Victims Say Lives Are Upended, and They Feel Unsafe
By Avis Thomas-Lester
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 5, 2005
Frederick Beverly was among the multitudes lined up at the "tags" window at the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration office in Upper Marlboro when Doris Carey and Melanie Tyree, waiting to turn in their license plates, struck up a conversation.
His car had been stolen, he told the women. "From right in front of my house."
"Umph, umph, umph," Carey said in disgust.
"They are bold, all right," Tyree chimed in. "These kids just don't care."
Tyree could sympathize. Her teenage son's car was recently stolen from right in front of their Landover home.
Beverly's sojourn at the MVA was his second in eight months. Twenty-one hours before, his seafoam green 1998 Mercury Sable had been snatched from his home on Merritt Street in District Heights. Last August, his dark green 1995 Toyota Camry was taken from his driveway.
He and Tyree are among a crowd of fellow sufferers in a county that has more car thefts than all the state's other jurisdictions combined. Last year, 18,485 vehicles were stolen in Prince George's County, and 4,553 have been stolen so far this year. The county also leads the state in carjackings.
The county's car theft rate has become a political issue. Rushern L. Baker III, a former state delegate who is a possible Democratic candidate for county executive, called a news conference last week to highlight the statistics. County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) countered by noting that the number so far in 2005 was down 16 percent from the same period last year and citing his anti-car theft initiatives.
Each of those thefts brings its own particular set of dilemmas to the victims.
Immediately after finding his car missing, Beverly contacted the police, who went to his home and took a report. Then he traveled the length of his street, inquiring about lurking strangers and alerting his neighbors.
After he left the MVA on Day Two, he went to his insurance agent to cancel his coverage. Then he contacted his cell phone carrier to see whether anyone had used the phone left in the glove compartment.
Everywhere, he and other victims are required to show proof of ownership. And they often must dip into leave time at work to get it all done, as Beverly did.
The psychological impact of having a car stolen is often greater than the financial loss and inconvenience, experts said.
Beverly, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, said he has found himself daydreaming about catching up with the car thief in a dark alley and still follows cars that look like his.
"The first night, I was driving down Florida Avenue and I saw a car that looked like mine and I made a U-turn and chased after it," he said. "When I got close, I saw that it wasn't mine. But I've found myself doing that every day since the car was stolen."
It's not an unusual reaction, said county Public Safety Director Vernon R. Herron.
"People feel violated," said Herron, a former Maryland State Police trooper. "For somebody to come along who hasn't worked as hard as we have and take a 10-cent screwdriver and steal our car makes people very upset."
Police Maj. Markus Summers, commander of the 3rd District, where Beverly lives, said the thefts leave victims feeling unsafe.
"They feel like, 'What are they going to do next, break into my house?' " he said. "Your car is like your house -- you spend a considerable amount of time there."
The recent theft rattled Beverly because it was "so blatant." It occurred on a Sunday afternoon on a busy residential street where state Sen. Ulysses Currie (D) lives while several people were outside doing yardwork or playing with children.
Beverly said he was nodding off on his living room sofa, only a few yards away, as a handyman installed a fan in his bathroom. Had his drapes not been drawn, he would have seen the culprit.
When the handyman asked him to retrieve a tool from outside, he discovered the theft.
"I looked up the street in one direction, then down the street in the other direction, as if looking would make the car appear," Beverly said. "I couldn't believe anybody would be that bold."
Mary Broady, who lives across the street from Beverly, said her pickup was stolen a month ago about 4 a.m. when thieves pulled into her driveway and hooked it to a stolen tow truck.
"I heard a loud thump," Broady, 78, said. "I looked out and saw the tow truck. It didn't matter that there were lights. They were just bold. They came right up in my driveway. Can you imagine that?"
Police are aware of the method. Charles County Sheriff's Department detectives, investigating complaints of tow trucks stealing older cars from parking lots, recently arrested an Upper Marlboro tow company owner and charged him with possession of stolen vehicles.
It seems that everybody has a stolen car story. The state's attorney in Prince George's, Glenn F. Ivey, had his van stolen. The car of a prominent minister, the Rev. Paul A. Wells of New Revival Kingdom Church in Forestville, was snatched as he preached at a funeral service.
The car of AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John B. Townsend II was stolen Thanksgiving week after a car accident as it sat wrecked, with the wheel secured in a lock, tires flat, in Landover.
That's why Beverly bristled over Johnson's optimistic statement last week. "All of us who have had a car stolen know that they are still being stolen a lot. He shouldn't be out there trying to make people think this isn't a big issue, because it is."