The people who’ll greet you at Tacoma Mall’s doors on Black Friday have a holiday wish for you: That no one breaks into your car and steals your stuff, or your identity.
Members of the city of Tacoma’s Car Prowl Prevention Safe and Clean Team will deploy to the mall at 7 a.m. with placards and pamphlets on preventing car prowls.
“Car prowling is a crime of opportunity,” said team leader Mike Fitzgerald of the Tacoma Fire Department. “Removing valuables from your vehicle or securing them in a locked trunk makes your vehicle unappealing to a car prowler.”
The effort is part of Safe and Clean’s goal to reduce crime in Tacoma by 50 percent.
The mall parking lots are Tacoma’s car prowl hot spot, with 140 reported from July 1 2008 to June 30, 2009.
The best defense is a boring, empty car, with nothing, not even a stray quarter, visible.
This is an easy one. Shop somewhere else.
× Flag comment
Hi, Italian Spring,
I’m working on a column on car prowls for next week. Here are the next locations on the list: Chuck E. Cheese, Point Defiance Zoo, Hooter’s, LaQuinta Inn, the Morgan Family YMCA, Tacoma Dome, Point Defiance Park, Best Western Tacoma Dome, 72nd St. Fred Meyer, Borders Books at 38th, The Swiss and the Westridge Apartments.
kits
× Flag comment