A local hiker’s car was broken into at Harrison Hollow trailhead. She’s not alone
After taking a hike at Harrison Hollow, a Treasure Valley woman received a fraud alert from her bank before she noticed her credit cards were missing. Unbeknownst to her, her car had been broken into and someone charged thousands of dollars worth of gift cards to her accounts.
“My car looked untouched, probably to not alarm me,” the woman said in a Nextdoor post that gained nearly 200 reactions.
She isn’t alone. So far in 2022, there have been 12 reported vehicle burglaries at trailheads throughout Boise, according to data provided by Boise police to the Idaho Statesman.
The majority of the reports were at popular trailheads at the Old Penitentiary and Harrison Hollow, the data showed. Some of the other trailheads included Ridgecrest, Cottonwood Creek, Red Fox and near Fort Boise Park.
Detective Brad Thorne with the Boise Police Department’s financial crimes unit told the Statesman in a phone interview that trailhead burglaries have not increased.
“This is an ongoing problem for all the years I’ve been an officer,” said Thorne, who’s been with the department for more than two decades.
Thorne grew up in Idaho, and said he doesn’t remember locking his front door until he was maybe 18 years old. People have a mentality that Boise is a safe place, which it is, he said, but the city is also growing and residents and visitors need to be aware of their surroundings.
“People are very trusting, and some (of them) are leaving things in plain view. In fact, I would say the majority are,” Thorne said, speaking about victims of vehicle burglaries.
How it happens
Thorne said trailheads aren’t the only locations singled out by burglars. He said that any place where somebody might leave personal items in their cars and walk away, including gyms, day cares or even while floating the Boise River, could be a target.
Typically the crews, which Thorne said are made up of at least two people who travel from state to state, will either smash a window and grab the items, or “pop the lock.”
To pop a lock, Thorne said, someone would need to use a punch that goes through the keyhole and breaks the mechanism inside the door, which forces it open. In some cities, these crews use a screwdriver to get in the vehicle.
Sometimes burglars will then grab the credit and debit cards, lock the door from the inside and move on, Thorne said. A lot of times people don’t immediately notice, he added, because “nobody uses their keys to get in the lock anymore, they just use the key fob and they don’t know.”
It can cost up to $1,000 to fix the lock, Thorne estimated.
“A lot of the good traveling crews will put everything exactly back the way that it was,” he said, noting victims often are unaware they’ve lost their credit cards.
Burglars then will head over to a nearby retail store and purchase thousands of dollars in gift cards. In the case of the woman whose car was broken into at Harrison Hollow, they got away with $8,000.
Thorne said gift cards are a way of laundering money that is extremely difficult to trace. A lot of stores will let people buy gift cards at self-checkout stands, he added.
Boise police had a case where two vehicle burglars were in and out of Fred Meyer in 10 minutes with $16,000 in gift cards, Thorne said.
‘Prevention is the key’ to avoid loss
After crews get the gift cards, they move on to a new city within a day, which Thorne said makes them even harder to catch. In some cases, he said, especially the trailhead burglaries, they are chasing the suspects to different states.
The Boise Police Department also works with the Organized Retail Crime Association of Idaho, or ORCAID, which allows officers to communicate with retailers about criminal activity to try to identify suspects and close cases.
“Prevention is the key to this,” Thorne said.
The best option is to leave credit and debit cards at home, Thorne said, or, for those that can’t, take them with you.
“Don’t lock your purse or your wallet in your car,” Thorne said.
Even leaving things in the trunk might not prevent loss because the crews could just break the trunk lock, Thorne said. He said the crews can be “pretty brazen” and they’ll even cut horn lines if car alarms go off.
Thorne added that the reason burglars come to Boise is because of the availability of retail stores.
“It’s just a common occurrence that if the consumers or the victims are aware of they can do things to mitigate being a victim,” he said.
