Petty Crimes Big Deal to Victims

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Thefts from vehicles are fairly commonly occurring crimes that take place hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day throughout the country.

The media rarely reports these “quality of life” crimes. When they do, they are usually relegated to a line in a police blotter, including here at Patch.

While these crimes don’t garner much attention, they are a big deal to the victims. There is the loss of security, the feeling of helplessness, along with the inconvenience of having to report the crime to the police and to the insurance company, and having to take a day off of work to handle all the details.

Those were all emotions I felt late last month when I discovered someone had broken into my wife’s van, which was parked right in our Essex driveway. There were feelings of anger, fear and frustration when a neighbor called to inform me someone took a rock and threw it right through the driver’s side window.

Glass was all over my driveway and in the van—all so that some small-time criminal could run off with my wife’s purse, which she had accidentally left in the van. We automatically blamed ourselves for making a cardinal mistake of leaving something of value in plain sight after returning home late the night before and rushing in to put our three kids to bed.

A Feeling of Helplessness

Luckily, the purse was mostly empty, but the thieves didn’t know that at the time. That was little consolation to my wife and I. There had been several other car break-ins in my neighborhood, which is located across the street from .

However, ours was the first where the thieves actually broke in to the vehicle. All of the other cases, according to Baltimore County police, involved someone taking items from unlocked cars.

More concerning to my wife and I than the items being stolen, was that loss of security and control we felt. Whoever did this had pictures of our children and had no fear of committing this crime right in our own yard sometime between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. The person that did this could also have easily used our automatic garage door opener to get inside our house.

In the days that followed, we came to discover that we were not alone.

Along with our property (and that of a neighbor) along Spencer Terrace, we found out homes in nearby Theresa and John avenues were also targeted. Many of our stolen items were discovered by two of those victims, Daniel and Joyce Paugh, whose car was recently broken into along John Avenue.

The couple discovered our stolen items, including my children’s photos and wife’s purse, while walking their dog along Christiana Avenue, a gravel road that runs between our communities.

“When we saw your stuff, we felt like we had to turn it in to the police because we knew other homes in the area had cars being broken into and we thought it might be from one of those cases,” Joyce Paugh told me afterward. “It just seems to be happening more and more in our community.”

A Common Occurrence, Little Recourse

An incident like this also makes you understand that there is little recourse in going after the ones who committed the crime. When I first contacted the police, the communications officer I spoke with was only going to take my information over the phone and place it in a pile of other nuisance crimes.

According to Baltimore County Police statistics, there were 6,375 thefts from autos in 2010 throughout the county, including 656 in the Essex Precinct. This compares to 6,704 thefts from autos countywide in 2009 and 657 in the Essex Precinct.

In recent months in the Essex-Middle River area, residents have reported several incidents where someone has targeted whole neighborhoods in order to steal from vehicles.

This includes April 14 when five people reported having their car broken into. Two of the break-ins occurred on the 100 block of Sawgrass Court, two occurred on the 200 block of Mariners Point Road and one was reported on the 2900 block of Eastern Avenue.

Another example occurred Jan. 20, when two men were arrested and charged with fourth-degree burglary/petty theft after opening several unlocked car doors along Yew Road in the Goldetree community of Middle River.

In my case, I insisted on having an officer come to my house and at least investigate the crime. Officer Ryan Mull, from the Essex Precinct arrived, and was very professional. He asked several questions and even dusted the van for fingerprints.

Still, the chances of finding out who did this are slim. Essex Precinct Captain Mike DiPaula said only about 40 percent of crimes like this ever get solved.

DiPaula said those odds do not deter his officers from thoroughly investigating such crimes.

“I get calls all the time from people who say, ‘This crime probably isn’t a big deal to the police,'” DiPaula said. “That is just not the case. These quality of life crimes have a big impact on the community and we will do our best to solve them and put the community’s fears to rest.”