The OPP's "Lock it or Lose It Campaign" shows just where  our society is going.
The campaign has a simple message - leaving your car unlocked, especially when you're carrying packages or gifts or leaving other kinds of valuables in sight, is an open invitation to thieves.
Apparently, the campaign isn't working - people in Centre Wellington continue to leave cellphones, purses and wallets, electronics, gifts, and so on in their cars; leave their cars unlocked while parked on the street or in their driveways; and in some cases leave their garage doors open with the unlocked car sitting inside, surrounded by all kinds of other free-for-the-taking stuff.
We appreciate the police's view - they want to prevent crime.
And the police are right, too. Leaving a portable DVD player, iPod, and your wallet on the front seats of your car where anyone going by can see them is just inviting a theft - especially if all someone has to do to help themselves is open the car door, or reach into the open window.
Leaving your garage open, especially at night or if you're not at home, is a similar invitation. It seems it's just too tempting for some people to walk by a house and realize the homeowner has an ATV or snowmobile, or expensive tools, or whatever.
While we understand the necessity of warning people about this type of crime, we can't help but be saddened by it as well.
Somehow, we've created a society where many people seem to feel they have a right to anything, so long as they can get away with taking it.
In a recent credit card TV commercial, a couple on vacation forgets their digital camera at an outdoor cafe - where it sits while the table is cleaned, others have meals there - and where the couple finally discover it at the end of the day. If life were like that, you wouldn't need so-and-so credit card, the commercial says.
But life should be like that.
Leaving your car unlocked shouldn't be an invitation for everyone around to ransack it. Leaving a camera on a restaurant table shouldn't be an invitation for someone to steal it.
Is it that people think they're entitled - that they deserve whatever anyone else has?
Are they that resentful or angry that other people have things they don't?
Are they so desperate for gadgets - or for the money they can get for selling stolen goods?
Police say a lot of petty crime is fueled by people needing money for drugs and other criminal activity, but swiping department store purchases from the back of a car, or change and an iPod from a front seat, seems more about getting something for nothing.
It's a trait we see on a larger scale when politicians pad expense accounts, when businesses overcharge government contracts, and when people fall for those scams that offer millions in "commission" for transferring illegally-gotten funds out of Nigeria.
Somewhere along the way, our modern society has lost the "respect for person and property" that used to be a fundamental part of what people learned growing up - whether from the parents, schools, or society in general. Perhaps it's those examples - padding expenses, overcharging contracts, adding unnecessary fees, getting away with it - that make it such easy behaviour to follow. Everybody does it, right?
Until we change those basic attitudes, locking our cars at all times, making sure the house is locked up, and keeping the garage door shut will have to become, unfortunately, habits.