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That right there is PATHETIC! That's more than one a day, and we all know that the odds are that the majority of these happened on the weekends when the theater was busy. So how many would that be on any one given Saturday night? A few per week is unacceptable, but more than one per day in the last month???

By the way, having a guy on the roof DOES work quite well...and it does NOT have to be an officer. Having a manager on the roof with a radio to two officers in unmarked cars in the parking lot is quite efficient.

...and if all else fails, a sniper on the roof works too!

You know Sean, you are right. I would much rather have patrol units, in a high crime area, watching cars than, say, preventing armed robberies, rapes and homicides.

Sean, I assume you have had a car stolen by your responses. The question I have for you is have you ever had to wait the tense couple of minutes for the Police when you are face to face with a hostile individual who claims to be armed and it threatening your life? While I have never had a car stolen Sean, I have been in the second situation, and, having been someone in that situation, I would perfer that the Police made sure they have enough manpower on the street to handle violent crimes BEFORE tying officers down on property crimes.

Now, for the question at hand..

Will putting someone on the roof help? Sure it will. Will it solve the problem? Not likely. There are many varibles that must be considered before anyone can make a determination as to the best way to approach the problem. Realize Sean, someone who has gotten good at stealing cars can get the car in a minute or two. Additionally, a signifigant number of departments nationwide have procedures that do not allow pursuits for property crimes, i.e. stolen autos, which means if they get the car running, they won.

I would venture to say that the 37 vehicles are largely the same makes and models. The types of vehicles being stolen and the modus operandi of the thefts will tell you a lot about who you should be looking for. Odds are, you have more than one group working this lot. The thefts themselves are probably being committed by juveniles who are delivering the cars to adults. These juveniles, if caught, will have little incentive to cooperate and turn in their "employer" out of a fear of reprisal and a realization that, with the way the juvenile justice system is set up, they won't recieve any signifigant punishment. More then likey, they will lawyer up and that will be the end of it.

The most effective solution for this problem is to "cut the head off" so to speak. If the adults running the operation can be captured, then the group will most likely just fall apart. Doing this requires an investment of detectives that the department may or may not be able to provide, again, depending on the crime rate of the area.

Now, there are things the theatre can do, whether they own the lot or not (which has yet to be determined). The largest thing that makes theatre lots attractive targets is that there is usually an hour and a half of downtime when almost no one is coming and going. To reduce this downtime, showtimes can be staggered, so you have shows starting and getting out more often. The more activity in your lot, the less likey you will be a target.

If the theatre can do so, again depending on the area, off-duty police officers would also be a good investment. In most cases, private security officers lack the training and experience to be a signifigant deterrance and are simply a waste of money. I would also hesitate to send theatre staff on lot patrols unless they understand that their sole purpose is to observe and report, preferably without the perps seeing them. However, in order to do this without undue risk on your employees, it has to be a well known fact that there are law enforcement officers on site. The deterrance level of your employees, and the saftey of your employees, depends on the size of the calvary on the other end of the radio. But, if you have police on site anyway, they should be the ones doing the lot checks.

Again, ultimate responsibility for this rests on who controls the lot. If this is a leased building, and it probably is, then the landlord, and not the theatre, is most likely responsible. Before casting blame at the theatre, it is best to make sure that they are the responsible party. Another thing to consider is that car thefts of this level indicate a large overall crime problem. If you have a problem of this size, it is likely the police department is understaffed. If the police department is understaffed, it is likely they are underfunded. Closing buisnesses and lowering the tax revenues of the city will only make the cities problems worse.

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The "taking officers off patrol to protect property" isn't even a counter-argument that makes sense. In nearly all cases where this type of surveillance is done, it is done with off-duty officers rented by the theatre (which is where the whole lack of caring by Regal about its Huntsville customers becomes apparent). In fairness, I do remember one case (167th St Theatre in Miami) where the police were on the trail of a much larger operation and did the surveillance on their own. Police generally know how to divide their time for the most public good.

Summing up, my experience tells me you are dead wrong on nearly all counts, and until you have been witness to successes you may not change your mind. If you ever get to Huntsville, let me know. I will be happy to purchase two tickets of your choice of films at the Friday evening shows (9PM or later) at that Regal theatre, provided you park your personal car (rental cars not allowed) in an area where the thefts are known to occur.

