Tire thieves do a lot of damage in West Roxbury
A police warning about tire thieves came a couple weeks too late for one West Roxbury resident, who filed this report via e-mail:
We live on a quiet and idyllic W. Rox. street and woke up to find that some nice people had stolen three (not four) of our wheels in the dead of night. They left all of the lug nuts and their jack (seemed like a nice jack, nice enough that it was expropriated by the towing company). They did a crappy job of propping the car up on cinder blocks and milk crates, which damaged to the front and rear bumpers. Our car has an alarm. Somehow it didn't go off. We called the report in but the police didn't come up to take a look. I think that's a bit strange; there might have at least been some prints or identifying information on the jack.
We had been avoiding parking our car in our driveway. It's a bit of a tight squeeze. Now we'll use the driveway. Hopefully that creates an additional psychological barrier.
The total repair bill: >$4,500. Plymouth Rock is loving us right now.
Comments
West Roxbury isn't a ghetto
Nor is it a third-world country.
Things like this, as well as the incidents the last couple years causing thousands of dollars of damage to real estate to loot hundreds of dollars of scrap metal, remind me of the stories of third-world countries that couldn't keep their land lines up because their own people would tear them down for the scrap value of the copper in the cables.
Too bad we can't seem to renew a social contract: a citizen tries to be cooperative and productive, and in exchange, s/he gets the benefits of living with like-minded people, as well as common services/infrastructure and even safety nets for misfortune.
BPD D-5 grade "C" for not showing up
Can't we get the officers in District 5 to pay attention to bona fide crimes in the hope that paying attention will help them apprehend the thieves who damage the quality of life in our city? If they don't come to the crime scene, residents will begin to believe they don't care to do their jobs and people will stop dropping dimes.