Thievery

Last Thursday, I awoke to find that someone had gotten into my carport and made off with some small items like my wife's bicycle helmet and my riding gloves, and they'd also stripped the lights from both our bicycles. Needless to say, I was Not Amused at a level that even Queen Victoria would have considered impressive.

Seeing as this is a family newspaper, I will not directly outline the invective that issued forth from me upon discovering that I had been burgled, but suffice it to say that the air turned blue, a passing flock of seagulls dropped out of the air, stone dead, and God's stern and bearded face peered out from behind a cloud and boomed, “Knock It Off.”

Of course, bleeding hearts might say that no-one sets out to steal unless motivated by personal misfortune, and perhaps the thief or thieves really needed the few small items they took and that we should all be thankful that we have our health and the love of our friends and blah blah blah. Well, to them I offer the pithy retort, “Get stuffed,” and without wishing to have anyone think that I am less forgiving a person than, say, Mother Theresa or perhaps Elin Nordegren, may the miscreant who stole my stuff win a free trip to Sea World where they might fall in a tank and be eaten by Tillikum the killer Killer whale.

But such is life. You work hard, buy stuff, and then other people try to take your stuff away. Sometimes, this is called “government”. The rest of the time, it's just plain thievery.

Here in the Lower Mainland, the rate of automotive theft is the highest in Canada. Sure, there's the bait-car program, and sure, it's a great balm if you've just had your car broken into to log on to the website and see a few luckless buffoons get nabbed by the fuzz. But there's nothing that quite takes away that sick feeling when you come out in the morning to find a broken window, or a jimmied lock, or worse still, no car at all.

Don't expect things to improve either. The widespread use of immobilizer keys has resulted in fewer vehicle thefts, but while there's a great deal of technology put into keeping our cars parked where we leave them, there's just as much tech being developed to steal them.

Take the recently released Electronic Key Impressioner, for instance. This screwdriver-sized device can be inserted in any key-lock and instantly takes a 3D snapshot of the tumblers. It then sends the information via USB cable to an instant key-cutter so a replica key can be created. It's even capable of scanning a database and duplicating the digital signal that passive immobilizers use.

So, whether it's a fancy electronic scanner, or the universal key of A Large Rock, how can we best protect ourselves against thieves?

Well, the first thing to do is the simplest: don't leave valuables in plain sight in your car. Keeping an ashtray full of loonies in your car is the equivalent of rolling in bacon grease and then going for a run in Lynn Canyon, just when the black bears are coming out of hibernation.

Were not just talking money either. It's a pretty lousy idea to keep shopping bags of any description hanging about in the back of your car, and there're all sorts of apocryphal reports of thieves breaking in to cars to steal chocolate bars left in plain view. I wouldn't do it for a Klondike Bar, but somebody might.

But perhaps you think you've removed all the valuables from your car, and you can't imagine what there is in there that a thief might be interested in. Well think again; there's you. Specifically, your identity. Most people chuck the original registration papers for their car in the glovebox and forget about them, but those documents can potentially expose you to identity theft should they fall into the wrong hands.

It's a growing problem, so how do you protect yourself? One possibility is to carry a photocopy of your registration papers with the address blanked out. Should you get nicked for speeding or similar (and I'm sure none of my readership has ever strayed over the legal limit), you're usually given the option to produce the originals within a few days.

At this point, you're probably thinking: “What about an alarm system to protect both my car and the parking meter fund?” Certainly if you own an older car without a passive immobilizer, or factory alarm, it can be a good idea to have some sort of theft deterrence installed. There are multiple types available, the simplest being a shock-detecting alarm that will invariably get set off by a passing friendly cat, and cause your neighbours to despise you. Also, cheap alarms can usually be defeated by a professional thief in the time it takes to read this sentence.

Better yet would be to spring for a two-way pager alarm, which will send you a quick buzz when your car's being broken into. It's only a matter of time before this technology is integrated into the iPhone, so you might soon be sitting through Avatar 2's four hours of eyestrain only to receive a text letting you know your hybrid is being violated, and then you can rush outside and administer justice, West-Coast-style (I'm not sure what that would be exactly. Whack the culprit with a sockeye salmon and then appoint them their own social worker or something).

The bottom line is this: auto-related theft is just part of living in the Lower Mainland, and there's very little you can do to stop it; you can just minimize the risk by making your car less attractive to thieves, but if they want to get in, they're going to get in.

Consider this though, in Johannesburg, South Africa the problem is not so much theft as it is the much more dangerous issue of car-jacking. At the peak of the difficulties, as many as 16,000 car-jackings were occurring every year. Drivers were equipping their vehicles with illegal-but-quietly-condoned anti-carjacking devices like the Blaster, which shot blasts of flame out the side of the car, or a spring-loaded metal bar which sprang out and shattered the ankles of a would-be hijacker.

While it might be satisfying to think of having an anti-theft device that will barbeque the next guy who tries to steal your mp3 player, these medieval-seeming anti-hijacking measures did little to solve the problem.

Aside from taking a few preventative steps to minimize our risk, the fact is, we on the West Coast have to accept that automotive-related theft is going to occur at some point during our car-owning lives, and just be ready to deal with it. After all, blessed are the meek and so forth.

Having said that, if I ever get my hands on the guy who took my stuff, I'm going to put my foot so far up his backside that he'll be using Kiwi shoe polish for toothpaste.