Neighbor warns of car break-ins

Geeky Swedes Ballard

Sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning, Mona says that someone tried to break into and steal her car. “My car was parked on 9th between 65th and 70th,” she writes, “The reason I am sending you this email is because after I had called 911 and the officer was inspecting my car, he told me there were six or seven other cases the same night in the surrounding area.”

The suspect(s) was not able to steal the car, but the spare tire and jack was stolen. “I hope this information will help someone else because let me tell you I feel icky after this whole thing,” Mona writes.

Geeky Swedes

The founders of My Ballard

24 thoughts to “Neighbor warns of car break-ins”

  3. The police could cut the number of car prowls by half very quickly if they wanted to. All they have to do is shift a few cops from writing up reports about car prowls in the morning to working late night patrols in unmarked cars and bikes. Do that a few times and you’ll have rounded up all the tweakers in a couple weeks.

  4. I asked about that very thing last year, SPG, when a cop came to talk to our homeowners group about crime prevention. I was told that it will not happen because it is unlikely that a police officer will catch someone in the act of stealing your car, burglarizing your home, or assaulting you as you walk the dog. I guess the SPD doesn’t know about the concept of deterrence.

  5. I asked about that very thing last year, SPG, when a cop came to talk to our homeowners group about crime prevention. I was told that it will not happen because it is unlikely that a police officer will catch someone in the act of stealing your car, burglarizing your home, or assaulting you as you walk the dog. I guess the SPD doesn’t know about the concept of deterrence.

  6. That’s relying on quite a bit of luck. “Right place at the right time.”
    They could improve their odds by setting up a few bait cars, and then actually treating the felons more like felons, rather than slap on the wrist for a felony.

  8. This happened to our car last week on Thursday night/Friday morning in Broadview. The perp broke out our back window and took my husbands spring jacket, Wisconsin Badger’s hat, and our first aid kit. They tossed through our car, but didnt touch our spare change and even left a $1 bill laying in the shattered glass on the street.

    Our car was not the only one hit that night. Our neighbors car was broken into at the same time and all they took was a single peanut butter cup (they left the other one) and their car had a gps in it as well as some other “valuable” items, and they were left untouched.

    That morning, I counted 4 other cars a few blocks down from us that had windows smashed too, but I didnt get to talk to any of the owners.

    So, I feel your pain. It sucks…. sorry :(

  9. It seems like there is a need to be watchful in the area. I heard someone or some animal rummaging in the alley way between 9th and Dibble north of 70th late last night and called the police to check it out. Everything was okay, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were folks looking for things in the alley way too.

  10. Well, obviously we have a petty thief in Ballard. He’s climbing in your car windows, snatchin yo’ spring jacket up tryin to sell them so you better hide your change, hide your reeses cups cause they robbin’ everybody out here.

  11. I am constantly/incessantly reminded that this is the cost of living in a big city. It’s replaceable etc, etc. After awhile this attitude gets 2 sucking and bike lanes aren’t going 2 fix things either. Perhaps another red-light-cam will deter these thugs? Thanks 2 unions we’ll no doubt have less cops this next year to boot.

  13. My neighbor’s car was broken into on Monday night on 59th near 15th. It was unlocked, but they broke the driver’s side window anyways. All they grabbed was his satellite radio.

    He said that the police told him there were a rash of prowls that night, starting up north and moving south. Probably the same group of tweakers, kids, whatever…

  14. It’s extremely unlikely that they will catch anyone in the act when they don’t patrol. We all recognize that, and basically that is the problem here.
    The police in most other places will actually be a little more proactive than ours in a situation like this. I’ve seen an identical situation some years ago in a suburban area similar to ours and this is what the police did. They switched a few of their officers to a specific task force with the purpose of catching the repeat car prowlers. They patrolled at night in unmarked vehicles and kept tabs on vehicles and people out at that hour. They’d radio back and forth as they saw cars driving around and had other units track them to see who’s going home, who’s going to work and who’s just cruising around. If you’re actually out there looking for car prowlers and have a couple other units doing the same you can figure out pretty quickly who’s up to what at that hour. Once they got a subject, they’d let them get to work and then swoop in on them. It took these cops about two weeks to pick up all the car prowlers. As a bonus they were able to flip a couple of the guys to rat out their fence and bring the level of small crime way down.
    Seattle police do not recognize car prowls as a major problem so they won’t put their officers out at night with the specific task of catching these guys. Yet, all of us are constantly dealing with this problem and more and more of us are becoming the victims.

  15. It’s not a question of luck as I point out above. There’s a method to doing it that doesn’t rely on the luck of a single patrol car stumbling onto a crime in progress. There really aren’t that many people out that late at night and with three or more unmarked cars you can sort through who’s up to what and where they’re going pretty quickly. The car prowlers are out every night so a task force would be able to catch up with them within a week. It’s more a question of whether the police take it seriously enough and want to actually do something about it.

  17. I think the special task forces are probably tied up with the dozen or so neighborhoods worse than ballard. Of course, maybe there could be more task forces. Might need to raise state revenue for that though, just don’t tax my soda!

  20. My Yakima roof racks were stolen right from the top of my car last night! The whole system! The towers, crossbars, 2 bike racks and snowboard rack all missing this morning. I can’t believe it, I reported it to the police and it’s case# is 11-9124 so if you see some miscreants driving around with my racks please report it.

  22. My bike was stolen out of my secure condo garage in the 1700 block of NW 57th street. Clearly any indication of suspicious activity needs to be called into 911. Until these thieves are caught, the citizens of Ballard need to do the proactive work and help the police catch these people.

  23. my housemate’s partner’s car got stolen about a month ago right by there, on 12th and 73rd. the car was totaled–they found it completely stripped of its parts.

    get a club, park in the garage if you have one, and try to park under wet lit streets.

Leave a Reply