Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Scare Tactics

Or, why I hate the local news...we've all heard and seen the stories about being safe and smart while shopping during the Xmas season. Why? We all know, because we've been told for years: roving bands of thieves drive around the mall parking lots waiting to pounce and steal all your purchases left in the back seat. It must be a really serious problem, right? From the way they beat this type of story into you, it must happen - what? several times a day at your typical mall?
I just read this article from one of our local stations, on how awful the problem is. Not suprisingly, it's not nearly as awful as you'd think.

Over the last 3 holiday shopping seasons, the 4 busiest malls in the city have seen anywhere from 15 to 38 cases of theft from vehicles.
Over 3 years...not a weekend, or a month...3 years.
(They don't define 'holiday shopping season' in the story, it could be from July to March for all we know.)
So you probably stand a better chance of being insulted by the mall Santa than having your car broken into.
And yet, every year, we are scared into sneaking out to our cars and hiding everything we bought, because of 'dangerous trends' that border on the statistically insignificant. While securing your items out of sight is a good idea, the parking lots are not the war zones they depict them to be. Happy holidays.

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