Curley: How Puyallup police are showing prowlers the best targets

Puyallup police officers have created an innovative way to educate shoppers about car prowls during the holidays, but KIRO Radio’s John Curley thinks it could end up helping potential scrooges.

Car prowls typically rise during the holidays, when shoppers tend to leave purchases and other valuables in their vehicles at crowded shopping center parking lots. To help eliminate some of those risks, Puyallup officers are prowling cars themselves, peeking through windows in search of valuables, and then leaving a report card on car’s windshield, reports Q13 Fox.

“While they’re shopping on the inside, the criminals can be out here shopping on the outside looking through the cars and looking for items to steal,” Sgt. Dan Pashon told Q13.

While Tom Tangney wonders what shoppers are expected to do other than dump large purchases back into their cars during long trips to the mall, he thinks the police’s initiative makes sense. Curley is not so sure.

John Curley: What I would do, if I were a car prowler: You get yourself a mask and then just walk around the parking lot looking for the cars that have something under the windshield. Maybe it’d be bright orange sticker or yellow sticker – something that’s been placed carefully by the police and think, ‘Well, there’s my first stop. I’m gonna stop there and I’m gonna get that one because obviously there’s something in the backseat, and I’m gonna head over here and make it much easier for me.’ Rather than me having to move suspiciously, serpentine around the different cars, peaking in there… I would just follow the police.

Tom Tangney: That’s a brilliant idea. The problem is if the police are already there that’s maybe not going to help you.

JC: The police show up, put down their little warnings letting you know where to steal and then you leave.

TT: But the idea is, if they actually do grade shoppers by leaving a report card, then everyone will have a report card.

JC: They won’t do that… They just want to let you know, I saw a package in the backseat, be careful. That’s where I would slip in there.

TT: You have a criminal mind, John Curley.

JC: No, Tom, I just see the flaws in this thing.

TT: The idea is if they are warning people to be more alert, that’s probably not a bad thing.

JC: Same people came up with the idea of having a box in the middle of the street in Tacoma that they people put their guns into. Same thing, same person there.