This morning, like many others, a Crown Heights family woke up to find their tires missing and their car suspended on crude cinderblocks instead. But this time the crime was even more surprising because the car had wheel locks installed.

Tire Thieves Take It to the Next Level

This morning, like many others, a Crown Heights family woke up to find their tires missing and their car suspended on crude cinderblocks instead. But this time the crime was even more surprising because the car had wheel locks installed.

The incident occurred at around 4:30am on Montgomery St. between Kingston and Brooklyn. Surveillance video captured the perpetrators ‘casing’ the car (hovering around the area and checking it out from time to time) for about 20 minutes before the robbery occurred.

The damage is estimated to cost the family over $1000 per set of rim and tire – a total of over $4,000.

This incident provides two important points regarding these tire thefts:

1. Wheel locks are vulnerable. The purpose is to make it more difficult to steal so that thieves move on to the next car, but if they are determined to take your tires – there isn’t much that can stop them.

2. The fact that they insisted on targeting this particular car – even though it was protected – leads us to believe that they are ‘stealing to order’ (i.e. a car repair shop owner commissioned these thieves to steal Infinity M37 tires because he has such a car by him waiting to be repaired).

18 Comments

  • to #1

    alarms don’t work in urban areas. when’s the last time you heard a car alarm go off outside in the middle of the night and thought ‘oh my, i should check my car’?

    the signal to noise ratio is just too low in the city for alarms to be useful!

  • the only way to take down crime

    camera on every corner

    with at least one person watching them 24/7 this way we can catch them in the act

    with all the money CHJCC gets i dont see why we cant get this done

  • Tired already of these tire stories

    A fancy car like that needs to have a garage. Thank God its a lease and insurance will cover it. Another good thing is that these thieves did not have to commit a violent crime for money.

    Win Win

    Fancy tires for peace

  • to #1

    the alarm is for breaking in to the car – they didn’t break in, just stole the tires.

  • Ed Greenberg

    My grandparents lived on that block. (We lived a block away between Kingston and Albany. They rented the upstairs of a two-family on the north side (odd number) of the street. The lease did not include one of the bays in the garage.

    My grandfather was fortunate to be able to rent a single car garage on Brooklyn Avenue, adjacent to the alley. I remember walking with him, to and from the garage, to get or put away his car.

    These houses are almost 100 years old. There were not a lot of two-car families in the days when the houses were built. Now there is nowhere near enough parking for the residents.

  • Confused 5. to #1 wrote

    You try taking tire off, the alarm will go off, and they will run away

  • Time to catch and convict

    Put a bait car with hidden cameras/microphones positioned nearby to get excellent quality video.

  • Jewish dude

    Brooklyn crime heights oops sorry, is a buffet for criminals. The police will not arrest the criminal, and normal people cannot get a gun to defend themselves. The police is always armed with a gun they cannot be helpless.

  • a possible solution is to

    put a GPS tracking device inside one of the tires so the Police can catch the thief

  • Jack

    To #2, A 2 way paging alarm with good range, the right sensor hooked up to a powerfull airhorn will do the job!
    yes it will run you about $450-$550 but still way cheaper than what happend to the owner of the M-37.

  • Possibility

    If they are working for a car dealership, then the robbers would have the Keys to the tire locks. :(

  • this is crazy

    to number 16 you can get the key to tire locks anywhere and even with them on they can be undone with proper tools I work on cars and i will tell you any locks can be taken off, any alarm will either go off every second or wont go off when its lifted 3 inches for you tires to get stolen maybe get your vin numbers engraved in your rims you maybe able to get them back