CHICAGO (WBBM Newsradio 780) -- They are carefully designed hiding places in a car where weapons, explosives, drugs, and money can be concealed. Police call them traps.
And Chicago police say they are finding at least three times the number of traps they were finding just two years ago.
WBBM Newsradio 780's Steve Miller continues the special series, "Finding the Trap."
"The rear defroster's on. Put your hand inside the steering column here."
Chicago Police Sergeant John Hamilton teaches officers here and elsewhere how to look for concealed compartments, or traps.
Looking now at a Jeep Cherokee, he's showing a reporter how to open a trap to the left of the steering wheel. Things Hamilton learned from seeing a lot of traps and their elaborate systems. The control buttons are under the steering wheel. You have to feel for them.
"There's your open one. Now come back to me and towards you a little bit, and there's another one for close... This one's not a real big one, but it's enough space to put your cocaine in there."
And when it closes, it closes tightly. And seamlessly.
"And was the American flag already on it?"
"Yeah, that was there. And the reason that's there is to cover up a screw that should not be there. They screwed it and put Bondo over the screw, but they wanted to cover up that poor workmanship, so that put that little sticker on there."
Crime concealed by an American flag sticker.
Coming up in the next part of our series, a trap that's big enough for human cargo.
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