Police: Car break-ins rampant in some towns

But cops say home surveillance network helps curb larcenies

Mobile bands of thieves are rifling through unlocked cars at an unbroken pace, but police say an expanding home surveillance network is helping to curb the spate of larcenies.

Southington police on Tuesday sent a plea to the public for help in stemming a surge of vehicle burglaries. On Monday and Tuesday, eight car break-ins were reported throughout town. Compared with the same period in 2019, vehicle break-ins have skyrocketed from 85 to 276, police spokesman Lt. Keith Egan said.

In Vernon, 60 car burglaries were reported from Aug. 1 to Sept. 28, compared with 35 in the same period last year, police spokesman Lt. Bill Meier said. As in other towns, most of the vehicles were unlocked, Meier said.

Nighttime bandits continue to exploit the public’s laxity in leaving cars unlocked with valuables inside, police say. The burglaries go hand in hand with vehicle thefts, police say, because people still leave keys and fobs in their unsecured cars.

A recent video from East Hartford, shared with police via Ring’s Neighbors App, shows a typical scenario. A white Ford Explorer and a grey Toyota Rav4 creep up a street while several people walk and run along the road and into driveways, lifting car door handles before hopping back into the getaway vehicles. Police spokesman Lt. Josh Litwin said East Hartford has seen a dramatic increase in car burglaries and stolen cars.

East Hartford, Manchester, Glastonbury, Vernon and South Windsor police are among more than 400 law enforcement agencies nationwide that use the Neighbors App, which allows residents to share surveillance footage with each other and police.

The app recently helped Vernon police solve a car burglary, Meier said.

“While we aren’t always able to identify the suspects,” Manchester police spokesman Lt. Ryan Shea said, “the use of the Neighbors App has certainly helped in gathering information to further investigations and provide our officers with descriptions of possible suspects and the vehicles they are operating.”

In Glastonbury, where police are on track toward a record year for car thefts (47) and burglaries (127), department spokesman Lt. Corey Davis said of the Neighbors App, “We find it valuable to be able to request that residents share their surveillance video with us, in specific cases where we are investigating a crime in their neighborhood.

“It’s another way that we can maintain open communication with our citizens about what kind of criminal activity is occurring in their area as well,” Davis said.

“It provides us quick access to videos of potential crimes,” South Windsor police spokesman Sgt. Mark Cleverdon said. “We also see it as another avenue to interact with citizens of SW, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.”

An interactive map shows many police departments in Connecticut are using the Neighbors App. Shea said he has noticed more residents setting up home surveillance cameras and more people using the app (which does not require users to have a Ring camera at their own homes) to report suspicious activity

But shared videos will not replace residents’ own vigilance, police say. Manchester police arrested two suspected car burglars on Monday after a sharpeyed witness immediately relayed descriptions to police, Shea said.

Neighbors App users have to post their videos, just like they would on any social media app, and they have to agree to share the footage with police. Also, the recently shared East Hartford videos, Litwin said, show that thieves and the vehicles they use often are not immediately identifiable. The cameras do not always capture license plates or clear shots of suspects’ faces.

Some have questioned the expanding use of surveillance networks, both from the perspective of privacy and potential racial profiling.

“It’s a business model based in paranoia,” Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, told the Washington Post.

“It’s a privately run surveillance dragnet built outside the democratic process, but they’re marketing it as just another product, just another app,” Greer was quoted as saying in the article about Amazon-owned Ring and the Neighbors App.

The Detroit Free Press reported last year that more than 30 civil rights groups in the U.S. signed a letter, saying the police partnerships “exemplify the company’s willingness to do what it takes to expand their data empire ... Amazon Ring partnerships with police departments threaten civil liberties, privacy and civil rights, and exist without oversight or accountability.”

In the letter, the newspaper reported, the groups claim the partnerships “pose a serious threat to civil rights and liberties, especially for Black and brown communities already targeted and surveilled by law enforcement.”

Ring disputed many of the claims in the letter, the newspaper reported, saying its mission is to help make neighborhoods safer. Police who have joined the Neighbors App say it is just another tool to protect residents and their property.