The reason we had officers on the roof was to capture the criminals for interrogation. During this time, there was a rash of breakins all over the city that had the same MO. The detective working the case hoped the arrests would generate some leads so he could find out who was behind it. He got his arrests, he got his leads, and took them down. Did that eliminate breakins in the city? Nope.. It eliminated the leaders of that one group who went down on some heavy felonies. The juvies breaking into the cars got wrist slaps. One thing you need to realize with this type of operation, however, is that the police will probably not move in until they have smashed the window, so they have something wiht more teeth than "burglar tools" to hold them on.

Again, in order to do anything really useful, the department will have to have some investigative resources assigned to these problems. Otherwise, you are going to pick up a few juvies and a few 18 and 19 years olds, but otherwise not make a large dent in the problem.

If the city does not want to invest the investigative resources, simple doing an active patrol of the lot will deter a signifigant number of problems.

After having reread the original article, I noticed a few things. First, the theatre does have weekend off-duty police security, which indicates they are doing something.

Also in the article the police chief suggested lighting and cameras. First, both of these are only options if the theatre is responsible for the parking lot (which has yet to be determined). Unless the parking lot is extremely dark, additional lighting will probably not make a signifigant impact. Cameras in a parking lot are not really a viable option either. With camera your choices are to have them zoomed in far enough that they produce good enough detail for them to have evidentary value, in which case you loose coverage, or you have them on wide angle observation, in which case they loose most evidentary value.

Now, to head off one argument that I am sure will be thrown up. Just because you can video tape a license plate, does not mean that plate is good. EVERY time we have gotten plate numbers of fleeing suspects when we have interrupted a vehicle burlarly, that plate comes back either stolen or as belonging to a different vehicle (basically, it hadn't been reported stolen yet).

Of course break-ins over an entire city won't be stopped if one lot stops car theft and break-ins. Many times the perps will just move to the next easy target. I agree that the police have to wait until a crime has been commited, and have no problem with that.

I also agree that an active patrol of the lot by at least a pair of employees can cut down incidents. I've used this myself. One employee patrolling could easily get mugged, and if that is a concern, there should be concern for the patrons' safety as well.

Responsibility isn't as much of an issue to customers as the perception of responsibility. The theatre will suffer in attendence and revenue because of the perception given by the newspaper article. Besides, the theatre obviously has some agreement to use the parking, and must pay into the CAM if it part of a mall. Unless customers are using an unauthorized ajoining lots illegally, the theatre has a liability issue, even with posted signs. The mall may share in that liability, but that is a secondary issue.

Example: one theatre where I worked many years ago was next to a supermarket, and the parking lot was sloped. The store had multiple signs in the lot, stating that the market was not responsible to damage caused by shopping carts, but by having unattended carts that repeatedly damaged cars and not having barrier strips, corrals, and proper policing of the lot, they were totally responsible for all property damage and the signs were there to discourage the gullible. A judge may look askance at an isolated incident, but uncorrected multiple incidents of property damage or assault will receive entirely different treatment. BTW, one of those carts rolled down the parking lot one time and hit MY brand new car. All I had to do was walk into the store and explain the situation, and the manager filled out the paperwork and took care of the repair. I wish businesses were that responsive today.

Cameras can be more of a liability in parking lots than a help. One shopping center was successfully sued a couple of years back because a customer was raped in the lot in full view of the cameras. The customer had been purposely led to believe by the promenent cameras and signs that there was security that wasn't there.

I'm not suggesting the theatre do nothing. What I am suggesting is that, if it is a leased location, the theatres options are limited and that, absent of more information, we really don't know if they are doing everything in their power or not.

One thing that has not been considered is how many of the 37 incidents in the last month were "attempted" crimes and how many were "completed" crimes? It could very well be that a signifigant portion of these were interrupted by theatre staff or security. Or, it could be that they were all completed. We do not know.

Liability is another issue entirely, and would probably depend on the wording of the lease. Another thing that has to be considered in all this is what authority theatre staff or theatre security would have in the lot. Basically, can the theatre staff legally force people off the lot if they are acting in a suspicious manner? Most likely, if the theatre has no standing in the lot, then they will have no liability (again, this depends on the laws of the state).

You are absolutly correct in saying that there is no foolproof method of crime prevention. One thing that I have found is true, at least in this area (and I presume that this holds true nationwide), is that a signifigant number of victims of car burlaries made their vehicles inviting targets by leaving something of value in plain view. The sad reality of modern life is that people must be vigilant to prevent being victimized.

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