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Updated: 10:57 AM Sep 24, 2008
Regaining Stolen Property Could Be as Easy as 1-2-3
It may sound hard to believe -- but thousands of people in Bryan & College Station have had their homes and cars broken into this year.
What's been taken is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Posted: 10:50 PM Sep 23, 2008Reporter: KBTX Staff Email Address: news@kbtx.com |
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It may sound hard to believe -- but thousands of people in Bryan & College Station have had their homes and cars broken into this year.
What's been taken is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The College Station Police Department's evidence room is filled with stolen goods that have been recovered, but much of it will never get back to its rightful owners.
Detectives showed News 3 some of the electronics recovered from a recent rash of burglaries.
Of the 60 items recovered, investigators say only four of them will be returned.
"We have very little to work with as far as I.D.'ing it. Most of the owners didn't record the serial number to begin with so chances are, it's not going to be returend to anybody," Detective Todd VanDresar with the College Station Police Department said.
College Station Police Crime Prevention Specialist Rachel Fallwell agrees.
"The problem we have with all of this property we have here today is that we don't know who it belongs to. We have vague descriptions, everybody's Playstations look the same. So unless you have your Drivers' License number engraved on it somewhere, we don't know who it belongs to."
Crime Prevention specialists say you have several options when it comes to engraving.
Police can lend their engravers to you and you can do it yourself.
You can bring your property in for them to engrave.
Or they can come to your home and do it for you.
They say doing that may not keep you from being a victim of property crime, but it may help you get your property back.
Here's why it's becoming more and more important to protect your belongings:
There were 166 property crimes in College Station last month alone.
That's an average of more than 5 reports of car, home or building break-ins each day.
So far this year, the number of property crimes has jumped 12% from this same time last year.
Latest Comments
First of all great job to the officers that recovered the property!! But what I'm having trouble with is, if you have no serial number off the items to match them with a owner, how do you know it's stolen property? Maybe KBTX should go into more detail on how it was found, because if you have a turd with 20 PS2 or PS3 or Xbox's then they are probably stolen, but how do you prove it? Just wondering. Does the possesion of 1 stolen item that you can prove mean everything that person owns is stolen? If you can't prove it's stolen then they will walk after the judge gets the case.
more shining examples of people that think the govertment is a charity that should give handouts to those that can't take a few minutes to protect themselves by writing down what they have. While it sounds great to give something back to those that have lost the same item, if you have 1 X-box but 7 people that are missing one, how do you decide who gets it? And while this story seemed to slant toward CS, I'm pretty sure BPD, BCSO, and UPD have the same items in their evidence rooms. Why does this have to be a CS story?
Calling the police thieves is just ignorant. If you can't prove that your stolen property is actually YOURS how are they supposed to know that YOU aren't a thief? Anyone can file a false report. And many do for an insurance claim. Come on... write down the serial numbers - which uniquely identifies YOUR property. Don't call the police thieves... I mean really people.
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