Reminder: Don’t Leave Your Months Old Easter Basket in Your Car Even For a Minute

Columns

by Prince Of Petworth August 19, 2015 at 12:20 pm 40 Comments

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Thanks to a reader for sending from Columbia Heights.

Ed. Note: I guess this makes up for no August Christmas Tree sightings this year. And sorry to joke at the expense of the owner who got their window smashed. That sucks.

phl2dc

Guys, just don’t leave anything in your car, period. It’s really just common sense.
Gumball

They really wanted that synthetic grass.
- wdc
  
  LOL!
- zartan
  
  great comment!
- Interested bystander
  
  This is perhaps the funniest comment I have read all year. If the photo were a caption contest picture, you’d win the grand prize.
  - dcd
    
    Agreed! Prince, give that man a t-shirt!
Hill Res

Lets take this a step further:

1. Don’t leave anything of value or worth taking in sight in a parked car. (I see this all the time in NE, phone or computer power cords left on the car seats, GPS units, bags in the back seat….the list goes on).
2. Don’t walk down the street so immersed in your iPhone that you don’t see the mugger approaching you to take it. (It’s great sitting on my front porch and hearing someone having a conversations on their phone before I even seem them pass by. Nothing like transmitting your vulnerability to a criminal).
3. Don’t be so immersed in your iPhone that you blindly walk into a cross walk. (This is just basic safety but related to the above…I see this all the time with folks crossing Maryland Ave)

Crime is on the rise. The city won’t let us arm ourselves nor do they have the resources to put cops on the beat in the numbers to deter crime.

We aren’t getting ahead of the crime…..so….comes down to residents taking charge of their personal actions to limit crime(s) like this. At least it’s a start and may help in the short term.
- justinbc
  
  “The city won’t let us arm ourselves”
  If you have passed a criminal background check and completed the required firearms safety training then you can get a concealed carry permit as of May of this year.
  - Hill Res
    
    No you can’t…they put a stay on that judgment and it fell back to the policy of having a legit reason for a CCW (living in a high crime area isn’t justification).
    
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/federal-appeals-court-issues-stay-in-ruling-on-dc-gun-laws/2015/06/14/e2bb69cc-12be-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html
    
    Quote 14June2015: “A federal appeals court has ordered a stay of a judge’s ruling in a challenge to the District’s gun laws.
    
    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked a decision made last month by U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. that stopped the District from enforcing a key provision of its gun laws. That provision requires a person to state a “good reason” for carrying a weapon in order to obtain a permit from police.
    
    The stay, granted late Friday, is a minor victory for the District in the ongoing court battle over its gun laws.”
    
    I had the paperwork ready to send in after the decision in May (which removed the “good reason” clause), but when I heard about the DC Govt reaction to this and the increase in crime it would create (nonsense)…and their push for a stay, I held my paperwork back. Sure enough, they were able to get a the appeals court to issue a stay.
    - Anon Spock
      
      I just did the same thing. LOL
      Maryland has the same requirement, so I wonder if the federal courts will take it up at some point.
      - T
        
        Me, too.
        And Lanier says nobody actually wants a permit…
  - T
    
    Hill Res is, for all intents and purposes, correct. MPDC won’t grant a concealed carry permit unless the applicant can document a “good reason” for having a permit. It seems you can only get one if you have, for example, someone has written you a letter saying they’re going to attack you. If you have a random shooting in front of your house every day, that’s not sufficient justification because you’re not necessarily a target.
    
    There’s currently a lawsuit against the city regarding this “good reason” provision.
    - Anon
      
      MPD is simply implementing the law passed by the Council. Per that law, carrying large amounts of cash or high value objects on your person may also constitute good reason.
      - Hill Res
        
        I almost expanded on this with Mr. Allen during the NE meeting last night when someone asked about the gun laws. The council woman jumped in and started the typical gun law diatribe that didn’t answer the question. Fact: The restrictive gun laws only impact those looking to legally obtain, keep, and carry firearms in DC. The criminal element isn’t affected by any law on the book(s)…they don’t care. I, who considers my life and the safety of my family as something “high value” (and not an “object”), am without the ability to keep/carry because I don’t have “good reason”. I can’t claim ownership of this quote but in the case I think it’s applicable: “A lion is shot in Africa and the govt/people attack and blame the HUNTER. Someone is shot in DC, and the govt/people attack and blame the GUN/hi-cap magazine”. Someone pulled that trigger Mayor/Chief…that’s the root cause…not the gun. Criminals only care about two things….getting caught or getting hurt. Until you change one of those elements…it’s going to keep getting worse residents.
- phl2dc
  
  The sad thing is that it doesn’t even have to be something of value / worth taking.
  - jeslett
    
    Yup. Somebody once threw a billiard ball through my passenger window and didn’t even bother to open the door and rummage around.
    I still have that thing, though I’m not sure why.
    - phl2dc
      
