law enforcement is often a thankless job, especially these days but I appreciate the hell out of it. Corrections is an even more thankless job, as few consider you real law enforcement and most places won't even give you free coffee! I don't disagree with either of your assessments. I only question the generalized consensus that it used to be better. Statistics can never tell the whole story, it's just gives a generic understanding of what we are looking at. The official record is often incomplete. For instance, the UCR doesn't really define or classify sexual crimes and, as you said, the majority of rapes go unreported. Contemporary crime is incredibly bad, but the point that I was trying to make was that it was comparatively bad during the crack pandemic of the 80s and the ramped up 'War On Drugs' of the 90s. I believe that the societal response of looking the other way and pretending the problem doesn't exist stems from these strong but generally ineffective responses in earlier decades.

I don't even want to get started on corrections. The Missouri Department of Corrections was fairly bad when I was there. We had multiple directors resign in scandal (Dormire and Lombardi at least) and the prisons were a hell for staff and offenders. Our philosophy on corrections needs an enema, but so does our resources for individuals who parole. Generally can't kick someone out on the streets with nothing to their name and no place to go and expect them to not find their way back to a cell. In spite of its three strikes law, parolees might reoffend a dozen times before they are violated. The philosophy of the criminal justice system should be firm, fair, consistent. An offender should be given every resource and opportunity available to be successful after their incarceration, but they should also be very quickly given over to corrective action if they are unable or unwilling to conform to societal norms. Personally, I wish we could implement some variation of the Nordic system of corrections.

 

[Spartan99]

As they say- YMMV.
I've had two cars broken into and one car stolen, both incidents were a long time ago. I think where you are is important, not just what state or city but what neighborhood or what parking lot. Your odds are better if you stay away from questionable places. There are work situations and so forth where you can't help it.


If possible it is always better to run away than confront someone.
Someone is breaking into your car you don' t have to walk out and confront them. If you must confront them do it from a distance. Try not to be in situations where someone can surprise you from up close, be aware of your surroundings and if you see someone getting too close tell them to stay away or you start moving away. If you are moving away and someone is pursuing you then you know this is not a good situation and you either run or you defend yourself.

A police officer told this story 25 years ago- a lady he knew was carrying a gun in her purse. She was in a big parking lot and she saw a man watching her and walking towards her, then she noticed 2 other men coming from other directions. She told them to stop and they didn't so she started shooting. The police officer asked her if she hit any of them and she said "no but I hit a lot of cars". It's a funny story now but could have ended badly if she had hit an innocent bystander, or OTOH if she had not had the gun and she ended up in a river somewhere. As the story was told it didn't appear that she had the option to run.

You know what I HAVE had in SF though? Parking tickets! Sheesh man even when I was parked legally! Arguing with ticketer showing them I was paid in full! Nope. “Nothing I can do about it now” and took off. Lol mkay.

Actually I recall I DID have a car stolen in Cupertino of all places, decades ago. It was an old Falcon and it seems the thief only needed a ride. Stole my car to get to EPA. I think they took the battery.

 

[pmlane]

Yeah, my house is typically unlocked, and often my Jeep is unlocked with the key in it. It's not uncommon for me to forget where my keys are, and they are in the cup holder of the Jeep, car keys, house keys, key to the mailbox. My life is pretty worry-free.

I don't know where you are in Southern Oregon, but I was the same way while living there. House unlocked, cars unlocked. We were rural, but if you listened to my neighbors Satan himself was on the prowl for your gas cans and children.

I've been fortunate in that I've never had really had anything stolen. I'm also fairly care free with a "people are inherently and mostly good" attitude. I understand that's not for everyone.

We do lock the doors now in the burbs as it makes the wife happy.

 

[The Chubbernaut]

For instance a guy spits on you. You can say, I seized him by the head in an effort to control him so that he could no longer assault me by spitting on me and placed him on the ground. Perfectly acceptable. You can not say I grabbed him by his head picked him up shook him and threw him to the ground.

Same action, same outcome. One version is okay, one may get you in trouble.

Yup, you worked corrections. We called that a distraction technique and an open-handed take down.

I don’t see anything in this post about weapons. Not sure how we got to weapons lol.

A thief would have to be a bad one if he had to break a window to get into a Jeep. They are so easy to get into. I live in the Bay Area and spend lots of time in Oakland and San Francisco, been here almost all my life, and I have never had my car broken into. I’ve never worried much about it but I just usually don’t leave anything valuable inside and if I have to I try to keep it hidden. I lock my doors. I’d never get into a life threatening altercation over a car. I don’t own any weapons but I support those who do. I get it. For the first time in my life, I had multiple threats hurled at me for being dark skinned, many times, between 2015 and 2020. At one point I was running for my life to escape an angry violent redneck who thought I looked too middle eastern. That would have been a great time to be armed. Thankfully those days are over and I no longer feel like my life is in danger as I don’t get such threats any longer, but if it kept going I’d definitely carry. The furthest I got was a baseball bat that I kept on my dashboard. “GO BACK TO IRAN YOU TERRORIST!” and I’d lift up my bat. Off they’d go. Steal my car I don’t care my concern is being killed by an angry motorist over my olive skin, big nose and dark beard lol.

After living here for a few years, I have come to the conclusion that California has no nice towns, only nice neighborhoods. I haven't had any issues in the major cities either, but I've seen enough smashed car windows to know it's a possibility. I just keep my insurance up to date. Not much else you can do. Also, as a man who spent most of his life in the swampy, far away lands of Missouri, Texas, and Louisiana, there are few things funnier to me than watching a Californian 'redneck' with an $80,000 dually, $250 cowboy boots and a stupid had climbing out of their ten foot high truck. It's a good metaphor for the state itself.

