Smash-and-grab vehicle robberies are so common in my Old East Dallas neighborhood that they’re just pesky. You get to know your insurance company’s glass guys pretty well. But if auto burglaries seem even more frequent lately, there could be a reason. Lakewood Crime Watch reported in a recent newsletter that auto burglaries are up 50 percent in our neighborhood. I don’t have the data on that, but at face value, that seems like quite a jump.
And it doesn’t even count the smash-and-grabs that go unreported. Take my neighbor, who felt unusually breezy driving to work early one morning this month. Some jerk smashed one of his Jeep’s small rear windows out. Luckily, the losers didn’t take anything because they couldn’t reach the lock — amateurs. This was the third time for this particular Jeep, and my neighbor didn’t bother the police with it.
