Burglars using cars to smash into garages in Berkeley hills
BERKELEY, Calif. - Burglars have been smashing cars into garages in the middle of the night in the Berkeley hills.
It's a scene that's been played over and over in the usually quiet neighborhood known as the Uplands. Garage doors, bent, warped and damaged by crooks in cars while residents are sleeping.
"Yeah it's aggravating. It's property damage. Luckily, no one was hurt," said Susan Meadows, whose garage was among those bashed in by burglars over the weekend.
"It's very unfortunate this is happening in our neighborhood. I feel terrible for my neighbors, for my neighbors who had stuff taken and, you know, for all of us that we have to deal with this," Meadows said.
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Francis Garay, service manager for a garage-door repair company, drove through the neighborhood Tuesday.
"People just being reckless. They do this all the time," he said. "It's almost like for sport, I would say, so it's a shame."
Garay said he believes the roving criminals are after one thing.
"So what they're doing is they're stealing cars to come down the street, driving right through them," he said. "They drive the car through it and they steal the next car. And they just keep driving through garages."
Spokeswoman for the Berkeley Police Department Officer Jessica Perry said, "At this time we have so far 12 incidents that have occurred."
She said no cars have been reported stolen
"Of those 12, only one of them actually had an item taken. And then we had a second one where the garage was actually rummaged through. The rest of them are just vandalism at this point, with damage to the garage doors," Perry said.
Police say many of the victims didn't immediately report the incidents because they didn't realize what was happening at the time.
"The victims are reporting they're hearing something loud in the evening hours, but they didn't necessarily call the police department. So the next day they're finding out that their garage was damaged," Perry said.