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Crime Report

O ne day last month, an elderly resident reached for her ringing telephone. She answered it in the usual way, thinking it was a friend or relative. But this was no friend or casual acquaintance. Instead, it turned out to be an inmate placing a collect call from inside a penal institution. Unbeknownst to her, she was another in a long line of unsuspecting persons whom prisoners were trying to scam. Had she accepted the collect call, she could have been bilked for a number of long distance phone calls she would not make or want.
    According to Senior Police Officer Ricardo "Rick" A. Vargas, here's how the scam works: An inmate randomly picks a number from the phone book or just out of the blue. An innocent person is then called collect. The inmate asks for help in dialing the phone number of a family member he or she desperately needs to reach. Had our neighbor accepted the collect call and dialed it for them, the inmate would have had access to a code that is embedded in the phone number, allowing them to transfer billing from one phone to another. Offenders then take the bold step of offering other inmates the free opportunity to make long distance calls. At the next billing cycle, the victim is indebted to the phone company for a number of unauthorized long distance phone calls. Fortunately, in this case, the senior citizen hung up and nothing came of it.
    However, that's not always the case. And, local law enforcement authorities are unable to do anything about this ongoing problem. It does not fall within our jurisdiction, says Officer Vargas. "The problem lies in the hands of the jailers, who find it impossible to charge anyone with a crime when they don't know which inmate is running the scam" from their public phones. Efforts to pinpoint the culprit are met with stony resistance from other prisoners, who fear retaliation within the jail system if they squeal.
    Officer Vargas advises residents to follow the example of the elderly person and hang up on unsolicited calls coming from penal institutions. You'll know if the call is coming from a jail because a message at the beginning identifies it as such.
    In other news, during our most recent reporting period the neighborhood reported two vehicles that were stolen and seven that were burglarized. To help catch these thieves, the Austin Police Department Central West Command recently introduced a new