Day 311 of 365 - Not Again!
The first time this happened, a little more than two weeks ago, I chose not to write about it. That's because I don't like to dwell excessively on the negative. I prefer to deal with things and move on, especially if no personal harm is done. However, it happened again last night, and I'm going to have a little rant here.
We live in an apartment building which has underground parking with locked doors. Periodically, in the time we have lived here, which is 8 years now, people have gotten into the garage at night and have gone through cars, presumably looking for money or valuables to sell. This used to be a sporadic occurrence. After we first heard about incidents, we decided to leave our front windows partially down, so someone could unlock the door and look through the car if they chose. This did happen a few times in the past couple years, evidenced by items from the glove box being strewn about. We never keep money or valuables in the car.
However, the ante has been upped lately. Less than three weeks ago, over 30 cars received broken windows. For the first time, ours was one. We had decided not long ago to keep our windows up, but had not left the car unlocked. Our driver's window was broken. We cleaned up the mess, contacted an auto glass place and organized a rental car since the repair could not be done for a few days. It was annoying and inconvenient.
After that, we decided to always keep the car unlocked, thinking it would prevent another incident. Our car was not locked last night, but the window was broken anyway. Several other cars were hit and we were not the only ones to have it happen a second time.
Locksmiths were brought in after the last round to improve door security, which was apparently not enough. Now, tenants are up in arms about the lack of security for the buildings. We shall see how this unfolds in terms of a response from management.
Once again, we will be inconvenienced for a couple of days and will be paying out of pocket for the repair, since it costs less than our insurance deductible. No personal harm was done.
There are a lot of seniors in these buildings, who are easily intimidated by events like this. Some will assume that they need to make an insurance claim when they don't. They might be paying for unnecessary additional repairs. Additionally, people start to feel unsafe about being in the garage at night, and worried about building safety in general.
We live in a 'nice' neighborhood but are not that far from the downtown. As I've mentioned in a previous post, there are increasing numbers of homeless people in the downtown area. Some of them appear to be mentally unstable or under the influence of drugs, based on their behaviors. Perhaps our building crimes are related to that sector of the population. We can only speculate.
The police know about these repeated incidents of car damage. I'm not sure what they can do, other than giving occurrence identification numbers to people who wish to make insurance claims. I know we are not immune to crime just because of the kind of neighborhood we live in. It is a bit stunning though that it keeps recurring.
The whole thing is kind of disheartening, not only from a personal perspective of property and personal safety, but also from the societal perspective of these kinds of actions becoming more common occurrences in the city.
There, rant complete, for now. The post that was intended for today will go up tomorrow.
We live in an apartment building which has underground parking with locked doors. Periodically, in the time we have lived here, which is 8 years now, people have gotten into the garage at night and have gone through cars, presumably looking for money or valuables to sell. This used to be a sporadic occurrence. After we first heard about incidents, we decided to leave our front windows partially down, so someone could unlock the door and look through the car if they chose. This did happen a few times in the past couple years, evidenced by items from the glove box being strewn about. We never keep money or valuables in the car.
However, the ante has been upped lately. Less than three weeks ago, over 30 cars received broken windows. For the first time, ours was one. We had decided not long ago to keep our windows up, but had not left the car unlocked. Our driver's window was broken. We cleaned up the mess, contacted an auto glass place and organized a rental car since the repair could not be done for a few days. It was annoying and inconvenient.
After that, we decided to always keep the car unlocked, thinking it would prevent another incident. Our car was not locked last night, but the window was broken anyway. Several other cars were hit and we were not the only ones to have it happen a second time.
Locksmiths were brought in after the last round to improve door security, which was apparently not enough. Now, tenants are up in arms about the lack of security for the buildings. We shall see how this unfolds in terms of a response from management.
Once again, we will be inconvenienced for a couple of days and will be paying out of pocket for the repair, since it costs less than our insurance deductible. No personal harm was done.
There are a lot of seniors in these buildings, who are easily intimidated by events like this. Some will assume that they need to make an insurance claim when they don't. They might be paying for unnecessary additional repairs. Additionally, people start to feel unsafe about being in the garage at night, and worried about building safety in general.
We live in a 'nice' neighborhood but are not that far from the downtown. As I've mentioned in a previous post, there are increasing numbers of homeless people in the downtown area. Some of them appear to be mentally unstable or under the influence of drugs, based on their behaviors. Perhaps our building crimes are related to that sector of the population. We can only speculate.
The police know about these repeated incidents of car damage. I'm not sure what they can do, other than giving occurrence identification numbers to people who wish to make insurance claims. I know we are not immune to crime just because of the kind of neighborhood we live in. It is a bit stunning though that it keeps recurring.
The whole thing is kind of disheartening, not only from a personal perspective of property and personal safety, but also from the societal perspective of these kinds of actions becoming more common occurrences in the city.
There, rant complete, for now. The post that was intended for today will go up tomorrow.
that sucks and so annoying. they ought to hire an overnight security guy..
ReplyDeleteYes Jody, that is the hope of many, even if our rent goes up to pay for it.
Delete