Colonel Swart of the Douglasdale police said that while the police are managing to bring the rate of other crimes down, the rate of theft out of motor vehicles is going up.
Swart said that most of the crimes are alleged to have been from remote jamming. “Victims of most of the reported cases of theft out of motor vehicles say that they parked at a shopping centre and locked their vehicles, but upon return found their vehicles unlocked and belongings missing,” he said.
Swart explained that only very sophisticated remote jamming devices can unlock a car once it is already locked. However through their investigation the Douglasdale police have found that the remote jamming devices being used in most of the cases are standard ones which interrupt the signal while the car is locking. For this reason, Swart advised residents to manually check if their cars were locked before walking away.
He also encouraged centre managers to install a signal jamming alarm system which sounds an alarm if it picks up a continuous signal.
To try to combat the problem, the Douglasdale Police are embarking on a theft out of motor vehicles awareness campaign. They will target shopping centres and supermarkets in the Fourways area and put up posters in parking lots and outside shops to remind people to check that their vehicles are locked before leaving them unattended.
