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Police offer tips to avoid property crime

Make sure vehicles are locked and valuables are hidden out of sight

By Emily Gillespie, Columbian Breaking News Reporter
Published: November 28, 2014, 12:00am

Clark County Sheriff’s Sgt. Alex Schoening admits that he’s fallen victim to some of the crimes that he reads about in police reports every day.

“Nobody’s immune,” he said. “We’re all guilty of overlooking certain things.”

But Schoening said that looking at hundreds of the agency’s online reports has gotten to him.

“It actually breaks my heart,” he said. “I am saddened and frustrated when I see hard-working, law-abiding citizens victimized by crime that, in their own words, could have been prevented.”

With the holidays in full swing, he predicts a rise in property crime and hopes that a few tips will help Clark County residents from becoming victims.

“Not only have I been there, there are some just fairly easy things that we all can do that would just keep the majority of statistics down,” he said.

Criminals, Schoening said, often look for the easy targets. He highlighted four of these targets and the steps residents can take to be more safe.

The first target is unsecured vehicles. Thieves regularly patrol crowded parking lots or cars parked outside of residences to see if they’re unlocked, Schoening said. That way, when they break into the car, it is less conspicuous. Simple fix: lock your car.

The second target is valuables left visible in a vehicle. “How many times have you driven to the store ‘just to grab something,’ and having run inside, left your purse, smartphone, GPS, etc., lying in plain view on the front passenger seat?” GPS units left on windshields act like beacons for criminals, Schoening said, who often have nothing better to do than to sit in a parking lot waiting to seize upon an opportunity. Keep valuables hidden or take them with you, he advised.

The added frustration with these theft cases, Schoening said, is that people rarely keep track of serial numbers for their belongings.

“We’ll recover items and we scour the police reports,” Schoening said. “If we match it up, then it’s recovered property … we often know its stolen, but there’s not enough identifiers to reunite the item with its owner.”

The third target is packages left on porches. If online purchasing is how you shop, Schoening advises that you consider avoiding heartache by shipping the package to an alternate location — your workplace if it allows.

The fourth and final target is personal identity, the results of which can be catastrophic and take years to undo, Schoening said.

He advises that you keep a close eye on your bank statements and run a credit report on yourself, looking for oddities and inconsistencies in both. In addition to that, never provide your name, date of birth, Social security number or other personal information to anyone over the phone that you did not call.

“It’s not 100 percent fail-safe … but (the tips) are helpful if you really don’t want to be a statistic,” he said.

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Columbian Breaking News Reporter