Car prowls: A crime that seems unstoppable

It will be 3 a.m. when Jordan and his buddies strike. They'll be gone before the car owner's feet can hit the slippers.

Pry the window. Pop the door lock. One guy jimmies the compact-disc player. The other rifles for spare change, CDs, sunglasses, anything of value.

And then they are gone, cloaked by night.

"You're just out of there - probably 30 seconds, 40 seconds at the most," said Jordan, who wants only his middle name used. "It's for the thrill, the rush in your gut. It's like being on a roller-coaster ride."

And in the morning, there's a victim such as Annette Beltrand, whose Toyota 4Runner was prowled recently by someone like Jordan.

"I cried," the 26-year-old Bellevue resident said. "It's almost like having your house robbed. It's just belittling. You don't know what to do."

It's a scene that repeats itself about 70 times a day in King County, half of which happen in Seattle. Car owners on the Eastside and Snohomish County each report about a dozen break-ins a day. It's a problem so common some victims don't even bother reporting their losses to police.

As losses grow, nothing - not car alarms nor police - seems able to stop it:

Statewide, about 59,000 car prowls are reported to police each year, costing victims an estimated $30 million. Close to half of those occurred in King County, which averages about 25,700 car prowls a year, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

With more than 4,000 car prowls reported on the Eastside alone last year, it's the area's most prevalent crime. In Seattle, about 12,000 car prowls were reported last year, down from a high of 19,000 in 1997, a 37 percent drop in three years, according to the city.

Suburban car prowls generally are holding steady but are worsening in a few cities. Federal Way police tally as many as 1,500 a year, even as virtually every other crime has declined there in recent years. Kent averages almost as many car prowls a year. About 550 are reported each year in Lynnwood, while Edmonds reports about 400 annually.

"It's very frustrating," Lynnwood police spokeswoman Trudy Dana said. "I used to think that for every problem there's a solution, but not anymore."

Most car prowlers are never caught. On the Eastside, about 90 percent get away. But that's better than in Seattle, where police, who usually face more pressing calls than in the quieter suburbs, acknowledge they arrest only about 1 percent of car prowlers.

"Our arrest rate is very low because we're usually called after the fact. We don't usually just roll up on car prowls in progress," Seattle police spokesman Clem Benton said.

Seattle's recent decline, police say, is due largely to theft-plagued owners finally getting savvy about not leaving valuables in their cars. But suburban car owners remain less wary, police say, perhaps because of the overall lower crime rates.

The fact is, car prowling is safer and easier than breaking into homes, police acknowledge. Car alarms act as a deterrent, police say, but they can't stop fast-moving prowlers.

The penalties for getting caught also do little to deter prowlers. A first-time offender probably will get no jail time. And while some police push for stiffer laws, not all prosecutors agree that locking up car prowlers longer makes sense, given clogged courtrooms and crowded jails. The state Legislature, meanwhile, hasn't debated the matter in years.

About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that some blame lies with people who, despite years of warnings, still leave their laptops, cell phones, checkbooks, CDs - even guns - in their cars.

"It comes down to a low-risk crime and easy targets. As long as people keep leaving their valuables unattended, there will still be people willing to break in and take them," said Redmond police Officer Brian Coats.

No place is safe from car prowlers. But it isn't hard to find their favorite haunts, statistics show.

Shopping centers are easy targets, despite the presence of private security officers. Parks and park-and-ride lots are hit hard. And big apartment complexes are irresistible.

"It's like going window-shopping," Coats said. "They just go from car to car, looking in the windows until they see what they want."

Hiding valuables like a purse in your trunk doesn't always work either, especially if thieves see you do it, said Dana, of the Lynnwood Police Department. One man stashed his sweaty gym clothes in a Nordstrom shopping bag only to discover a brand-conscious car prowler had stolen the bag expecting something good, Dana said.

The prevalence of it may make it seem like petty crime, except to victims.

