Nassau Police making push for residents to stop leaving key fobs in cars amid surging thefts
LONG ISLAND, N.Y. -- Car thefts are skyrocketing across our area and the nation as technology makes it easy to drive off with a car.
Nassau County police told CBS2's Carolyn Gusoff about a major push to get residents to help reverse the criminal trend.
They work in teams and don't seem to care if they're caught on camera. The numbers are staggering in Nassau County, where car thefts have more than tripled in one year, from 100 at this time last year to 341 in 2022, and those are just the thieves who got in.
In Greenvale, video shows a team drive right up to a car at a supermarket to try the doors.
Old Westbury resident John Sarraf has caught would-be thieves on camera lurking around his cars three times.
"Unsettling," Sarraf said. "Someone who lives in the suburbs, you want peace, quiet. You move and every day you're checking. There's daily incidents."
It's shattering a sense of suburban safety.
"We had a Bentley stolen recently, Range Rovers, other high-end cars," said Elliott Conway, mayor and police commissioner in Upper Brookville. "Virtually all of them have had the key fobs in the cars."
It seems like a no-brainer to lock your car, and yet thefts are plaguing Nassau's north shore. Police, deluged with cases, are driven to change habits. They're spreading the word that 95 percent of stolen cars are unlocked with key fobs inside. New models' mirrors, which retract when a car is locked, are a dead giveaway if it's left open.
One night in Great Neck, they found cars left idling, valuables in plain sight.
"All the criminal has to do is smash that window, enter the car and and now it can drive away," said Nassau County Police Lt. Richard LeBrun.
It's a message they're echoing at community meetings, but bad habits are hard to break.
In Old Brookville, a driver, followed home from an ATM, had his unlocked Porsche stolen. From Old Westbury, a sports car was tracked at nearly 100 mph in New Jersey, where many end up.
"They're taking them to Newark, parking them and they're being used by or sold or made available to thieves who commit other crimes," Conway said.
It renders license plate readers useless.
"These kids are 15, 16, 17 years old," Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said. "They'll leave them for a day or two on the street if nobody hits on it. They'll then rent that car to another bad guy, a gang banger. He'll then use that to do a robbery or a shooting ... Because you left the keys in it, 90 percent of the time is now being used as a robbery or a drive-by shooting."
Or menacing road racing.
Residents say don't just blame the victims. It's a quality of life crime wave fueled by thieves gaming the system.
"As long as they hear 'Nothing's gonna happen to you, there is bail reform, they're going to get out the next day,' that's enough for them to actually do this," said Dr. Pedram Brahl, mayor of Great Neck Village.
"They know what raise the age. We treat them as a juvenile up to 18. They know also with bail reform, a stolen car with no violence, you're getting an appearance ticket and you're walking out the door," Ryder said.
Car thefts are not victimless crimes. With higher insurance rates and dangerous roads, we're all paying.
The police commissioner suggested insurance companies penalize drivers who didn't lock cars that wound up stolen.