went out to leave for work and my car radio was stolen last night

[yellowdogintexas]

bummer and I just bought the damn thing too. I bought a close out so it didn't have the face place dealie to "disguise" it but I am still royally pissed off. It wasn't a hugely expensive one, I didn't want one with GPS, Sirius, etc just AM/FM and CD. Fortunately my CD case was in the house.

At least the thief didn't take the garage door opener, but did rumble through the console and opened up my sunglasses and popped one of the lenses out. These are magnetic sunglasses which lock on my prescription glasses...glasses were in the house but I keep the clip on in the car because driving is when I need them most. Police have been here, crime scene is coming to dust for prints, I am going to get them to dust my storm door too, just in case.

I am the second person hit in the past 10 days on this street. This is really annoying because this is a street where you feel safe walking alone at night, lots of people do it. And of course Cobain the Terrible didn't bark or anything. He was asleep at the opposite end of the house from the driveway. Policemen said there are a lot of teenage boys around our neighborhood now roaming around at night.

Now I have power locks but I must have left the car unlocked accidentally because no glass was broken, thank goodness. At least I don't have that worry. However, the ceiling light was vandalized and the little map lights as well. I do think I ran in the house after unloading groceries, started supper , worked on some other stuff I needed to do and forgot to go back out to the car to get a couple of books I left in the car. Books are still there..LOL they are a Bible study..but anyway that could explain why my car was unlocked in the first place. I am glad I don't have to replace any windows.

Well that is my terrifice opening to the week. It can only get better, right?

[Blue Diadem]

1. Your police dust for finger prints? Wow..

They've never done that here. We got hit years ago, during a time we didn't lock our car doors. Groups of kids were going from small town to small town and got our cars. At the time, my kids were living here, so we had 5 cars they went through. They only took change from the cars and broke the dome light/map lights in my car.

We had it happen again when we lived in Michigan. Dh must have scared them when he went out to get us a late night snack from the store. The next morning DH and I were working in the yard and found rubber gloves. I looked around and found someone's stereo tucked under the evergreen trees. The police said it was a similar thing..kids had hit the area and there were several reports of stolen items from cars.

Sorry to hear you lost your stereo. Be extra cautious now that they've taken it, they may come back to see if you've replaced it and attempt to take that one too. I've heard of that happening before.

[yellowdogintexas]

8. the initial responding policeman offered Crime Scene assitance

and I said sure because the neighbor's car had been broken into so recently. I figured anything that would help them catch the little hoodlums which is what we all think is what is happening was worth the time.

I have the old dead unit which I can't stick back in myself but I was thinking about not replacing it right away. Fortunately the a/c and heat are on another set of panels.

[Blue Diadem]

11. That's great they offer it.

Around here the cops come right out and say that they'll never find out who did it anyway..unless they catch them in the act. It was probably a year later that they did catch a couple kids in a neighboring town. Of course, with no fingerprinting, the kids could only be charged with the one they were caught at, even though they were suspected of doing all the prior incidents.

I hope yours get caught.

[yellowdogintexas]

16. thank you..the police were just wonderful. Before they rang my

doorbell, they had already cruised the block checking all the other cars parked on street or in driveway for any signs of vandalism

[Coyote_Bandit]

2. A few years back

somebody smashed my windows out and ripped out the factory installed AM/FM/CD unit - which also contained all the temperature, vent and fan controls. Cops came and took a report. Nothing else. They barely looked at the car and laughed when I asked if they were going to fingerprint. Two weeks later I got a form letter from the cops informing me that I was a crime victim. Never heard anything else regarding the matter. I'm certain they did not investigate. I continued to find small bits of glass in the car until the day I traded it in a few years later.

[LynzM]

3. Ugh, that sucks.

I had my faceplate and all my CDs stolen about 5 years ago, so I feel for ya. I'm amazed that the cops did as much as they did! I'll cross my fingers they find out who did it. :hug:

[meegbear]

4. Theres' a thing called a 'car alarm' which you may want to look into ...

you have a system like that and no alarm? For shame.

[yellowdogintexas]

6. not a fancy system at all. It was a $95 Sony, I had replaced the factory

set because it had died and was out of warranty. LOL the dash accessory kit cost almost as much as the unit and they didn't take that! At least I don't have to buy a new dash kit if I stick to same brand of radio.

