New-Press and Leader Editorial: Don’t let this Thanksgiving be a turkey

The promise of Thanksgiving brings with it not only feast and football shared with family and friends, but something for the deal hunter. Most big-name retailers will throw open their doors for at least a few hours Thursday in hopes of capturing consumers’ bucks before Black Friday.

We’ll leave it to the general public to decide how it feels about commerce putting a fork in the traditional Thanksgiving; this grab for dollars will either be a smashing success or fall flat.

We suspect the former, given the intense lust for bargains so many people have. Unless there is a backlash felt on Wall Street, we can see the time coming when our national holiday of reflection and gratitude will morph into yet another hectic shopping day, with, perhaps, a quick family meal sandwiched in between a morning spent trawling Kmart and an evening foray into Macy’s.

Regardless of which days in the coming weeks you are out and about selecting holiday gifts for your loved ones, please know that opportunistic thieves will be monitoring stores and parking lots for some easy pickings. If you leave anything in the least bit enticing in your car while you head into a store, a smash-and-grab artist can make it disappear in less than a minute. Once inside a store, should you set your cellphone down on a counter and turn your head for a moment, it will be gone before you can say “Where’s my...?”

We have so much on our minds that it is all too easy to become distracted, especially during this season. We urge our readers to learn crime-prevention tips and share them with family members before venturing forth in the hunt for the season’s hottest sales. Our local police departments offer information on their websites: burbankpd.org and police.ci.glendale.ca.us.

It’s a chilling fact that we’re all seen as fair game by the bad guys. Let’s stay abundantly aware of our surroundings and outsmart them. Better we enjoy the fruits of our shopping labors than hand them over to crooks who are highly unlikely to pause to offer us thanks.