BEAUMONT, Texas — Are we seeing more car burglaries in Southeast Texas?
It seems like every day, we're reporting on more car break-ins in neighborhoods all over the Golden Triangle.
We wanted to verify whether it's a trend, or if things just seem like they're getting worse.
Lieutenant Bryan Skinner with Beaumont Police Department is with the Southeast Texas Auto Theft Task Force.
"By far our biggest concern is firearms stolen from vehicles," Skinner told 12News by phone. "Burglars window shop, and break the window, but most of the time they are just pulling on handles looking for an easy target."
What does that mean? Lock your car doors.
The harder you make it to get into your vehicle, the less likely it'll be stolen.
"Thieves do not focus on one certain area, it moves around. We will see hot spots in one part of the city, then a different part of the city later," Lt. Skinner said.
Though we're able to pull numbers and statistics, these are random crimes. It's hard to track how or when they'll happen.
Lt. Skinner says during the summer months, there is typically an increase.
Let's look at the raw numbers. This year, from January to April, there's been a total of 301 car break-ins. At the same time last year, there had been 388.
The car burglaries, for the year, are down 87.
So we can verify: yes, auto thefts have, in fact, fallen in the first few months of 2019.
If you have a question you would like verified, send it over to verify@12newsnow.com.