Lamar County Sheriff Danny Rigel said residents can help cut down the number of vehicle burglaries during the summer by taking their keys out of the car and locking the doors.
The advice sounds simple, but Rigel said it goes a long way in keeping local thieves at bay.
“Nowadays, car thieves believe in what I call ‘window shopping,’” he said. “A lot of times, what they’ll do is to get somebody to drop them off in the neighborhood. With the technology today using cellphones, they can have someone down the road and say, ‘There’s a car coming; hide in the bushes.’ We can’t see behind every bush at night so they go undetected in the neighborhood. They don’t want to make noise, so they’ll try the door handle. If it’s open and they see something, they take it.”
In most auto burglaries, Rigel said the cars are just trashed looking for something of value.
“It’s usually something like sunglasses; of course, sunglasses could cost as much as $300,” he said. “They’ll take change out of the cup holders, cigarette lighters. You’d be surprised how many people leave laptops on the front seats.”
A “big score” can make a thief’s night, Rigel said.
“A lot of times the lights will come on when they try to open the doors,” he said. “They might see a laptop or a gun. You’d be surprised how many people leave their golf clubs or their guns in sight. Especially during hunting season, they’ll leave their hunting rifles in the back seat of their trucks. If thieves see that, they are going to knock out the window. If they see a $1,000 gun, that beats $10 in change by going into five different cars. Take the rifle and run, and that’s your one thing for the night. That’s why we tell people not to help the window shoppers.”
Sometimes, it’s just as simple as walking into a garage and taking the car. For example, one Lake Serene resident wasn’t even aware his vehicle had been stolen.
“They chased one (stolen car) the other night from Lake Serene,” he said. “It went all the way to Dixie and Elks Road Lake. They broke into the car and a girl saw them as they were breaking in and wrote down the tag number. The Forrest County deputies were right there and chased them and they bailed out by the Central School behind the old Beverly Drive-In. They ran the tag and came back to Lake Serene. A deputy went over there and asked, ‘Where’s your car?’ ‘It’s in the garage.’ The deputy said, ‘I’m afraid not.’ He had left his keys in the car too.”
Although Lamar County does not have the number of stolen cars as a large city like Hattiesburg, most of them could be prevented.
“We had 15 auto burglaries in the last three weeks,” Rigel said, “and 14 of those were unlocked. We’ve had three stolen cars. Keys are left in the cars. We found one on Mobile Street, one down on Franklin Street and the one in Lake Serene.”
Rigel added that garages are not always safe.
“I have had people tell me, ‘Well, I parked my car in my garage,’” he said. “Thieves go up inside garages; if they are going to break into your house, they are not going to bother about going up into your garage.”
Most of the suspects who are arrested for the auto burglaries and thefts are youngsters, Rigel said.
“I think a lot involves kids, because a lot of the ones that we catch are from 13-16 years old,” he said. “We caught some last year at Lake Serene that were a 13-, a 15- and a 17-year-old. It used to be that a 17-year-old would be tried as an adult. The courts and Legislature have changed that to 18 years old, so the 17-year-olds know that there is no punishment for them. They go to Youth Court and it’s a slap on the wrist.”
Different factors are involved in the large number of auto burglaries and thefts during the summer.
“I don’t know what it is,” Rigel said. I guess it’s more that there’s kids out (during the summer vacation), more daylight hours, there’s no school in the morning so they don’t have to go to bed early. But there is a lot more activity in the summer; that’s when most of our thefts happen. Usually the house and business burglaries are drug-related because they can get a bigger take.”
Rigel said he has also been a victim of vehicle burglars.
“I have had my car broken into and my truck broken into,” he said. “It’s aggravating, but it’s usually auto burglaries when they take change. That’s just kids and it’s not drug-related. They don’t get enough to buy drugs. They’ll break into 10 cars just to get $10; that’s not fueling a drug habit.”
Rigel reminds residents to do their part in stopping vehicle burglaries.
“We don’t live in Mayberry anymore,” he said.
