Police zoom in on GPS crims

POLICE are telling us to tell GPS nabbers to get lost.
Victoria Police Safer Communities Unit Inspector Jill Wood said opportunistic thieves would be on the prowl for GPS units, particularly from residential streets and driveways.
Inspector Wood said we should not leave evidence of a GPS unit when we parked our cars.
Last financial year 6787 GPS units were stolen from cars in Victoria and it goes without saying that many would have been given to people for Christmas.
But why should drivers be forced to take down their GPS and bracket every time they park?
We have nearly 7000 units a year being stolen and on-sold at a fraction of their worth, so why aren’t the GPS nabbers being nabbed?
If a person accepts an offer from someone selling a GPS for a fraction of its sale value, they are equally as guilty of the theft as the nabbers because they have to know the unit was ‘hot’.
Why would you pay a stranger full price for something that can be bought brand-new in a shop with a guarantee?
GPS units have been around for a few years so that means about 30,000 now being used in cars were nicked.
Allowing for the cost of a new unit and car repairs, the loss to motorists on each theft probably amounts to nearly $1000 each, plus the stress factor.
People who buy the stolen goods get a GPS, probably for less than $100.
Let’s have a process where the units are registered to the owner and if stolen are tracked, by a report to the GPS company, so they can be recovered by police or at least demobilised and made inoperable.
Then the market for cheap GPS units would disappear and so would the nabbers.
Chances are that a small addition to electronics in GPS units would lead police to a stolen unit and in most cases to people who have a collection of other stolen goods.