[Neighbors] Auto break in report

[Robert L Anderson via Neighbors_nobhill-nm]

Location: corner Richmond @ Coal, SE.

We did not know until the morning (Tuesday) of the break in when we went out and saw a door ajar on one of our cars and I reviewed our security cam and saw the details.

Yesterday morning at about 1:45 a young man casually walk into our drive way from the sidewalk as if he were on a stroll, walked over to try the door handles of a couple cars.  He found one unlocked.  With his flashlight he went through the car and took my expensive cowboy hat.  He opened the trunk and checked it for anything.  

He was about 20, 5’6’, anglo or Hispanic, wearing a sweater with some kind of logo on front, a baseball cap with something on the front and tennis shoes that were unusual - large white front section and black or dark back section.  In the dark the cam does a fair job of details, not as good as daylight.  He hung around until the driveway security light came on when he got closer to the house, and then just turned and with the hat in hand and flashlight walked back the way he came.

I reported this to APD probably because he broke into other cars in the area…now that is another story…the APD online form for reporting events is really horrible - it would not function for some of the fields and kept stopping.  Some fields instructions did not make sense. It would not let me fill out fields unless I put in a drivers license number.  Now some people may not have DL so they could not use the form from the start.  I sent the mayor a note that this on line reporting process is not user friendly (maybe to a Silicon Valley tech professional it is) and such a form would prevent the city from getting all the reports of incidents from people who would give up on the impossible.  I never did get it to take the info, it just locked up so I called 242-COPS.  They called me today and a woman went over a few key items needed for a report (which makes the online form an exercise in futility).

This was not a big loss but it means there are people like this who walk our streets looking so casual until they sense a chance to break in and grab something.

Bob Anderson