A warning on social media from the Sioux Falls Police Department Tuesday morning (June 15), had a lot of us checking the calendar.

Usually, it's when the weather is at its coldest in the city we see an uptick in stolen vehicles, as owners leave their cars unattended with engines running and doors unlocked in an attempt to warm up their vehicles.

But even with temperatures soaring to near triple digits in Sioux Falls this week, the message from the police looked very similar.

From the SFPD Facebook page:

3 stolen vehicle reports already this morning. All had the same thing in common, they were left unlocked with the keys in the vehicle. Please help us out and help yourself out and don't become a victim. Lock your vehicles and take your keys, valuables, and guns with you. Often times these stolen vehicles are being used to commit other crimes to include burglaries and gunshot calls.

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Almost as quickly as that post hit social media came an avalanche of comments, more than 100 of them in the first hour.

A large number of them very less than sympathetic toward the victims of these crimes:

  • Pam Butcher:
    'Cannot believe in this day and age that people are so trusting to leave (your) vehicle unlocked, let alone with the keys in them... Wow...'
  • Dwain Riffle:
    'When are people going to use common sense? Do you leave your front door unlocked and you go to bed No so why leave your keys in the car when you go inside?'
  • Kari Lang
    'If you leave your keys in your car and unlocked then you deserve to get your car stolen.'
  • Dell Hoier:
    'A smorgasbord for thieves… 😢'
  • Marvin Carson:
    'Sioux Falls isn’t Mayberry anymore'

Some even went as far as to suggest that the owners themselves should be penalized:

  • Sonja Estes:
    'Maybe the owners should be fined. What do people tell the police when they realize they enabled criminals? Embarrassing, at best.'

Others posting comments focused their wrath on the criminals not the victims:

Danielle Lynn:
'Who the hell are these people? I can't imagine ever thinking I have the right to steal someone’s things.'

Troy Blumhagen:
'It's also pretty easy to stay the hell out of a car that doesn't belong to you.'

Joe Melin:
'No one deserves to have someone mess with their property. Everyone should just not touch what doesn’t belong to them.'

Regardless on which side of this argument you fall on, it's hard to deny this ultimate 'crime prevention' tip:

David Langner:
'I keep leaving the keys in mine but nobody takes it. lol
One car is a manual transmission and the other car is just a rusty Ford Taurus.
Most can’t drive the stick.'

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