My cd case was in the house, cellphone in the house, garage door opener dead as a doornail, seriously this radio was a unit that was on closeout because it had the fewest number of bells and whistles available, and I chose it for just that reason..and because the little tuner buttons and stuff were big enough I could see them. So it had the easy pop out feature but not the detachable face plate. And it was easy to set everything up ...just AM/FM radio and a single CD slot. It is MP3 capable but I only got that because they didn't have one without it.

Living where we do it hadn't really occurred to me to bother with a car alarm, since the car itself isn't one that looks like it would have anything of interest in it....7 years old, little dings and dents here and there. We have a loudmouthed dog who apparantly was on break last night, as were the neighbor's dogs. And people walk at night in the neighborhood all the time, as the streets are quite well lit and many people have motion detector lights on their homes and in their yards, and decorative yard lights etc.


Going around the neighborhood, house down the street got hit about 10 days ago and they lost a window too and probably a fancier unit. My next door neighbor's car had windows smashed about 18 months ago, most likely in an attempt to get the DVD player and stereo in that car. Dogs must have scared them off because they didn't actually take anything.

however, the dome light and map lights were pried out of the ceiling and the bulb removed from the dome. And one of the lenses popped out of my magnetic sunglasses which was probably what annoyed me the very most. What possible satisfaction can be gained from that?

Guess I will look into a car alarm when I have the radio replaced.

[CreekDog]

9. yes, by all means, BUY A CAR ALARM, your neighbors will love you for it!

This advice given by someone who lives miles and miles away.

:wtf:

[meegbear]

10. Yeah, you want to scare someone if they're breaking into your car ...

:wtf: yourself.

[CreekDog]

13. Car alarms in my neighborhood go off generally when a car is not being harassed

but when the wind is strong, when a large vehicle passes to close to the parked car, etc. etc.

alarms are a great concept, but there are so many false alarms they are mostly a nuisance.

[hippywife]

14. I once heard them called

the urban equivalent to the cricket. LOL

[CreekDog]

19. more like mockingbird ;) nt

[yellowdogintexas]

17. the heavy winds in this area are one reason I never wanted one

we spent a very sleepless night in a motel in Arkansas due to high winds and rampant triggering of car alarms!

[KitchenWitch]

5. Back in June my purse was stolen out of my car which was parked in my garage.

For whatever reason, something tripped my garage door opener and the door came back open. I do not normally leave my purse on the seat of my car, but that day I did. For two months I thought my purse had just been missing. One day in August, I got a call from a detective in Orange, telling me that he may have some of my property.

Thankfully, I had cancelled all the credit cards, and gotten in touch with all the financial institutions the next day. No activity on any of the accounts, thank goodness.

When I went to the property room, all I got back was a stub from a consignment jewelry shop, some postage stamps and my drivers license.

[yellowdogintexas]

7. I have heard that robbery rings go around with a variety of garage

door openers and open garage doors that way. Apparantly there is a master code that is randomly loaded into them so every 30th one or whatever matches and if you have that master you can "open any door". So my husband doesn't want me to exit the house using the garage door because I can't slide the safety on the inside of the house ..just turn the little knob latch. So I use the front door mostly unless someone else is in the house and can put everything back in place.

Now you can't manually lift my garage door if it is down without the electric opener, it is wood and heavy . The other door doesn't work and we have it bolted shut and no opener attached at present. No room for car in garage of course, or it would have been in there anyway.

Sorry about your purse, and thank goodness I had that with me. I have been known on rare occasion to leave it in the car overnight.

[KitchenWitch]

12. Actually I am pretty sure that the garage door did not close

Because when I went down to close it later, it still came up, something was in the way.

But it was pretty scary. I mean, what would have happened if I caught them in my car when I took stuff out of the freezer for dinner...I am sure they were armed.

[hippywife]

15. Our house was broken into

a few years ago and no one was interested in doing any dusting for fingerprints. Just took a report of all the things missing and never heard another word.

Sorry you had this happen. Terribly violated feeling, isn't it?

[yellowdogintexas]

18. very. I hid some things before I went out this afternoon. Came home

all TV sets, computers, stereos and things I did not hide are in place and accounted for. My only truly costly jewelry was on my body, I have a few pieces it would be hard to replace due to uniqueness but not extremely expensive.

I ended up taking the day off from work, and managed to squeeze in a medical appointment I had been trying to schedule.