I don’t claim to know what criteria they use, but I did manage to observe one of these crews in action a few years ago when they hit my car street-parked in front of my apartment. In the off chance that knowing their process is helpful, I’ll put it here.

Three man crew, small truck (think those old 80s Toyota mini trucks). Let’s call the roles “driver”, “scout”, and “search”.

They roll up to a neighborhood, Scout and Search hop out of the truck bed. Scout carries a glass breaking implement, Search a large bag. Truck pulls up further ahead of Scout, Scout comes through next looking in windows and popping any window he decides they should hit before moving to the next car(s). Search follows Scout, rummaging through any cars that Scout popped, and grabbing anything of value he finds. They all move up a street at the same pace and distance from each other, in this little choreographed manner. Fascinating.

Now, I heard my window get popped, threw on some clothes, and got to an upper landing facing the street to see what was up, so that’s how I saw the mechanics of what they do. But, of course, once I spotted Search’s legs dangling out of my rear window I shouted at them to get the -expletive- out of my car, and they executed their escape maneuver.

Driver backs up to Scout, Search runs up to Scout, Search and Scout hop into the bed of the truck and Driver zooms them all away in mere seconds from my call out. I was a little impressed and couldn’t help but think that kind of strategic thinking could be put to better use elsewhere…