Last night, some thieves stole the car parked Right Behind my new Mercedes.  They apparently left behind another car they’d stolen previously.  They took my neighbor Joe’s Dodge mini van.  Joe is an elderly WWII vet and he has some trouble walking.  The thieves left behind the walker he’d left in the back seat.

 

I woke up this morning, and looking out my front office window noticed Joe’s van was gone and assumed he’d gone to church early.  Then I saw the walker laying in the grass and thought he’d accidentally left it behind. Later, I saw the police talking to my neighbor across the street and went out to ask what was going on and that’s when I found out Joe’s van had been stolen.  It had happened right in front of my house.  While I slept.

 

I’m assuming the Mercedes wasn’t disturbed because its built-in anti-theft devices still haven’t been cracked by the street, and the thieves didn’t want the alarm going off.  Also, the evidence seems to indicate that these were joy riders, since they left behind another vehicle they’d previously stolen.  I’m sure they’d have loved to have gotten their hands on my car.  So on the one hand I’m a bit reassured that my car is deterring thieves, at least for now.  But on the other hand our neighborhood seems to be a target lately.

 

It really burns me that Joe lost his car…and they had to know they were stealing it from someone who had trouble getting around since they took the time to take the walker out of the van.  But I’m sure the thieves wouldn’t have even paused to know they were stealing from someone who put his life on the line for their freedom to be asswipes.

 

I’ve been considering putting up outdoor security cameras ever since we had that last bout of car thefts in the neighborhood a couple months ago.  I’m going to do it now.  Three hidden cameras out front…one looking directly in front of the house, one looking upstreet and one looking downstreet, and a DVR recording it all for posterity.  Hopefully then when something’s stolen we’ll have their faces on record.  I’ll start making inquiries this week.  I’ll need someone to run a conduit for the cabling to the outside, and I suppose while I’m at that I should get an electrician to put in those outdoor outlets out front that I’ve been wanting ever since I bought the house.

 

The other thing I may do is go ahead and buy one of these, or one of these.  If Joe gets another car to replace the one that was stolen, I’ll ask him if he wants one of those too.

 

[Update…]   My brother in California says if I’m going to get a wheel boot, I should get one that covers the lug nuts.  Apparently some thieves will just bring along a spare tire and just unbolt the one with the boot on it if the boot doesn’t cover the lug nuts.  But then…I have locking bolts (on the Mercedes they’re bolts, not nuts) and maybe that’ll deter that.