OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — There's been a recent uptick in break-ins reported at Nebraska Medicine. Police tell 3 News Now, there have been up to ten break-ins in the area.
Nurse Carley Thomas had her vehicle registration stolen from her car on Sept. 18th after a long, hard day.
"I came off my shift, walked to my car in the parking garage and I noticed my doors were unlocked. I had a bag of clothing donations ripped open — all over my backseat — which was obviously kind of odd and kind of alarming," Thomas said.
Her dad filed a police report on her behalf. Two days later, she got an email.
"I worked two days later and noticed there was an email communication that had gone out saying there was an uptick in cases of people's registrations being stolen, and that the address listed on those registrations, there have been attempted burglaries at those addresses — that obviously raised some panic in me," Thomas said.
It is a pattern that UNO Police Captain Jerry Baggett is noticing.
The night of the 27th, there were six incidents of break-ins to vehicles on UNMC's campus. Of those six, four cars had items stolen. One of them had items stolen but the items were located a short distance from the car and the final car had nothing stolen but there was destruction of the vehicle.
Omaha Police also shared three reports of theft or destruction of property from the area of Nebraska Medical Center.
Baggett sees two patterns.
"Information on the victim, either be it registration or car insurance and then having personal information on that victim," Baggett said. "The second pattern is that of more of a theft of opportunity, that is when the victim is doing something in plain sight in their vehicle or the vehicle was parked in such a location that it's easy for the suspect to quickly break a window and grab an item."
Thomas says it's disheartening to see these incidents happen at a workplace.
"It would be nice to know I would not have to worry about that, taking care of really sick people," Thomas said. "Moving forward, it would be nice to be reassured that there is maybe an increase in security or cameras are being manned or people patrolling that area on a frequent basis."
3 News Now reached out to Nebraska Medicine for a comment. The spokesperson says they are investigating.
Video surveillance led to the identification of a possible suspect vehicle and there are plans to expand video surveillance in the future.
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