Breaking and Entering: Recently throughout the Prairie Village and Kansas City area, car break-ins and robberies have become more frequent

Through the past few months, East students and other members of the Kansas City community have experienced a spike in car break-ins and burglaries, according to School Resource Officer and Prairie Village Police Officer Seth Meyer.

Meyer believes that a large cause of this increase is a result of unlocked cars. According to Meyer, many crimes happen when there’s an opportunity, making car break-ins or burglaries easy to commit. Many burglars will walk up and down a street or through a parking lot, pulling handles until they find an unlocked car, giving them an easy opportunity to steal everything inside.

Senior Charlotte Hawes experienced this when she slept over at a friend’s house in Mission on Jan. 8. When she woke up to take a few friends home, she came to find her car in a mess. The items from the center console were scattered on the seats and her glove box was open.

Hawes left her car unlocked that night, making it an easy target. The only things taken were an Apple phone charger and a Bluetooth radio adapter. Since neither of these things are of high value — she decided not to file a report — but it still provoked an alarming feeling for Hawes.

“I would just say even when you are in a safe neighborhood where you think no one’s gonna go into your car, lock your car,” Hawes said. “I bet they were looking for an unlocked car and the dumb person who left theirs open and it was me.”

Junior Tommy Marx’s case was far more dramatic. On Jan. 9, his panicked father, Kenneth, shook him awake, asking where his car was — it wasn’t in the driveway but his keys were on the counter.

Tommy quickly realized he had left his dad’s Lincoln unlocked when he drove it the night before. The door handles that automatically tuck into the car when locked were still sticking out — so he knew. He started panicking.

Tommy’s spare car keys were inside Kenneth’s unlocked car, giving the burglar access to Tommy’s car to then steal it from in their own driveway. Kenneth’s car was left untouched besides Tommy’s spare car key being stolen from inside the vehicle.

According to Marx, the majority of his items in his car can be replaced except for a couple valuables including a jacket of his grandfather’s, who recently passed away. Marx’s case is still unresolved, but they did file a report and collected Tommy’s DNA in hopes to find his car.

However, cars can still be broken into even when they’re locked. According to Meyer, this most likely happens when the car has something valuable in sight for the criminal. Breaking a window and causing a scene could result in someone hearing or seeing the criminal, making it less worthwhile unless there’s something like a wallet or money sitting in plain sight inside the car. 

Leaving her car locked overnight at a friend’s house off of Ward Parkway on Oct. 24, sophomore Lulu McKee found it in disarray the next morning. 

McKee saw her green tinted glass at her feet and noticed the driver’s window had been completely punched out. Unfortunately, Mckee’s car had many valuables stolen — her purse, $200, her debit card, her parents’ card, two pairs of Ray-bans, a Patagonia jacket and a Lululemon jacket. 

The scariest realization for McKee was that they’d stolen her garage door opener and insurance booklet with all her information in it, meaning they knew where she lived and now had access to her house.

She filed a police report, asked her friend whose house the car was at and if he had seen anything or footage from a camera, but has yet to figure out who did it. Mckee’s dad quickly changed all their locks and the garage door code and openers to ensure safety. 

“The lesson that my dad taught me was that since I don’t have an alarm and obviously [break-ins] can happen, I need to lock my center console and I now have my garage door opener on my keys,” McKee said. “Don’t leave any valuable things in the view of people and don’t leave your car somewhere that’s not at your house.”

Unfortunately, according to Meyer, the car break-in process on their end doesn’t always result in a solved case. It’s first dealt with by officers and then passed to the detectives to follow up with any details and try to find a lead.

“At the end of the day, we may not ever figure out who broke into your car,” Meyer said. “And then we have to inactivate the case so it just gets set aside, and if something pops up later we can go back and look at it. But a year later the chances are that the stolen [item] has exchanged ten [sets of] hands and that isn’t even the person who really did it.”

According to Meyer, doing day-to-day things can save you from having your car broken into or stolen. Simply locking the doors and hiding or taking out any valuables in the car brings the risk down and can avoid the situation as a whole.