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SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City police made their presence known outside the Rihanna concert at Vivint Arena Wednesday night as part of a targeted education and enforcement effort designed to reduce car burglaries.
Officers and members of the department’s Law Enforcement Explorer Program warned attendees who parked within blocks of the arena to take their valuables with them — including garage door openers. Police said burglars have been known to steal the openers, along with address information on car registrations, in order to break into homes while their owners are occupied for several hours.
“The bad guys are actually watching. They’re watching you get out of your vehicle, they’re watching you put your purse in your trunk,” detective Greg Wilking said. “A broken window only takes a mere second or two, and then they’re in the car and they’re grabbing for what they want.”
Along with the education element, Wilking said uniformed and plain-clothes officers watched for would-be car burglars and those looking to commit other crimes.
“If we make a few arrests, all the better, but we would rather have everyone come down and enjoy the concert and not fall victim to a crime,” Wilking said.
Operation CompStat
The operation is part of a “CompStat” approach to policing that has been implemented at many other law enforcement agencies across the country.
“We get together every other week, we talk about statistics, where we’re having problems, look at some predictive models (of) where we might be having problems, look at known offenders in the area, flex our resources, get units into that area,” Wilking explained.
Wilking said Salt Lake City police implemented the approach last fall and staged similar education and enforcement operations at University of Utah football games and Utah Jazz games.
As a result, detectives said they observed a difference in the number of crimes like car burglaries.
“We know that a lot of times we’re disrupting crime,” he said. “That’s hard to measure how much we’re preventing, but we are seeing statistically some crimes go down in areas because of our increased presence.”
Concertgoers seemed to appreciate the friendly reminder and added police presence.
“Property theft is huge,” Gary Duran said. “So, definitely, (I’m) always locking the car door.”
Michelle Schmidt said the potential for theft of her property was already on her mind prior to Wednesday night’s event.
“I’ve had my car broken into, so I always make sure nothing’s in sight,” Schmidt said. “You have to be safe, and that’s the most important thing.”
