Chester Thai ’14: In response to series of car robberies in Delaware and Chester Counties that occurred in late February, Episcopal security personnel have alerted the school community.
Joe Shanahan, Manager of Campus Safety, said, “There’s a group of individuals that started operating in Florida, and they’re working their way up the East coast. Local law enforcement is referring to them as the Felony Lane Gang. In Pennsylvania they’ve pulled a lot of jobs in Delaware and Chester Counties.” In addition, Shanahan noted, “I put out an all-EA email about several jobs in the past week in Marple Township.”
“They’re scouting out a lot of locations, a lot of athletic centers and malls. They’ll watch you go in. Then they hit the car, and they’re mainly looking for personal banking information. They’ll immediately go to your bank, and they call them the Felony Lane Gang because they go to the lane farthest from the teller, and try to pass themselves off with your personal information…they’ll withdraw money and try to get access to your account as quickly as possible, sometimes while you’re still in the parking lot.”
According to Shanahan, “Some easy steps that everyone can take include not leaving anything in your vehicle that contains personal information. If you’re going to leave it in the car, lock it in the trunk. [This includes] purses, smartphones, tablets. Don’t leave anything in plain view in the car.
Shanahan also wants people to be aware that incidents like this have happened at Episcopal in the past. “You can see with the smash and grabs that occurred here last year. In May or June, six cars were broken into in the tennis lot. A car came in, and it was probably all over and done with in twenty to thirty seconds.”
“That’s one of the misconceptions that I want people to get beyond. If it’s happening in the world, it can happen here.”