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Monday, February 26, 2018

A question that concerns the Miami police

Por mayli2017

Argemis Colomé, the Miami-Dade Police spokesman, explained to the Nuevo Herald that this measure is intended to help South Florida residents create the habit of closing the doors of their vehicles and their homes, to create awareness not to expose your valuables. In this way, crimes are minimized and it is prevented that in case of a theft of this type there is no victim involved. Now, something as simple as closing the car door, why are we forgetting?

According to data from the US census, more than half of the population of Miami-Dade was born abroad and come from countries with high levels of insecurity, in which no one in their right mind would leave a portfolio unattended, a neglected object or a door open The expert in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Miami, Anthony Zanesco, believes that these "oversights" could be due to a phenomenon called "optimistic bias", a symptom that leads the person to always expect positive results, because they believe neither the car nor will anything happen to the house.

We are leaving the house in a hurry and (as usual) we are going late. We quickly review the extensive list of activities of the day and asking that the traffic of the city disappear by magic, just when turning on the car, we realize that we forgot something important. That's when we believe that if we run very fast, nobody will have a chance to steal what we leave inside the car. It happens to all of us frequently.

Or, it happens the other way around.

After a long day of work, of spending several minutes, even hours, sitting inside our vehicles on the South Florida freeways, we arrived at the comfort of home and while doing any other activity, we asked ourselves, "Did I close the auto? " and before the trouble of having to go to check we think so, that we close it, besides, who is going to steal it?".

The truth is that car theft is not so frequent in South Florida, but the dispossession of cars, yes it is. In 2017, 10,034 vehicles in Miami-Dade County were opened by strangers and took everything they could find of value. A year earlier, in 2016, there were 10,377 cars and in 2015, 9,278. It is an "easy" crime to commit. According to the police department of the city of Doral, two out of three looted cars were open at the time of the crime, providing the perfect opportunity for unscrupulous people.

As a result of the tendency to "forget" when closing doors with insurance, thieves do not even have to break the car window to gain access to the vehicle. This has been shown in several surveillance videos disseminated by the police authorities, where it goes clearly to groups of criminals testing door to door until they get one that opens without resistance. Sometimes they have stolen entire housing complexes in a single night. The Miami-Dade Police looking for alternatives to prevent these crimes has implemented an original measure. Every day, at 9 o'clock in the evening, police officers publish reminders for citizens in their different social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. The prevention measure, which started in July 2017, usually has similar messages that are accompanied by images of masked thieves and the "9PMRoutine" label.