Vehicle thefts stand out among crimes that increased in Wellington in 2023, and one statistic points to a key reason why, the Wellington Village Council heard at a meeting Tuesday, July 16.
In 62 percent of 61 vehicle thefts analyzed, the doors were unlocked, and the keys were inside the vehicle, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Nichole Addazio said during her annual crime report presentation.
“It’s a message I’m trying to send and trying to change the culture here in Wellington,” said Addazio, who took over as commander of the PBSO’s District 8, serving Wellington, in the spring of 2023.
She pointed to successes in areas such as shoplifting, where “hot spot” enforcement and a greater emphasis on imposing consequences such as jail time have led to a reduction in cases.
But upticks in other kinds of crime can be mitigated considerably by more buy-in from the community, she said.
Addazio urged residents to lock car and home doors, shut garages and not be lulled into a sense of invulnerability because rates for many types of crime are low in Wellington compared to peer cities in Palm Beach County.
“The community, I believe, can have a greater impact than law enforcement,” she said.
Such exhortations are not new, and if anything, have become something like an annual rite in Wellington. Still, double-digit percentage jumps in some categories like vehicle theft in the past year suggest a growing price for inattention.
“The majority of these crimes are crimes of opportunity,” Mayor Michael Napoleone said. “We’re not protecting ourselves the way we should.”
It leaps out also in vehicle burglaries. There, 71 percent of vehicles in 182 cases in 2023 were described as unlocked or otherwise “unsecured,” suggesting perhaps open windows. Only 18 percent involved smashed windows, with another seven percent featuring broken locks.
Such lapses can lead to other crimes as well, Addazio said. Consider the criminal who gains entry into a car. That could provide access to a garage door opener, offering the temptation to try a burglary of the home.
With vehicle thefts, 10 of the cases involved conveyances besides traditional cars and trucks, such as golf carts, dirt bikes or trailers, and in at least three instances, the victim knew the suspect.
In the end, it added up to a 60 percent annual jump in vehicle thefts in Wellington, using Uniform Crime Reporting statistics that sometimes vary a bit from the PBSO’s numbers because of differences in the way crimes are categorized and counted.
One hindrance to fighting crimes involving vehicles has been a transition to a new vendor for license plate readers that left the devices out of operation for parts of 2023 and 2024, village records show.
Data security concerns with the software used by the previous vendor led the village to terminate the contract. Vetted Security Solutions LLC paid Wellington $25,930.39 to resolve the matter, records show.
In June, the council approved 17 new readers from Flock Group Inc. for $129,550 over two years. Those devices began to be installed in July, officials said.
UCR numbers compiled by the state and FBI registered five-year highs in three of eight major categories in Wellington in 2023: vehicle thefts, aggravated assault and murder.
Addazio offered caveats there, such as with the UCR reporting of two murders in Wellington in 2023, compared to one in the previous four years, in 2020.
The 2023 case involved a murder-suicide domestic situation, and different reporting systems might have recorded that as one murder, rather than two victims associated with one murder, Addazio said.
Motor vehicle thefts rose to 69, up from 43 the previous year, according to the UCR data. Aggravated assaults climbed to 65 from 58 in 2022, in a wide-ranging category that can include everything from domestic confrontations to showing a weapon.
A “total crime index” based on those numbers rose to 757, up from 683 the previous year and the highest since 852 in 2019.
Robberies listed in UCR data appear as 10 in Wellington in 2023, the most since 11 in 2019.
But that may refer to multiple participants or actions within what the PBSO records as six robbery incidents for the year. One case involved physical blows, juveniles stealing a backpack from a student, and another in a parking lot involved threatened use of a knife, Addazio said.
Others featured little overt violence, such as cases of snatch-and-run in stores and parking lots.
Arrests in some categories fell: 42 for burglary compared to 45 the year before, and 94 for shoplifting versus 156 in 2022.
But that latter number was accompanied by a significant drop in overall shoplifting cases, from 234 to 172, Addazio noted. That followed concentrated enforcement and an increased focus on sending perpetrators to court, fostering a deterrent message, she said.
It can be useful to pull back a few years for perspective, she said.
Take vehicle burglaries. The 182 in 2023 represents an increase from the previous year, but a far cry from well over 400 in 2009, according to a chart she presented using PBSO data.
Residential burglaries stood at 34 in 2023, a slight decrease from the prior year but nowhere close to more than 300 in 2009. Even recently rising vehicle thefts came in below, for example, 112 as recently as 2017, by the PBSO’s count.
“Crime in this village has gone down dramatically in the last several years,” Addazio said.
That’s certainly welcome, as far it goes. As for complacency with certain crimes of opportunity, she said, “It’s a problem.”
