It can happen anywhere—and it did just last month in Eagle Rock. As LAPD Officer Craig Orange tells the story, a local real estate agent went to run a quick errand in the Eagle Rock Plaza after parking her Lexus SUV in the mall's sprawling parking lot. It was a rainy day and when the woman returned to her car she found one of the windows smashed. A handbag and a laptop computer she had left behind were gone.

Mistakes such as that are all too common—and the LAPD reminded Angelenos at a news conference in the San Fernando Valley Monday that with the upcoming holiday season, people are much more vulnerable to so-called "Burglary Thefts From Motor Vehicles," BTMV in police parlance.

"The message is universal, and very simply, it is that with the holiday season approaching, thefts and burglaries are significantly higher," said Kirk Albanese, LAPD's deputy chief of operations in the San Fernando Valley. "Last year, crime went up 12 percent between Thanksgiving and Jaunary 5, compared to the previous six-week period."

The Nov. 22 news conference, with a tongue-in-cheek title, "Holiday Reminder—Lock It, Hide It, Keep It—Don't Let the Grinches Steal Your Holiday Spirit," was focused around the LAPD's campaign, launched Aug. 3, to encourage people to lock their belongings, hide them—or better still, keep them—instead of leaving them in plain sight for criminals to steal.

The LAPD offered five crime prevention tips at the news conference: Always lock your car ("Lock It"); do not leave valuables in plain sight ("Hide It"), especially laptops, navigation systems, cell phones, even sun glasses; park in well-lighted areas; report suspicious activities; check on your neighbors' vehicles on a regular basis. (The last three tips cover the "Keep It" portion of the LAPD's crime-prevention slogan—"a positive reminder that personal responsibility and prevention can safeguard your valuables from theft.")

"Even if we get the message out—and a lot of people listen to us—there are going to be those who will leave their property," Albanese said, adding: "The bad guys know the holiday season is a ripe environment, with people shopping and leaving stuff in their cars."

The highlight of the news conference, held in the parking lot of the Westfield Topanga Shopping Mall in Canoga Park, was a demonstration in which LAPD officers smashed the window of a Toyota Corolla sedan and "stole" a bag pack lying in plain view inside. An officer hurled a metallic ball bearing on each of the car's right-side windows, causing them to immediately shatter. Then he reached inside, grabbed the bag pack, and the demonstration was over within seconds.

"It happens like that—and even if police are around the corner it doesn't matter," Albanese said. "It takes three seconds." And it might come as a surprise to many that criminals don't break into cars with baseball bats or crowbars. Their favorite weapon, said Albanese, is bits of porcelain obtained from auto spark plugs. A handful of these heavy objects thrown at a car window causes it to shatter—not because of the force generated but because of the sound, the deputy chief of police explained.

The LAPD chose the Westfield shopping mall as a location for the news conference because "there is the greatest likelihood of these thefts happening near malls," Albanese said. But he added that BTMVs can occur anywhere, including in residential areas. "We caught a guy a few months ago—he had 12 GPS's [navigation systems] in his bag pack—and that was on a residential street in Studio City," Albanese said.

In the BTMV incident at Eagle Rock Plaza, which occurred on Oct. 10, two thieves drove up to the realtor's Lexus and parked their car in front the SUV, Officer Orange told Eagle Rock Neighborhood Watch captains at their monthly meeting in City Hall last month. While one of the thieves stood on guard, his companion smashed the SUV's window and stole the hand bag and laptop, Orange said, adding: "The whole operation took less than a minute."

During that week, from Oct. 10 through Oct. 16, a total of 13 crimes occurred in Eagle Rock, Orange said. Four involved auto thefts—or "Grand Theft Auto" as the police call it—one was a BTMV, three were robberies and five were thefts, according to Orange.

Asked if there's a higher risk of theft from vehicles during rainy weather, Orange said that although there appears to be no direct link between the weather and such crimes, "suspects do not take breaks, no matter what the weather is like."

Every third Wednesday, said Orange, he meets with members of Eagle Rock Plaza's "Business Watch"—merchants who keep an eye out on suspicious activity in and around the mall—in an effort to help prevent burglaries, thefts and vehicle break-ins.

The LAPD is working with merchants in the mall to install a camera system that overlooks the entire parking lot, Orange said. This would be an improvement over an existing camera installed by the Target store in the mall, which covers only the eastern portion of the mall's parking that faces Target, Orange said. Neighboring Macy's does not have a camera to monitor its side of the mall's parking lot to the west. "The idea is to get Macy's and Target to collaborate on a joint camera project that covers the entire parking lot," Orange said.

The latest crime figures in Eagle Rock announced by Orange at the Neighborhood Watch meeting on Nov. 18 are considerably lower compared to the figures announced last month. During the week of Nov. 7 to Nov. 13, a house on Dahlia Drive was broken into through a window and electronic equipment stolen; a car was stolen from behind Eagle Rock Plaza, and there was a shootout on Colorado Boulevard in front of the Eagle Rock Plaza on the afternoon of Nov. 11 among rival gang members.