Don’t leave anything in your car that a passer-by might think is valuable, even if it isn’t. For example, a closed box sitting on a car seat might contain nothing, but a car thief has no way of knowing that without breaking a window and looking inside the box. A tenant of mine found that out the hard way several years ago after leaving an empty iPhone box on the back seat of his car. A thief broke his window, picked up the box, and when he realized it was empty, he dropped the box and left. Do not rely on car burglar alarms. In an urban area like Berkeley, they are completely useless. False car alarms are so common that nobody pays any attention to them. Have you ever called the police because you heard a car alarm go off? Do you know anyone who has?
Protecting Your Car From Break-Ins.
The single most important thing you can do to protect your car from a break-in robbery is to leave nothing of value in the visible area of your car. Put everything in the trunk or glove compartment where it can’t be seen. Last month, someone I know parked his car on the street in a residential neighborhood in San Francisco. His laptop computer was sitting on the front seat of the car. Instead of putting the computer in the trunk, he left it on the seat and covered it with a hoodie. When he returned to his car, a window was broken, and the computer was gone. Successful car thieves have keen powers of observation. A professional car thief can look at a hoodie, a jacket, or a sweater lying on a car seat and can tell by the height and shape of the pile if there is likely something underneath. Successful thieves have good instincts about these things. A professional thief isn’t going to risk going to jail for nothing.