Posted on 10/20/2017 7:58:41 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Does placing a 'no valuables inside' sign in a car window deter break-ins?
Car burglaries are at epidemic levels in San Francisco
By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE Updated 9:18 am, Friday, October 20, 2017
In San Francisco, where no automobile parked on the street is immune from glass-smashing thieves, some people have taken to posting signs on car windows announcing that there are no valuables inside.
The hope, of course, is that a thief will read the notice and decide: "Huh. No valuables in this one.I guess I'll break into some other car."
On Tuesday, a Reddit user posted a photo of such a sign and posed the question "Do you think it works?" to the Reddit community. A lively debate ensued.
"Sounds a lot like something that someone with valuables in their car would say," wrote a skeptical Maddox83a.
But iamthewaffler disagreed, citing personal experience.
"It's strong signaling that works VERY well," the commenter wrote. "The intended victim for thefts from cars are people who are from out of town, other "safer" parts of SF, etc who don't know that certain areas are very prone to car break-ins. If you have bothered to print out a sign and put it in your window, that shows you know exactly what neighborhood you're in and the chances of anything valuable being in your car are extremely low.
"These are crimes of opportunity, and if you simply let the would-be thief know that you're from this part of town and aware of the danger, they'll pass right by.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
We were on a family trip to SF about 20 years ago and stopped at a red light. Mid-day. Opposite side of the street from us two black guys were breaking into a car. Pried open the trunk with a steel bar. We called 911 and their attitude was “They’ll be gone when we get there.” Our kids still talk about it. My son subsequently lived there and had his motorcycle stolen twice — and recovered both times!
I lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan in the 1970s.
The signs DO NOT WORK.
Rudy Giuliani crime fighting DOES WORK.
Does placing a ‘no valuables inside’ sign in a car window deter break-ins?
The sign will be stolen.... just because.
In the areas of SF that arent safe the perps cant read
Car break-ins epidemic in San Francisco? How can that be, it’s a sanctuary city?
Thank you, Sanctuary Cities.
My brother lived in Massachusetts during a car radio theft epidemic. People would scrawl "no radio" and put it on the window. Thieves would bust out the window and write "Get one!" on the back of the sign.
I had a friend in high school who had a very well trained, un-docked doberman. One afternoon we were heading out fishing, and he had the dog with us, and we had to stop off at Walmart. He left the dog in the truck, along with all the fishing gear, with the windows (and the back window) completely rolled down and went inside.
When we came back out, he noticed some blood spatter on the tailgate, and the dog just wagging his tail like he was really proud of himself. Nothing was missing.
Mark
Whenever I used to see one of those stupid "baby on board" signs, I remember thinking I needed to get one that said "Axe Murderer On Board."
Mark
They can’t read Spanish either.
Probably the best deterrent to having your windows smashed is to leave them all down. You would need to remove everything from the car, including the owner’s manual. This way they could jump in the car, open all the containers, pop the trunk and verify in thirty seconds that nothing is there. You would probably even need to ditch the jack and spare tire. Hopefully they’d leave without doing any damage.
We can only live as well as the people around us will allow. The reason we could, in the past, lock our cars and expect to return and find them undamaged is because everybody was raised in the same Christian culture, whether they were practicing Christians or not. That shared culture creates an invisible, unwritten set of standards and rules that we aren’t even aware of following. But along comes unlimited immigration from other, non-Christian cultures and suddenly we have to deal with the reality of “diversity.” Diversity is bad. But the wider society we live in won’t recognize that and start voting that way until it is too late to go back to better not-so-diverse times. Liberalism is crazy, wild-eyed optimism and cultural myopia.
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