More than 30 Falcon area residents met Jan. 21 with representatives of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to get answers about rumors of a dramatic increase in residential burglaries occurring in the Meridian Ranch and Woodmen Hills developments at the end of 2009.The rumors are not true, said Brandi Christon, crime analyst for the Sheriff’s Office. Christon said she had been receiving two or three calls a day from people asking about the purported crime wave.”November was the month everybody was calling about,” she said.Falcon is in the Sheriff’s Office District 4, a large area that, with the exception of Falcon, is rural, extending north to County Line Road and east past Calhan.Christon said the residential burglary rate for District 4 in November doubled from six in 2008 to 12 in 2009, but for the entire year, the residential burglary rate was down to 72 in 2009, from 75 in 2008.Worst of all was the rumor that someone had been held hostage at gunpoint in their home while someone else stole the hostage’s car.”I’ve checked through every case, and we had nothing like that,” Christon said.She said home invasion burglaries are rare in the county. However, there have been some armed robberies of convenience stores, fast food and tanning salons in Colorado Springs, Christon added.Gerri Elsasser, the Sheriff’s Office crime prevention coordinator, said people concerned about the potential for crime in their neighborhoods should form neighborhood watch groups.Neighborhood Watch groups have three responsibilities: observation, communication and security, Elsasser said.Observation is about knowing what is normal for a neighborhood and becoming suspicious when something abnormal occurs, such as someone checking cars for unlocked doors.Communication means sharing information with neighbors and the Sheriff’s Office.To improve security, people should look at their homes and critically assess what they can do to prevent crime. Keeping doors and windows locked, trimming plants a burglar might use for cover while breaking in, keeping high-theft items such as GPS devices and Blackberries out of sight when left in a car and locking cars that aren’t parked in a garage are a few of the recommended precautions.The Sheriff’s Office and the El Paso County Department of Transportation will install Neighborhood Watch signs for free on the perimeter of the watch area, Elsasser said, adding that the signs effectively discourage criminal activity.Burglaries typically happen during the day, and burglars prefer doors and windows at the rear of a house, where they can break in without being seen, Christon said. Burglars don’t like to break glass if they think someone will hear it. They prefer kicking in a door, which makes having dead bolt locks and using them a good idea.Installing double cylinder dead bolt locks – dead bolts with a key on the inside to unlock the door – is against fire code, Christon said. However, it could make sense to install them if a front door has glass panels or a side light that could easily be broken, allowing the burglar to reach in and flip the lever.”You have to do layers of security. One thing by itself isn’t enough,” she said.Another effective security layer: “A yappy dog makes burglars think twice about whether to target your home,” Christon said.Sheriff’s Deputy Karl Mai said home alarm systems are a big deterrent.”Having [alarm] stickers on your windows is a huge sign for them to move on to the next house,” he said.Mai said it’s important for people to etch or mark high-theft items with their drivers’ license number and keep a printed list of serial numbers in a place that is unlikely to be pilfered.For items that can’t be marked, such as jewelry, take a picture of the piece and a close-up picture of an identifying feature, Christon said.”The district attorney’s office will not prosecute a crime unless we can positively link you to those items,” Mai said.Christon said anything sold to a pawn shop in this area is recorded in a computer system, and the Sheriff’s Office has access for search purposes.”If you have the serial number for your iPod or computer, we can see if somebody sold it to a pawn shop,” she said.Christon also said that generally one patrol officer is assigned per overlapping eight-hour shifts to each district.Although the Sheriff’s Office has jurisdiction throughout the county, it focuses on the unincorporated areas, she said. District boundaries are decided by the number of incidents, not the district’s population.Mai said he generally picks up 20 to 30 cases per month in the summer, when more criminals are more active, and he tries to fit follow-up investigations into “what little spare moments pop up during shifts.”The Sheriff’s Office has 12 investigators to handle the 18,000 crimes that occurred in the county in 2009, Mai said. “They have to pick and choose what cases they take based on pattern crime or dollar value associated with the loss.”Mai said he works the same three northern El Paso County districts about 85 percent of the time, which has allowed him to become familiar with the districts he patrols.”Solving a crime is more a matter of being aware of patterns going on in the district,” he said.Christon asked people to use the Sheriff’s Office telephone reporting system for minor crimes for which there is no suspect, regardless of the value of a missing item.”I look for patterns of activity in an area, so whether your stolen garden gnome cost $5 or $200, I want to know if it was taken,” she said.Meridian Ranch resident Craig Bagley organized the meeting. He said, “I’m not going to wait until I get victimized.”Sheriff’s Office phone numbers:Anonymous tip line: 719-520-7777Crime prevention and Neighborhood Watch: 719-520-7151Minor crime/no suspect telephone reporting system: 719-520-7111
