Police, residents band together to--they hope--put a stop to wave of Saranap area burglaries

Over the past month, dozens of homes have been broken into in and around the Saranap area. Burglars struck five houses on one street that has just a dozen houses. This is according to Lafayette City Manager Steven Falk.

One positive result, he says, is that neighbors have estaliblished a Google groups email distribution system to alert one another to other crimes, and "to see if they could establish patterns and identify suspects to police."

This collaborative effort may be helping police.

Falk passed along some notes on the crime wave from Lafayette Police Chief Mike Hubbard. He details some of the recent cases, as well as the collaborative efforts among area police departments, including his department and Walnut Creek and Orinda police departments to catch those who are responsible. According to Hubbard, the police are seeing some positive results:

On Tuesday of this week we suffered six residential burglaries. Six in one day! To put this in perspective, we usually have about eight to 10 per month. These burglaries occurred on the east side of the city and appear to have been committed by the same people that have been burglarizing homes in unincorporated Lafayette and Walnut Creek. To tackle the problem on Wednesday, with the help of Walnut Creek PD and Orinda PD, we flooded the area with a team of about ten cars. The result was dismal: we actually had another burglary and didn’t catch anyone.



Wednesday afternoon, however, there was an interrupted burglary in the northern Lafayette, and Walnut Creek PD detectives intercepted the bad guys with their ill-gotten gains still in their vehicle. Along with items that had just been stolen from a home, there were many other items of jewelry in the bad guys’ vehicle.

Because we weren’t sure if these were the same guys, and because we were still determined to stop these burglaries, we put the same team into the field again yesterday. But: still another burglary! This time, however, we got a description of the van and when our crime scene technician just happened to see a vehicle matching the description on the way back from the victim’s house, she radioed the license plate to Detective Hernandez, who traced it to a home in Pittsburg. Upon arriving at that location this afternoon, Hernandez found loads of apparently stolen goods and was able to apprehend a suspect.

With these two arrests, have we solved the crime problem in Lafayette? No. As long as there are bad guys, Lafayette – with its affluence and easy access – will be a target. But with good police work and great neighborhood coordination and activism, we can minimize the problem.

 
Back to the neighborhood Google e-mail distribution.  Falk shared some samples of the kinds of e-mail that neighbors have been sharing with one another and that are likely to help make the neighborhood safe:
 

I noticed a man driving an old blue Chevy Van with tinted windows circling and acting "suspicious" in the neighborhood just a few moments ago (breaking every so often, almost pulling off to the side and then not). I took down the lic plate and called the Sheriff’s department - they are sending someone out as I type this now.  --Danielle

The Sheriff's Dept. is doing an undercover sweep of the area today (Wed.). I saw a suspicious silver Ford Sedan with darkened windows drive through the neighborhood today. I followed it and called it in. As I was calling it in, the Sheriff appeared right after the car. I talked to the Sheriff and he said there are going to be a lot of cars like this going through the neighborhood today. He's just cruising the neighborhood on the look out. This time the car is looking out for us!  --Michelle

I just-saw him too. I also saw a man on a bicycle by Juanita and Kinney just stopped and on a cell phone - very suspicious. The Sheriff drove by and stopped to check him out. --Deb

 

Home burglaries worry residents in and around Walnut Creek’s Lakewood neighborhood; police say they’ve made an arrest

Over the past week, I’ve received e-mails from residents saying that there has been a rash of home burglaries in the Lakewood area.

I went through a month’s worth of the Walnut Creek police department’s Daily Bulletin and found eight incidents between February 8 and March 8 that might fall into the kind of home break-ins that readers were talking about.

Here's one such example from the Daily Bulletin involving a March 3 burglary on Stallion Court: The call came in just after 5 p.m. when someone arrived home to find the back sliding glass door shattered and opened. The break-in occurred sometimes between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m..The master bedroom had been ransacked, and the thief had stolen jewelry.

These burglaries took place both in Lakewood but also in nearby neighborhoods southeast of downtown, including n the Walnut Heights area and close to the Walnut Creek Open Space. Like the above example, the crimes all involved a resident arriving home, usually late in the afternoon, to find a back glass door open or smashed. In almost all the cases, the thief went through the house, tearing through drawers and closets. Items stolen mostly included jewelry, but also cameras, TVs, a laptop, and a double-barrel shotgun.


Captain Timothy Schultz in early March the department began noticing “a trend in that area, took steps to deal with it, and arrested someone they believe was responsible for events” related to that trend.

He added that the department had compared crime statistics for the first two months of 2010 to those of the first two months of 2009 and “found no significant increase” in home burglaries.

Schultz added: “We encourage residents to become aware of what is going on in their neighborhood. One way they can increase their awareness is by becoming an active member of our Neighborhood Watch Program. Those wishing to join an existing group, or start a new group can call our Community Policing Team at (925) 943-5844. We also strongly encourage residents to call the police when they see something they believe is suspicious.” He also said residents can check out the home security tips on the department’s website.