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Madison Officials: Lock Your Car

As car thefts continue across the shoreline, town officials and police officers are pleading with residents to lock their cars, particularly at night. Now, town officials are pushing residents to remember their new 9 p.m. routine: lock your car.

On March 20, another vehicle was stolen in Madison, but this particular theft garnered greater attention because the stolen vehicle was involved in a serious accident in Durham that proved to be fatal for one of the passengers.

The vehicle was stolen from a home on Island Avenue. This particular vehicle happened to be locked, but the car used an electronic key fob; some fobs allow the vehicle to be started if they are within a certain distance of the car.

At a Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting on March 25, First Selectman Tom Banisch took the opportunity to remind people about this issue.

“While this is becoming a bigger problem along the shoreline, we are also part of the problem,” he said. “If we don’t lock up our cars, they are going to keep getting stolen…and in the case of these cars that are being stolen, they are unlocked and the fob is either in the car or close enough to start the car.”

Banisch then referenced a report made to the General Assembly that shows while car thefts have gone down in the major cities, the thefts have increased significantly in the surrounding suburbs over the last decade. Banisch also referenced a news article printed in The Hartford Courant that indicated that in almost all cases, the vehicles stolen were left unlocked. The thieves are generally not bothering to break into the vehicles and will just keep moving until they find a vehicle that is unlocked.

“I am calling on people to start reminding each other about this,” he said. “I am trying to get a program going to remind people to lock their cars by 9 p.m. at night, because if you lock it by then, people are not going to be able to steal it at 3 a.m. in the morning.”

Beyond word of mouth, Banisch said he is using the town’s Facebook page for a nightly post called the 9 p.m. routine, a reminder to lock your vehicles and take the fob out of the vehicle.

“As I am looking at this whole thing I am thinking maybe the best way to do this if we really want to get people involved is to use Facebook,” he said. “That way people can share the post on social media and maybe we will reach a lot more people this way…My goal is to reach everyone in Madison around 9 p.m. every night and say make sure your car is locked. Hopefully this will become a reminder for people.”