Glendale is seeing a rise in car break-ins this year, according to police.
During a community meeting on May 20, Capt. Christopher Manson, commanding officer of the 104th Precinct, said that compared to last year, there was a rise in thefts from automobiles.
He was unable to provide exact stats at the meeting, but, through May 18, the latest state available on the NYPD website, there were marked increases in both grand larceny (up 21 percent) and petit larceny (up 16.5 percent).
The spike in crime is leaving many residents of this usually quiet neighborhood surprised and frustrated with cops.
Joann Guidici, a resident of Glendale, found her car broken into on a recent Saturday morning. The car had been parked on 72nd Street and the driver window was smashed but nothing valuable had been stolen from the car.
“They must’ve done it for the high,” she said. “Because they didn’t take any of the valuable stuff.”
She noted that there had been two pairs of expensive, designer glasses in the car that were left untouched.
Brian Dooley, a member of the Glendale Property Owners Organization, had a similar experience.
“My car was broken into twice,” he said. Unlike Guidici, there were no broken windows. “The first time I thought that we had left the car unlocked. But after the second incident, I knew that they must be using a magnetic device of some sort.”
Manson echoed Dooley’s suspicion about the use of a magnetic device.
“Most of the cases we’ve responded to are with cars that don’t have any broken windows or picked locks,” he said during the meeting. “So we think that whoever is doing that is using some kind of magnetic device.”
Police say they are doing everything they can to stop the spike in car break-ins, which are mostly occurring in Glendale with a few also in Middle Village. But Guidici said that it isn’t enough.
“This has been an issue for over a year,” she said. “The 104th Precinct wasn’t very helpful. They need to step it up.”
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