Alyssa H. Kang

It was a dark but a moonlit, breezy, night and a party of five friends was light-heartedly making its way down the Pennybacker cliffs. Joking and laughing together as they descended, Sonik Jhang swung a blissfully consumed six-pack of Woodchuck Hard Cider, its residents still giddily bumping about.

Jumping off the last step and emerging from the trees into the clearing, the six-pack swinger turned toward his grey Honda when he was stopped mid-step. 

“Check your car!” shouted a young woman with a blonde ponytail who looked to be in her mid-20s. “Our windows were broken and everything’s gone. You might still be lucky,” she said. 

The six-pack dropped as it hit the ground as hard as reality. The Honda windows had been smashed.

The Pennybacker cliffs north of the Capital Texas Highway and Mount Bonnell Covert Park are spots Austinites frequent to breathe in the lazy, romantic air and gaze at the speckled cityscape. Placed at the top of many rankings on sites like ‘365 things to do in Austin,’ these areas attract visitors to settle down on one of many jutted out cliffs and fall into private conversation.

However, these areas are also the ideal spots for burglary of vehicles. As visitors are at heights embraced by foliage, thieves are left at ease to help themselves to a buffet of abandoned cars. In Jhang’s case, safety alarms triggered by smashed windows seemed little more than distant sirens when he and his unknowing friends were enjoying the night view some hundred feet above.

Nonetheless, these crimes of stealing valuables from unguarded automobiles are in downward spiral. In 2012, there were 46 vehicles broken into at Mount Bonnell and 50 at the Pennybacker. In the fiscal year, however, the counts are 12 burglaries at Mount Bonnell and 14 at the Pennybacker.

According to Sgt. Felecia Williams of the Austin Police Department’s property crimes division, Mount Bonnell parking areas are covered in signage that inform citizens of park curfew hours and tips to avoid burglary. On the other hand, the Pennybacker only has signs telling visitors not to park. “I believe this is because Mount Bonnell is an official city park and the area frequented off the Pennybacker is not,” Williams says.

Both areas have a curfew of 10 p.m. but visitors are allowed to park after hours at their own risk. “I had no idea that there was a curfew for parking at the Pennybacker,” says Jhang. 

Jhang says the last time he visited the Pennybacker, he had seen some visitors dealing with the aftermaths of a burglary just like his. Cautious not to be victimized for the same crime, he took care to tuck his and his friends’ wallets into the center console and trunk of his car, hidden out of sight. Still, the burglars managed to strategically loot valuables from the car. “It was like the burglars had been watching us put away our things,” says Jhang.

Jhang’s experience with burglars left his car with about $150 worth of damage, an amount too small to be covered by insurance.

According to Williams, both the APD and Travis County Sheriff’s Office do random patrols in both areas. Even so, Williams stresses that 9-1-1 calls have precedence over these patrols. “If I am out on my way to patrol the Pennybacker and another call comes for a family disturbance, I won’t continue on to patrol,” says Williams. “We are responsible for the entire city of Austin, not just the Pennybacker and Mount Bonnell.”

Even if there were a group of officers set apart to patrol these areas or surveillance cameras installed, burglars will eventually find their way around it, she says. Williams advises it would be best for visitors to take their own precautions and hide valuables away from plain view, preferably before arriving at their designation. “We respond to the needs of the public,” says Williams, “but the public has some responsibility to reduce chances of being victimized as well.”

“Even if burglary rates are decreasing, I still hope for further change,” says Jhang. “Being a regular visitor of these areas, I hope to see more signage put up at Pennybacker, just like they have at Mount Bonnell, so people will not be robbed unaware.”