Here are tips from a Seattle car thief on how to keep your car safe in Seattle. Flamingmoon Kine is in prison, but he now wants to help society, so he agreed to be interviewed by The Stranger. Here are his tips copied from the resulting article:
“Keeping a clean car is the best thing you can possibly do,” Kime said. “Don’t leave things in the visual area that with a little effort could be kept in the trunk. And don’t buy or own a Honda between the years of 1988 and 2004, or a Nissan, period!”
Kime said it only takes a $2 piece of equipment that can be found at any hardware store to efficiently shatter your back window. “A car alarm doesn’t even always go off when you break a window,” he said, “only when you open the door. So you can peel a car out without even setting off the alarm.”
“Jackets are a big thing,” Kime said. “When someone sees a jacket, a suit jacket especially, or a nice f***ing North Face, they’re thinking there will be a wallet in it, and they’ll risk breaking a window just to check.”
Kime said he even knows someone who found $10,000 cash in a McDonald’s Happy Meal bag inside an unlocked car full of garbage, so keeping a disgustingly messy car isn’t a deterrent.
An occasional vehicle may be dismantled and sold piece by piece on eBay or Craigslist, but both Kime and Fowler laughed at the notion of chop shops. “Not in Seattle,” said Kime. “The cars just get driven around until they get too hot.”
“If the garden-variety thief sees a Club [on the steering wheel], he’ll maybe go to a different car,” said Scafidi. Kime backed up this idea. He disagreed with the Seattle Police Department’s advice to park in a well-lit place, however. “Parking in a well-lit area will just make it easier to see everything in the car,” Kime said. “When you exit your vehicle, take a quick look and think like a thief: What would I mistake for a potential valuable?”
Thanks, this was a very informative article.