 

[RAMSTEEL]

I don’t see anything in this post about weapons. Not sure how we got to weapons lol.

A thief would have to be a bad one if he had to break a window to get into a Jeep. They are so easy to get into. I live in the Bay Area and spend lots of time in Oakland and San Francisco, been here almost all my life, and I have never had my car broken into. I’ve never worried much about it but I just usually don’t leave anything valuable inside and if I have to I try to keep it hidden. I lock my doors. I’d never get into a life threatening altercation over a car. I don’t own any weapons but I support those who do. I get it. For the first time in my life, I had multiple threats hurled at me for being dark skinned, many times, between 2015 and 2020. At one point I was running for my life to escape an angry violent redneck who thought I looked too middle eastern. That would have been a great time to be armed. Thankfully those days are over and I no longer feel like my life is in danger as I don’t get such threats any longer, but if it kept going I’d definitely carry. The furthest I got was a baseball bat that I kept on my dashboard. “GO BACK TO IRAN YOU TERRORIST!” and I’d lift up my bat. Off they’d go. Steal my car I don’t care my concern is being killed by an angry motorist over my olive skin, big nose and dark beard lol.

To carry, or not to carry

It's in the title of the post.

 

[Whaler27]

On the flip side this is how Michigan reduced its recidivism rates. In Michigan, if you were on parole and violated any conditions of your parole, to were sent back to prison. Don’t show up to see your parole officer, back to prison, commit a new crime, fail a drug test, back to prison. Violate any condition of your parole, back to prison.

Now in Michigan, they will not send you back to prison for almost anything. You can now be on parole, on probation and be in jail and still not get sent back to prison. My wife did intake classification for the Michigan prison system. Meaning that if you was on parole and sent back to prison you would be interviewed by her upon your return to prison. Her or one of the other 12 or so people in her department. I remember her one day coming home and she was frustrated because a guy returning to prison had 18…yes 18 arrest and or parole violations before they violated his parole and sent time back to prison to serve more time on his original conviction.

She was like WTF. Why after 18 times, why is 18 the magic number, how about 5 violations or 9 or maybe 12 violations, why all of a sudden is it at 18, the Michigan Department of Corrections decided that this criminal was no longer manageable in society? Yet there is more. When she retired the record was 28 parole violations before a criminal was sent back to prison for violating his parole.

And that is how you change your state recidivism rate from 48% to 29%. Statistics are only as good as the person entering the information. If the agency decides to not keep track of certain information or changes their policy or policy and enforcement practices, it can dramatically impact statistics and not actually reflect what is truly happening.

It is all about how it is reported. For instance when a prisoner, during transportation, gets out of restraints during the transportation, kicked the window and steel mesh out of the door climbs out of the vehicle, while being sprayed with chemical agent, and officers have to chase him and tackle him, to gain control of him, bringing him back into custody. He has officially escaped. Watered down he has attempted to escape. Nope, that carries a new felony and counts against the department escape number. The prisoner was charged with assault on an employee. Not even charged with the damage to the vehicle. No report for the statistics of prison escape…….

If for one second you don’t believe that statistics are not agenda driven, you are a fool. Spend 30 years working in the criminal Justice System and I can say statistically speaking, q100% you will change your mind.

As you’d expect, Oregon is headed hard the other way. Fifteen years ago, a serial criminal with a “no drugs” clause would be sent to prison on the second dirty UA. Then the third dirty UA… Then “failure was the route to success”, then no “technical” violation would revoke probation… (technical being any breach of the rules other than a new crime.) Now not even new convictions are guaranteed to result in return to prison.

On the recidivism front, unless it has changed, the failure won’t be counted unless the offender is 1) CONVICTED of 2) a FELONY 3) WITHIN SIX MONTHS of release. All three conditions must be met or the criminal (and DOC) are scored as successful.

So the guy who is convicted of two assaults and three thefts under $750 is a DOC success story — not a recidivist. Same is true of the guy arrested of kidnap and murder the week following release from prison, because the most serious crimes almost never mature to conviction within only six months. If he’s convicted of the murder after a year or thirteen months, it’s another “win” for Oregon’s DOC rehabilitation. It’s nuts.

One of my personal projects was convicted of several residential burglaries, forgery, and car theft over a period of a couple years. While he was on probation for those felonies he forced his way into an elderly man’s home and robbed him at knife-point. As trial on that case approached he conned his girlfriend into providing a false alibi, and she perjured herself at trial — but he got caught. The DA convicted him of all the original charges AND, two months later, perjury. For all of that AND the his probation revocation the judge sentenced him to 60 months in prison. (the rest of the story in the next post)

 

[QwikKotaTx]

If you have a soft top, definitely avoid leaving a firearm inside at night or when parked for an extended period. I was able to easily open the back window panel and put some items in the rear while my Wife was shopping and I also wouldn't trust the glove box or center console lock.

 

[No IFS]

We sell more guns every year, but the crime keeps going up! All the experts here with all the answers but in reality, how come it’s not working? How come crime is going up not down? read this thread everybody has the answer, but how come it doesn’t work?

 

[QwikKotaTx]

We sell more guns every year, but the crime keeps going up! All the experts here with all the answers but in reality, how come it’s not working? How come crime is going up not down? read this thread everybody has the answer, but how come it doesn’t work?

Selling guns doesn't have much with being able to defend yourself with them. Interestingly, most of the comments in this thread about guns being useless or only for those with Rambo complexes are from users in certain states. Being able to carry and NOT be prosecuted for defending your own life or those of your family members has a lot to do with reducing crime rates. I highly doubt the law changing to allow concealed carry in Texas in the early 90's coinciding with the reduction of crime rates is a coincidence on this graph.

Sponsored