Joyriding in a HMMV
Chief Tango sends a link to an article from Orlando about Jose Quinones who was apparently bored and decided to steal a HMMV;
Quinones, deputies say, climbed a 7-foot fence topped with barbed wire surrounding the new Army Reserve Training Center in Sanford and jumped into several military transports.
After rummaging through a few of them, he found one with an anti-theft device on the steering wheel that was loose enough for him to turn the wheel a bit.
Soon, he was charging the tan military vehicle through the barbed-wire fence, driving past an unmanned security gate and motoring across Central Florida.
You can hear a local radio report on the whole thing which autostarts;
Oh, when they finally pulled him over, there was a joint on the seat next to him.
“We did have all the security measures in place that the military requires,” Capt. Rebecca Brawner, operations officer in the 436th Civil Affairs Battalion, said Thursday.
She said the facility isn’t fortified with a 24-hour manned security gate as typical military base installations are.
The Sanford facility doesn’t have a surveillance camera either, according to Capt. Brianna Bladen, another spokeswoman for the 436th Civil Affairs Battalion.
Yeah, I can see all of that changing in the near future.
Category: Crime
Yeah, this won’t go well for the thief or the folks responsible for security at the base.
Nothing beats when the naked speed freak stole an M60 Tank in San Diego,.. flattened a couple cars then got stuck on the deiving barriers on the 163North. A cop finally got inside and shot his ass.
For the record: Unless a new and improved “Anti-Theft Device” has been invented since I was last responsible for a HMMWV, said device was simply a length of logging chain bolted to the floor and then padlocked around the steering wheel. Yep, more than once I forgot my keys, so I just unbolted the chain from the floor and drove with the chain wrapped around the steering wheel. Obnoxious, yes. Better than admitting that I lost\misplaced the keys to my vehicle? Yep.
That is all.
That’s great security right there. No cameras. No manned posts. Reminds me of the Buggs Bunny cartoon where all the signs pop up, only in this instance it’s “Attention Terrorists: Have at our equipment!” What’s next, a radiation leak at a nuclear waste site that is unreported by most media and little reported by the rest?
@4 Yes.
Ex-PH2: funny you should say that. But I think the leak happened first.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/n-m-nuclear-waste-site-stays-closed-after-radiation-leak-n35246
One question…did he have his reflective PT belt on? Safety first you know.
I wonder if our dear Christina “Chrissy” Axtman showed him how to use the clutch…
Surprising and stupid as it may seem, it’s not at all unusual for small National Guard armories to go un-manned at night and sometimes even for entire weekends. And while the main buildings are usually well secured and afforded a reasonable alarm system, I don’t recall ever seeing a motor pool that was adequately secured in over 20 years.
@9, VERY true, Jacobite, NG Motor Pools typically have only JUST ENOUGH security measures to “keep honest people honest”! That story reminds me of a case my Dad heard ( He’s a retired Judge) when I was a kid where some GI’s did an armed robbery/murder at a store in the boonies and used a HMMWV for a getaway car. Once the State was done with them, they got their time in Leavenworth to boot!
@3, huh, I wonder if my drivers ever pulled that trick (Never noticed the padlock dangling off of the steering wheel). I think we served in the same Bn, so not surprising, but I remember the same “security device”. I also remember coming on Staff Duty one weekend and finding someone had gone on a joyride with a HMMWV from the motorpool, but couldn’t get too far because they were too dumb (or lazy) to circumvent the device.
Every night I made sure all of out vehicles were completely secure before checking the exterior armory doors. I guess this is the difference between the Reserves and the Guard.
Back in the late 90’s guy on meth stole an M60 tank out of a national guard lot. He took off smashing into parked cares, etc….have a great time being high and stupid.
The civ cops didn’t know he had no live ammo for the main gun, but thought he did, so when the dumbass got high centered, the got a hatch open and shot his dumb ass. Killed the stupid idiot and he was truly rehabilitated after that.
Then all the NG units that had tracked vehicles, had to have anti theft devices put on them, chained up steering wheels on the other vehicles and constant counts of vehicles while the the full timer folks were on duty.
This has happened in motor pools of Armory’s in my Brigade (Army Guard) at last 6 times in the last 4 years I have been Brigade S4
Only once has one made it out of the motor pool but that was deliberate theft involving bolt cutters
The others were kids being jack a$$es and they would leave it “parked” oddly or in one case ran into the side of a CONEX
@4 2/17 CAV
You can drive by a Guard Armory or Reserve Center in any Podunk Town, USA and find a small motorpool with basic transport vehicles like HMMWVs, LMTVs and HMTVs.
You have to sacrifice some security if you want vehicles like that readily available for use in natural disasters in the local area…which is what the US public expects from the Guard and to a lesser extent the Reserve
It HAD to be a Civil Affairs unit, didn’t it. My unit’s armory is in the middle of a neighborhood, and the two houses on one of the corners has trees growing over the fence, just waiting for some ten year old to figure out that you don’t need a key to start a humvee…
That is, if any of them worked.
Was a stationkeeper at an Armed Forces Reserve Center near Boston back in the 70’s. We had Navy, Army and USMC vehicles. Us Navy guys had better security on our vehicles and weapons that either the other branches. Don’t know why, except that if any of our stuff got stolen or damaged, we had to go thru hell and a bunch of paper work. BZ