Eindhoven has been struggling with a wave of burglaries in the parking garages in the city for years. Even during the corona pandemic, hundreds of cars were looted. The contrast with Tilburg could hardly be greater. Since 2019, only nineteen cars have been broken into in a parking garage. No one seems to know why these differences are so extreme.
The Eindhoven parking garages seem to have been a sanctuary for car burglars for years. Hundreds of times a year, cars are looted in just seconds. Expensive electronics such as laptops, telephones and cameras are especially popular with the thieves’ guild.
It is striking that in the other large Brabant cities Tilburg, Breda and Den Bosch your car is relatively safe in the parking garage. This is apparent from figures requested by Omroep Brabant and Omroep Tilburg. The number of car burglaries in the three cities added together does not even come close to the Eindhoven figures.
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Both garage manager Q-park and the police have no explanation why Eindhoven is such a popular target for car burglars and Tilburg, for example, is not. “I can say that we are doing so well here, but I don’t know why the figures are so low here,” says Eric Passchier of the Zeeland-West-Brabant police, which includes Tilburg and Breda.
“The location of Eindhoven close to the border and on the A2 could be an explanation, but we cannot substantiate that,” says Dion Luijten of the East Brabant police, which includes Eindhoven and Den Bosch. Only the origin of the suspects arrested by the police disproves this.
“The suspects mainly come from their own region.”
“If you look at the arrests earlier this year, the suspects are mainly from the region or they do not have a permanent home address,” explains police spokesman Luijten. This applies to both Eindhoven and Den Bosch. He emphasizes that their place of residence does not immediately say anything about the bigger picture. “But the view on that is simply missing.”
Quite a few years ago there was a group from the Utrecht district of Kanaleneiland that systematically committed car burglaries in Eindhoven. “There were also arrests at the time, but we cannot link the burglaries in recent years to them. There is no substantiation for this,” says the East Brabant police.
“It’s not at the top of the priority list.”
What is clear is that the chance of being caught is low if your car is robbed. “Car burglaries are not at the top of our list of priorities. Capacity is limited and difficult choices sometimes have to be made,” explains Luijten.
Camera surveillance in the parking garages now focuses mainly on the barriers and entrances and exits. Where the cars are parked, malicious parties often have free rein, also in the Tilburg garages. Q-Park, manager of most parking garages in the cities, says it is expanding camera surveillance.
“We even use decoy cars.”
According to Babette Vanom of Q-park, decoy cars are now being deployed together with the police and they are installing special entrance gates. “The car squats keep us busy. For example, we are going to equip the garage on Mathildelaan in Eindhoven and Arena in Den Bosch with dozens of extra cameras.” It is still unclear when the other garages will follow.
The municipalities, the police and Q-park continue to insist that motorists should empty their car themselves. “Prevention works many times better than enforcement,” emphasizes Dion Luijten of the police.
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