"You feel like someone's been wearing your clothes," said Beltrand, a North Seattle Community College student whose Toyota was broken into in the garage of her Bellevue apartment. Gone were 35 CDs, a radar detector and loose change.

"It was probably stupid on my part for leaving them out in the open, but I've been doing it for years."

And car prowlers are not discerning. Even junkers get hit.

"It's a pretty low thing to do," said Matthew Weir, a 19-year-old Bellevue man whose self-described "crappy," rust-spotted, 1979 Toyota Corolla was jimmied recently, costing him 28 CDs and a checkbook. The thief then forged signatures on a bunch of his checks.

"When people work hard to buy stuff and someone just steals it, it really pisses you off," Weir said. "I'm not devastated or anything, it's just that there was a lot of expensive stuff."

Seattle car prowlers, police say, tend to be junkies or drifters looking for items that will get a few quick bucks at a pawnshop. Eastside police say they have their share of that, too. But other prowlers fit a different profile.

"They're 12- to 19-year-olds looking for things to do," said Bellevue police Detective Mark Tarantino. "There's no economic reason for them to commit these crimes. We live in Bellevue, and Bellevue's not the ghetto. But they find it exciting. I don't know why."

Jordan does.

"You're doing everything really fast, and then when you get in and out, you're glad because you feel like you accomplished something," he said. "If you're bored, you go out and do it. If you need money, you go out and do it. If you need a CD deck, you go out and do it."

Still, Jordan says he has given up car prowling. He has matured, he says, and is working full time and has a young child.

As easy as it is to break into a car, sometimes the crime can turn deadly. Police say it's a bad idea to try stopping a car prowler.

In Bellevue in December, a 39-year-old man was stabbed and stun-gunned when he confronted a pair of teenage prowlers in his apartment-complex parking lot. In Tacoma a few months earlier, a man was shot to death after chasing down and confronting a man who broke into his van.

For police, trying to slow car prowls is "a never-ending battle," Bellevue police detective Tarantino said. "So we try to use all our resources to concentrate on areas that are being hit by prowlers."

Officers stake out high-crime areas at night in hopes of catching prowlers, and when none show up, police sometimes use fancy-looking "bait cars" to lure them.

The best defense is to strip your car of valuables each time you leave it, police say. The approach works, according to Seattle police, who say the city's downturn in car prowls is due more to an increasingly careful public than any special police efforts. A special car-prowling task force formed in 1997, for example, disbanded a short time later.

"I would say people's awareness is better," said Benton, Seattle police spokesman. "People are wiser and smarter and taking better measures to protect themselves."

Still, frustrated police grumble that catching a car prowler doesn't seem to do any good. A first-time offense might, at most, cost a teenager a few hours of community service and a couple of months' probation, prosecutors say. Even a repeat offender doesn't have to worry about a long jail sentence.

"It kind of lets the air out of you a little bit when that person is getting a slap on the hand and they're right back out the next night," Coats said.

Car prowlers such as Jordan agree. He never got caught - not for car prowling anyway - and doubts his friends worried about getting caught, either. "They're juveniles. They just go to jail or pay a fine, and they keep doing it."

Would harsher laws help? California classifies "car burglary" as a felony. Whether that's a cure is doubtful.

"It's been a felony as long as I can remember, but it's still a constant problem," said Sgt. Al Guaderrama of the San Diego Police Department. It's so common there, in fact, that officers don't even respond to car break-ins anymore unless there's an exceptional chance that they might catch someone, the veteran sergeant said.

Prosecutors share police frustration with the problem but say they simply have more serious crimes already clogging the system.

"We just don't see very many vehicle prowlers who come in for prosecution," said Brian McDonald, a King County senior deputy prosecutor who heads the juvenile division. "My car's been prowled. It is a big problem. And part of it is simply catching the culprits."

Susan Irwin, Bellevue' city prosecutor, said "if we have the evidence, we pursue them pretty vigorously."

"But some people want to get tough on every crime possible and put everyone in jail. But then they say, `Don't put a jail in my back yard.' "