Responding to a rise in residential break-ins, Los Altos police are warning residents to pay attention to security basics such as locking doors and closing windows.
Detective Wes Beveridge and Crime Prevention Officer Paco Vergara have been investigating the spike in break-ins, particularly thefts from cars, throughout the city. The department recorded more than 20 incidents a month in June and July. They report that in the majority of cases, homeowners left car and house windows and doors unlocked. Burglaries tend to be crimes of opportunity, in which robbers check a neighborhood for uninhabited, unsecured homes and cars.
“(Suspects in custody) say it’s easy, because nobody locks their homes or cars” in Los Altos, Vergara said. “(Suspects) spend only five or 10 minutes, take what they can get and get out.”
One reason thieves target unlocked homes and cars is that the criminal consequence – theft of unsecured property – is a misdemeanor, while breaking and entering is a felony.
“You see a rise because of the coming holiday season,” Beveridge said. “There is stuff in cars like gift cards and presents. And in the warmer weather, people leave windows or the top down.”
The department also sees an increase in the opportunistic thefts on Fridays, when workers eager to escape the office at the end of the workweek are careless about locking up when they get home.
Vergara noted that GPS units are the No. 1 hot item for thieves, not only because they are rising in consumer popularity, but because they are easy to resell.
He credits the city’s volunteer Neighborhood Watch program with having an “outstanding” impact on neighborhood crime. He said he wants to recruit more residents to form the watch groups, which are trained to report suspicious activities to the police and to communicate among neighbors.
Vergara trains Neighborhood Watch groups in safety procedures such as locking doors, removing valuables from cars and the value of knowing one’s neighbors and their employees and contractors. He asks each watch group’s leader to disseminate information to the neighborhood about suspicious activity to which residents should be alert.
Recently, a Neighborhood Watch member used his cell phone to record video of a green van driving down his street, inspired by an e-mail warning about a green van that had been
scamming elderly residents. The police used the license plate information to track down the suspects.
Despite the surge in petty crime, Beveridge and Vergara noted that identity theft is by far the department’s biggest problem, with two to three new incidents reported per week. Property thefts and identity thefts have a shared solution, according to Beveridge.
“We’ve got to get the suspicion in (residents),” he said. He applauded residents skeptical of unexpected callers at the door, and recounted, with approval, an anecdote of an elderly woman
who grilled him, a uniformed officer, through a shut door, demanding multiple forms of identification.
Residents interested in joining or forming a Neighborhood Watch group should contact Vergara at the Los Altos Police Department, 947-2770.
