Thieves are breaking into Bay Area garages using this novel technique, police warn

[Auggie]

San Francisco Chronicle / Jan 20, 2023

Police in Marin County are investigating a string of garage burglaries in which thieves use improvised tools to swipe high-end bicycles — a crime pattern that’s also surging in San Francisco.

In the course of roughly six weeks, residents of Corte Madera, Larkspur and San Anselmo reported 10 break-ins with similar elements: After casing a neighborhood, a perpetrator walked up to a garage door with a clear glass panel, punctured a hole in the glass and then deploy a rod and hook to grab the emergency cord and pull the door open.

“This is definitely more ingenious than the traditional break-in of a door, or smashing of a window,” Captain Hamid Khalili of the Central Marin Police Authority said in an interview, hours after the agency posted an advisory to warn people about the incidents.

“It’s quieter and more covert,” Khalili continued, explaining that in these instances, thieves use a makeshift stick or hanger to latch onto the cord, a method that allows them to surreptitiously gain entry and complete the whole caper within minutes, usually in the pre-dawn hours.

LINK (likely paywall): https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/garage-burglaries-bikes-17729119.php

For solid doors, thieves use a power or crank drill to cut a hole in the garage panel before sticking a rod through. Some perpetrators cut a larger hole in the metal door and simply reach in with an arm.

The link focuses on bike thefts, but anything in the garage is fair game.