      I’d have kept it too (I think billiard balls are cool) that way I could say I’d gotten something out of it. Sounds like it may have been a drunk jerk.
  - gk
    
    my car got broken into for literally 15 cents once. another time (circa 2007 maybe?), for some mix tapes (yes, tapes) a friend had made me in the early ’90s. i still hope the thief enjoyed the heck out of the indigo girls.
    - phl2dc
      
      Wow that sucks. 15 cents… wow.
    - Anonymous
      
      My car has been broken into twice, and no one has ever taken any of my CDs. I’m offended!
      - redraiderdc
        
        Samsies.
justinbc

HANGRY
- palisades
  
  I certainly get similar urges when I see some chocolate
  - Caroline
    
    I’m guessing the chocolate was a puddle by now… but maybe they found a few stale jelly beans?
- Zed
  
  I hate you, pants!
Caroline

Or rather, don’t leave it in there a day past 4 1/2 months.
Thomas

Probably some one rightfully angry about gentrification.
samanda_bynes

lemme guess – Hiatt?
Lauren

Finally a little crime news that made me LOL. I was worried I would never laugh again.
DC TaxPayer

There is always broken glass from car windows on Clifton St and down 13St towards the U St. metro. Would be nice if the police caught some of the culprits!

As for the status quo; I find it very odd that people in DC have accepted this type of crime as normal life in the city. Maybe, just maybe, if we act like this is a big deal, then the police may crack down on the wrongdoers.

I’m tired of it….but what can we do?
- Q
  
  I’m with you. I feel bad that all I do now is shake my head when I see a bashed out window. But also, I wish folks didn’t immediately say, duh, common sense that you don’t leave anything in your car, your fault. Well, no, it’s not. There are a lot of places in this city where you can be pretty confident that your car won’t get broken into if you happen to leave your glasses on the dashboard, and there are a lot of people who visit DC or haven’t lived here very long who aren’t aware that this is so, so, so commonplace in some neighborhoods. My dad has oodles of city smarts, but the last time he came to visit he was surprised when I insisted that he bring his jacket into the house or put it in the trunk because my little corner of Columbia Heights looks so sweet (and I have tried not to disabuse him of that notion). And, you know, sometimes folks just forget that something’s on the back seat or are distracted. We’re human. It happens. (I don’t actually have a car, but I’m assuming those that do are, like me, wildly imperfect.)
  - textdoc
    
    No one’s perfect, but I’m still surprised that this happens to anyone other than people who are very new to the city.
    .
    Maybe it’s because I arrived in the area when D.C. was a rougher place — I remember a friend who lived at the eastern edge of Adams Morgan saying that he no longer parked east of 16th Street because every time he did, his car was broken into — but even when I was still in grad school in the ‘burbs, I was aware that D.C. was a place where you should leave nothing visible in your car.
    .
    I remember a friend who had a station wagon telling me that it had been broken into when she went to the Black Cat — she had a blanket strewn across the floor in the back and the would-be thief apparently thought there might be something worth stealing underneath. (This was when the Black Cat, the Metro Cafe, HR-57, and maybe a couple of other spots were the only “gentrified”-ish establishments on 14th Street, and Saint-Ex hadn’t yet opened as the pioneering sit-down restaurant.)
    - textdoc
      
      That said… several months ago I accidentally left my purse on the front passenger seat of my car.
      .
      By some miracle, my car wasn’t broken into. All I can think is that any would-be thieves prowling the block were so accustomed to seeing my car completely bare on the interior that they didn’t bother looking in.
- justinbc
  
  High Def CCTV, but the paranoid folks in this country would never let it pass.
Abby

What do people do about car seats? Do you take them in every night, or do people not break in for car seats?
- samanda_bynes
  
  angry dwarf thieves do
- anon
  
  pretty sure people leave car seats in their cars. toddler seats are pretty hard to quickly get out – it takes me at least 5 minutes each time to loosen the belts and figure out how to undo the hooks to get mine out.
- jim_ed
  
  We leave ours in the car. They’re a pain to unhook, especially if you’re not familiar with how they work. Lots of car seats are cheap, and you’d really have to study up to know which were valuable and which weren’t. In fact, our car got rifled through a few weeks ago after we accidentally left it unlocked, and they didn’t bother to take the rather expensive car seat in it.
  - samanda_bynes
    
    what pawn shop is gonna take some car seat? gotta think practically, y’all.
K_Champagne

These are symptoms of deep poverty…gentrification has done nothing to alleviate the poverty that was endemic to DC before it brought unaffordable rent, trendy restaurants too pricey for the long-term residents, and amenities like dog parks, yoga studios, craft breweries, etc… that don’t address the issues of race-based economic inequality, still failing privatized public schools, and lack of class mobility/economic opportunity. This is what festering resentment and poverty look like…until you as residents force your elected officials to effectively address the real issues in DC this will continue. No amount of policing will fix this…and broken windows policing leads to a systematically brutalized and disrespected lower class, which breeds roots and revolution. Keep pretending that this is about the savages versus the civilized and you’ll be the first on the receiving end of the pitchfork crowd…ijs

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