Amidst our burglary wave last fall (one-third of the homes on my block were burglarized in a 10-day period -- during the daytime while residents were at work), residents got active like never before. The police department held meetings with us, stepped up patrols (including bikes and Segways), brought in undercover officers and even got out of their cars to walk the beat.

The instigators of that burglary wave (two juveys and an 18-year old) were apprehended because of two alert neighbors and one not-so-alert who was still able to ID them. They were nabbed while in the process of burglarizing the next door neighbor (the lead perp's girlfriend lives next door) who had walked out of his house to do an errand. One of the neighbors caught the burglary on video.

Takeaways from our interactions with DC police (this may be different with your police department so you need to talk to them and get their advice):

- Call 911 even just to report suspicious behavior (such as loitering or suspicious "work trucks" or vans). Your police may not want you to call 911 unless a crime is underway but our police -- to our surprise -- urged us to call 911 even just to report suspicious behavior.

They said they are pleased to roll a patrol car by and that they really need residents to be their eyes and ears because they cannot be everywhere all the time. And that we know better than they do what's out of the ordinary on our own blocks and in our alleyways.

We have long had problems in this area with home construction/renovation workers committing home burglaries during the day as they are able to see the comings and goings of residents.

Police also told us to be on alert for people who go door-to-door. It is a common tactic here for perps to knock on someone's front door and if they answer they'll have a ready explanation for why they were knocking. If no one answers the door, the perp(s) break in through the back. A couple nights before Christmas a friend and I called 911 upon seeing two suspicious fellows going door-to-door on our streets, at 8:00p at night, with a crate of apparent candy bars. Our neighborhood typically empties during Christmas as people here tend to be from elsewhere. They were working in coordination with a van with nonresident license plates. Police cars were on them lickety-split.

Police also advised that burglars want to know that your home is worth breaking into, so they case the place. Police stressed that we should close the drapes when not home so that valuables like flat screen TVs can't be seen.

You need to know what's been happening in your neighborhood -- in case there's a crime wave underway. The police need to know what you know about suspicious behavior. They would like to catch the perps in the act because they rarely catch them otherwise (at least that's DC's situation).


VALUABLE PROPERTY RECORD SHEET
http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/lib/mpdc/opid_proprecord.pdf