Keeping Your Car & Valuables Safe

We manage a number of buildings in city centres with car parks. City Centre living can be so exciting with bars, clubs, shops and easy access to transport links on your doorstep.

One downfall with city centre living is the risk of car crime. The worst part of mine and my teams day is talking to our residents who have been the victim of this type of crime.

There are lots of deterrents Block Management companies can do to try and deter crime at a building, for example CCTV, fob access, electronic gates.

Block Management companies can do all of the above and more but from our experience, the main reason someone’s valuables from a car becomes a target to criminals is one of the following:

• Leaving keys, wallets, Sat Nav’s, mobile phones on view in the car
• Leaving the car unlocked
• Phone charger cables left in cigarette chargers
• Leaving the car park access system fob on show in the car
• Leaving coins and change on show in the car
• Leaving anything on the back seat. Even a sheet covering a back seat can lead criminals to think there is something worth stealing that is being covered
• Leaving items in the foot well
• Not wiping the marks on the window screen from where the Sat nav has been affixed to the window screen
• Not putting your parcel shelf down especially when any items are in the back (Especially sheets or clothes)
• Leaving items in the glove compartments
• Do not leave bags especially laptop bags anywhere in view. Not even pushed under the seat

Most car thieves who operate in city centre car parks want quick sale items like mobile phones and sat navs. They are not usually looking to steal your car. Therefore please be smart. Stealing items from car has a low punishment in relation to the quick sale value that thieves can make. We have seen examples of CCTV footage where thieves have not even covered their faces and stolen items from cars directly under CCTV cameras.

Therefore the best way of making sure you do not have your car broken into in any city centre car park (Private or public) is making it less of a target. If you have nothing on show and its clean and tidy, the thief will think there is nothing of value and move onto the next target.

Also, we cannot further highlight the need to make sure you have the correct insurances in place.

Please make sure you have a read of the crime stoppers website below for more helpful tips.

https://crimestoppers-uk.org/keeping-safe/home-property-safety/vehicle-safety

Please keep yourself and your valuables safe. We don’t want to hear of people being victims of crime so please do everything you can to not be the criminal’s next target.