Maryland, My Maryland

 John Sexton at Hat Hair, Maryland Teen Tied to 121 Car Break-Ins Arrested and Released Hours Later

The underlying incident in this case actually happened back on May 4th but it's getting some attention now because the local police chief came out and made some comments about how the system is handling it.

What happened is that a small group of teens, possibly just 3 people, ran rampant on a single night breaking into dozens of cars. Initial reports said there had been a total of 47 break-ins in Laurel, Maryland overnight.

"We had over 47 vehicle break-ins that we took reports for this morning," said Laura Guenin, a spokeswoman for the Laurel Police Department. "They happened in the early morning hours of today, May 4. We got our first call around 4 a.m."

Here's a local news report from the next day. 

But in fact it was worse than that. The number of break-ins in Laurel was eventually tallied as 54 and there were another 67 break-ins in surrounding counties, all carried out by the same group. We know it was one group because police arrested one of the teen suspects Wednesday and searched his home.

Laurel police arrested a 16-year-old boy Wednesday morning in connection to car break-ins on the night of May 4. He and two other teens smashed car windows and stole items from 54 cars in Laurel and 67 more in Prince George's, Anne Arundel and Howard counties, police said.

"They were just simply going through neighborhoods and targets of opportunity, breaking into cars. If there was something in there, they'd steal. If there was nothing in there, they'd move to another car," Laurel Police Chief Russ Hamill told News4.

At least he didn't spend all his time playing video games.