My OperaFrom Last Night's Blagden Alley Meeting
Thursday, July 21, 2011 2:27:07 PM
Just a few notes from the Blagden Alley and Naylor Court Association meeting. What was said applies to most downtown neighborhoods.
Sgt. Terestre of 3D/PSA207 was there, and did the usual monthly crime report. Only two categories of crime were up, and that was robbery without weapon and burglary. The robbery was almost all iPod or cell phone, and from people so concentrating on their texting or marketing plan or whatever that they were not paying attention to their surroundings. They get shoved to the ground, device stolen and gone. The editor does understand that the neighborhood seems "safe", and it really is. It is not, however, perfectly safe, nor are most of the other neighborhoods in DC. One has to skip the communications for a few blocks, especially when the streets are not crowded.
The second problem is TFA, Theft From Auto. It seems as if that's a constant around here. If you leave a laptop or cell phone in a car it will leave, usually through a broken window. If you can't read maps and use one of those GPS thingies, obviously you don't leave it. But if you leave the suction cup ring on the window, you're liable to get a broken window to check out whether you have left the device in the glove box. Or the trunk, now that the "open trunk" button is available. TFA is frequently a problem for people from out of town, with non local licenses. The perps believe that the mark won't come back to town to testify if the perp is caught. Apparently there's some truth to it. But locals do get hit. If you see a neighbor's car with too much visible parked on the street, gently tell him about TFA. If you have lived here for a while, you know several people that it has touched.
The other item was that there have recently been a number of burglaries in the neighborhood, usually during the day when folks are at work. One yesterday was through a skylight on a four-story apartment house. If you don't have bars on your windows, you're making the editor safer by providing a better target. In the editor's experience, for what it's worth, it sounds like a couple of experienced individuals who will be taken down in the near future and burglaries will stop or go way down for a year or two. Then the same thing will happen in another neighborhood, such as Logan Circle or Dupont Circle, and the cycle will repeat.
Sgt. Terestre of 3D/PSA207 was there, and did the usual monthly crime report. Only two categories of crime were up, and that was robbery without weapon and burglary. The robbery was almost all iPod or cell phone, and from people so concentrating on their texting or marketing plan or whatever that they were not paying attention to their surroundings. They get shoved to the ground, device stolen and gone. The editor does understand that the neighborhood seems "safe", and it really is. It is not, however, perfectly safe, nor are most of the other neighborhoods in DC. One has to skip the communications for a few blocks, especially when the streets are not crowded.
The second problem is TFA, Theft From Auto. It seems as if that's a constant around here. If you leave a laptop or cell phone in a car it will leave, usually through a broken window. If you can't read maps and use one of those GPS thingies, obviously you don't leave it. But if you leave the suction cup ring on the window, you're liable to get a broken window to check out whether you have left the device in the glove box. Or the trunk, now that the "open trunk" button is available. TFA is frequently a problem for people from out of town, with non local licenses. The perps believe that the mark won't come back to town to testify if the perp is caught. Apparently there's some truth to it. But locals do get hit. If you see a neighbor's car with too much visible parked on the street, gently tell him about TFA. If you have lived here for a while, you know several people that it has touched.
The other item was that there have recently been a number of burglaries in the neighborhood, usually during the day when folks are at work. One yesterday was through a skylight on a four-story apartment house. If you don't have bars on your windows, you're making the editor safer by providing a better target. In the editor's experience, for what it's worth, it sounds like a couple of experienced individuals who will be taken down in the near future and burglaries will stop or go way down for a year or two. Then the same thing will happen in another neighborhood, such as Logan Circle or Dupont Circle, and the cycle will repeat.
