High-tech GPS devices in vehicles are magnets for thieves
Pat Jensen never really got to know her global positioning system device. Her children had bought a GPS unit for her in December because of what she admits is her “really bad sense of direction.”
On Jan. 5, while her son was visiting a friend on Mariner Street in Buffalo, someone smashed a window and broke into her Volkswagen Passat. The thief took the GPS device, her son’s video iPod, a Dell laptop and a $175 pair of sunglasses.
“I literally had just gotten it for Christmas. I had it in the car for just a day or two. I had used it one time. Bummer,” said Jensen, who is in her 40s and runs a nonprofit organization.
The Delaware District resident is a victim of the latest trend in car break-ins — GPS thefts.
Portable GPS receivers cost several hundred dollars or more, and they were among the hottest consumer-electronic gifts of the recent holiday season.
So it’s no surprise that thieves are targeting them in car break-ins, police said, grabbing them right off the windshield or from glove compartments and other hiding places.
“The GPSs are just the item of the day, so to speak,” said University at Buffalo Police Chief Gerald W. Schoenle Jr.
Police in Buffalo, Amherst and Niagara Falls and at UB have seen a spike in thefts of these portable navigation units.
No longer satisfied with taking the car stereo, thieves are stealing GPS devices, cell phones, MP3 players and other electronic gadgets.
The Erie County Sheriff’s Office, for example, is investigating the thefts of six GPS units late Saturday and early Sunday in just one Clarence subdivision.
“It’s a target. It’s like leaving a bull’s-eye on your car. ‘Come steal me,’ ” said Patrol Chief Dennis Rankin.
Police are stepping up efforts to crack down on these break-ins, while cautioning users to be more aware of the potential for theft.
And some technology experts say the companies that make these devices need to do more to make it harder for thieves to resell or reuse them.
“As there is more crime, the manufacturers are going to step in,” said Ken Westin, founder of GadgetTrak, a company in Portland, Ore., that sells software that can be installed in electronic devices to help their rightful owners find them if they are stolen…more