DATE: Friday, September 5, 1997             TAG: 9709040005

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   49 lines

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE IMPROVED POLICING HELPS; MOTORIST PRECAUTIONS WOULD HELP STILL MORE.

Fewer motor vehicles were stolen in South Hampton Roads in 1996 than in 1995. The biggest annual drop, by 27 percent, was in Norfolk, where the Police Department in 1996 commissioned a team to cut the theft toll.

A nationwide drop in criminal activity has occurred because of a dip in the numbers of young males entering their teens, an economy providing more jobs for unskilled and semi-skilled members of the work force, community-based policing and enhanced private-sector security and other crime-prevention strategies.

The Virginian-Pilot report on the heartening drop in motor-vehicle thefts was complemented by a report that in Norfolk property crimes continued a gratifying decline.

Norfolk still led the region in the number of motor vehicles taken - customarily for short periods before being abandoned by the miscreants. But the 1,703 thefts in 1996 were markedly fewer than the 2,333 in 1995.

Meanwhile, Portsmouth experienced no decline in car thefts, edging out Norfolk for first place in thefts per 1,000 residents (8.55 compared with Norfolk's 7.21). Thefts decreased in Virginia Beach by 14 percent and in Chesapeake by 10 percent.

Norfolk's gains are attributed in part to beefed-up policing, improved lighting and additional security officers in Military Circle-Janaf shopping-center parking lots and the adjacent commercial area and to similar public-private collaboration elsewhere. Arrests of car thieves also rose. That more motor vehicles contain theft-thwarting technology surely also figures in the drop in thefts.

But anti-theft devices do not work when keys are left in ignitions, as too many are. A Norfolk auto squad investigator told The Virginian-Pilot that even fewer cars would have been stolen in 1996 if more motorists had taken their keys with them and locked their vehicles.

Many - perhaps most - motor vehicles are stolen by young thrill-seekers who pass up hard targets for easy ones. Securing vehicles is the best defense against such thefts.

Only marginal progress is possible against stupidity and carelessness. But car thefts would plummet if all motorist habitually - automatically - secured their vehicles when leaving them, even briefly. Opportunistic snatches would be prevented. That would not only improve the statistics but also lessen the peril to police who risk their lives when pursuing or approaching vehicles reported stolen. Unlocked cars with keys in ignitions invite mischief or worse.

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