Simple tools, complex crime issue

Who would suspect a stringy necklace?

Tools of the trade? A device taped to the entrance of a condo building can prevent the door from closing.

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?