By Matt Lynch and Norman Miller, Daily News staff The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Mar 05, 2008 @ 11:22 PM
After at least a dozen car break-ins in Framingham and Marlborough this week, police are warning drivers to go beyond just taking global positioning system devices out of parked cars.
Despite parking lot patrols and warnings not to leave GPS devices in vehicles, the expensive electronics are still being targeted by thieves.
The break-ins, which happened yesterday and Tuesday in hotel and mall areas, all involved cars with GPS holders on the windows, tipping thieves off that there may be a device in the vehicle, police said.
Marlborough Police Detective Martha Shea said the devices are typically attached to a dashboard or the inside of a car's windshield with a suction cup, leaving an easy clue for thieves.
"If (thieves) see a suction cup, they're going to know there's a GPS somewhere," she said.
Yesterday, at least five vehicles were broken into in Framingham hotel parking lots on Rte. 9, and a sixth occurred on Tuesday, police spokesman Lt. Paul Shastany said.
In a two-hour period Tuesday night, Marlborough Police received eight reports of broken car windows in apparent smash-and-grab thefts targeting GPS units near Solomon Pond Mall along Donald Lynch Boulevard.
Both Shastany and Shea urge drivers not to give thieves a reason to break in to the car. "Don't just hide your GPS, take it with you," Shastany said. "Don't leave the suction cups (mounting device) on the window. Take them out, and clean the marks off the window."
The Framingham vehicles were broken into at the Sheraton Framingham hotel and the Best Western. Most of the vehicles had a window broken and the glove compartment rifled through, Shastany said. Only two cars actually had GPS units in them. The drivers of the other cars had taken the units with them into the hotels.
In one of Marlborough's incidents, a thief smashed a car window because of the suction cup but left empty-handed because the owner had taken the GPS device with her, Shea said. "If left sitting on a dashboard, someone will smash through the window and just grab (a GPS device)," she said. Shea said there was no video or photographs of the Tuesday night robberies, and police had no suspects.
Police patrol parking lots, but the break-ins can happen quickly. One of the thefts was discovered at the Framingham Best Western around 2:05 a.m., and the man driving the rental car said he had not noticed any signs of a break-in an hour before.
If anyone sees someone suspicious lingering around a vehicle, they are asked to call the Framingham Police Department at 508-872-1212.
(Matt Lynch can be reached at 508-490-7453 or mlynch@cnc.com. Norman Miller can be reached at 508-626-3823 or nmiller@cnc.com.)
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