Staying a step ahead of thieves takes patience and cunning. As skilled pros in low-level crime, they have the edge for now, but I have to believe we can catch up to them.
We just have to be at least as smart, and train ourselves to think a bit more like them.
Heading out for an early morning Safeway run recently, I noticed something dangling over my building’s main entrance. These two objects, taped to the outside of the door, looked like small wads of electrical tape carefully folded and built up around the black threads from which they hung. About the size of a quarter, streaked with red.
With assistance from the natural backdraft an opening door creates, this device would settle into the lock system and prevent the door from fully closing behind my neighbors as they entered or exited the building, allowing bad guys full access. I thought of some of my older neighbors, good people, and got mad.
I jerked the homemade plugs down to study their engineering more closely. Someone with time on their hands, clearly. Grudgingly had to admit that they were nicely crafted.
Then I remembered how the recycling bin in the trash/recycling room on my building’s floor was uncharacteristically scattered about that morning, like a drunk feral cat had entered and knocked everthing around. It finally dawned on me it was the cans (10 cents each redemption) the thieves were after. Since fentanyl is supposedly $1 a pill on the mean streets of Portland, this seemed the likely end prize.
I love the Oregon Bottle Bill as much as the average girl. As kids we hunted cans to trade in for Chick-o Stick and Hot Tamales. Later, when the green bag system made its (slightly unwelcome) entrance on the scene, I set my new Bottle Drop account to link to my daughter’s Oregon College Savings Fund, adding about $30 extra a month to her savings depending on how much LaCroix I consumed that month. I let myself consume a lot in the name of higher education.
I see a few options: buildings can secure (if they haven’t already) their recycling areas so that unwelcome people won’t come canning in the wee hours. Or, people can take their cans back to the store in the green bag, thus removing the attractive nuisance. Or, we can just obliterate the Bottle Bill altogether, as has been proposed by Gov. Tina Kotek. That would be a shame, I think. It seems like we have already given up enough things in the interest of crime deterrence and how would kids buy candy?
I invite you to help answer this question: How do we foil these guys?
My partner and I lived in the Cosmopolitan for 3 years. They have a high expectation that residents make sure the lobby doors close completely behind them when leaving or entering. If someone is right behind you, you ask to see their key fob, which proves they live there. The same expectation is for the parking garage. After you enter or leave the garage, you wait until the garage door closes to prevent someone (in a car or on foot) from getting in. It sounds like a lot, but the protocol becomes second nature. In my opinion, residents of any building have the responsibility to take these simple, practical steps. How hard is it to make sure the door you just walked through closes completely? The problem requires people to be responsible, NOT TO END a good, tried and true bottle return system. That law got passed for a reason and we should not be held hostage by thieves!
Great article, good questions, great observation! Because our City and County Governments have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to crime and public safety, we the citizens going to have to step up until we can elect leaders who actually listen to and care about, their law-abiding, responsible, tax-paying constituents.