Nobody took the bait.

But that doesn't mean police are calling a three-day, overtime-approved holiday burglary sting operation a total failure.

Six detectives with the Santa Fe Police Department spent three eight-hour shifts over the holiday weekend — Friday through Sunday — waiting and watching an unlocked 2012 Toyota Sequoia filled with electronics and other items associated with the shopping surge after Thanksgiving.

The hope was to snag an opportunistic burglar using the jam-packed parking lots around Santa Fe to make a quick score of stolen loot by stealing items from unlocked vehicles.

"Obviously there is always an uptick of auto burglaries around the holiday season, usually starting at Thanksgiving and running through Christmastime," Sgt. Peter Neal, the head of the Santa Fe Police Department's Property Crimes Division, said. "We didn't get any bites on this operation, but I think we'll do this operation again in the near future at some other locations that have a high number of auto burglaries."

While auto burglary numbers in the city have gone down in 2011 compared to the record high in 2010, they are still on pace to be higher than the number of auto burglaries reported in 2008 and 2009.

The good news for this past weekend, Neal pointed out, was that not only were there no takers on the SFPD bait car, there were no reported auto burglaries in the parking lot of a local business in the city limits on either Friday, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, or on Saturday (SFPD did not yet have Sunday's burglary statistics available late Sunday night).

The department earlier in November purchased several small cameras for the Property Crimes Division that were used in the weekend operation, positioned in several locations inside the vehicle with the hopes of obtaining usable evidentiary video had a person actually attempted to burglarize the vehicle.

The first use of the cameras was Friday morning with the bait car parked near the food court at Santa Fe Place mall from 5 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. On Saturday, the car was parked at the old Walmart, 3251 Cerrillos Road, from 8 a.m. to about 4 p.m. On Sunday, it was deployed to two locations — Smiths, 2308 Cerrillos Road, and the Regal Stadium 14 movie theater, 3474 Zafarano Drive, also from 8 a.m. to about 4 p.m.

A final tally on how much the operation cost the department was not available Sunday night, but Neal said he thinks whether it be through overtime operations or regular hours worked into his Property Crime Division's workload, the bait car operation is worth it to help combat the city's burglary problem.

"Obviously the hope is we would have made an arrest, and we have with similar operations in past years, but it also helps when word starts to get out that this is one of the tactics we use because it can help deter future burglaries," Neal said. "We don't want people knowing when we're doing them or where, necessarily, but just the word getting out in general is a help."

The New Mexican spent several hours with detectives working the operation Friday and a short time Saturday, but didn't observe anyone even peeking into the bait car, let alone attempting to open the doors or stealing property inside.

Neal said two tactical decisions that may be tweaked during future operations are the type of vehicle used and the timing of the operations.

First, the dealer-donated Toyota Sequoia that was used was high and had tinted windows, making it nearly impossible for a person to casually observe the items inside that were supposed to be enticing the would-be burglars.

The second possible tweak coming for future operations is to stage the vehicle later in the day to hit more common burglary times as opposed to going for the highest-traffic shopping times, which tend to be earlier in the day than when most of the city's more regular auto burglars are known to operate.

"We tried some things in this operation that didn't get us any arrests this time, but it gave us an opportunity to become more familiar with the new equipment, and I think this is still a very worthwhile operation for the next month over the holiday season for sure," Neal said.

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3076 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at SantaFeCrime.com.