Monday - May 25, 2009

Local Crime Wave

I live in a fairly large condo park. Something like 1000 people live in these 328 units. That means folks come and go at all hours of the day and night. Each of our buildings has 16 units in it, 8 upstairs and 8 downstairs, and we all have garages.

Last night the lady on the end had her garage broken into. We all have power door openers, but each door has one of those emergency release key latches in the middle of the door. The burglars tore that release latch right out, probably with a slide hammer or a pry bar or something, and got the door open that way. I don’t know what was stolen, if anything. Talking with the neighbors a few minutes ago I learned that at least 3 other garages were broken into last night. The State Police are here, and they’re doing their best to collect evidence and fingerprints and stuff. Maybe they’ll get some leads and catch the perps [ who are Einstein level geniuses apparently, as they left their Dollar Store quality toolkit outside my neighbor’s garage. Duh? Duh! ]

I’m going to go and disconnect the emergency release wire on our door. And I’m giving serious thought to some sort of alarm system. And more thought to a better garage door opener, a modern one that uses floating codes for the remote. Maybe one that can be wired in to an alarm? I have to do some research there. The opener we have is one of those ancient Sears 1/4 hp openers from the mid-70s when this place was built. It still works, but I’m guessing it might be nearing the end of it’s useful life. I’ll have to gamble that it will continue working, and risk going without the safety release.

These units have no basement, and they have no attic, so all my stuff is stored in the garage. Furniture, extra stereo gear, equipment, tools, my whole reloading system, my entire window cleaning business, etc. Plus a car!

A few weeks ago one of the cars in the parking area was broken into and some DVDs stolen. I don’t know if the owner even filed a police report.

Our condo park is in a sleepy little town in western NJ that has no crime, hardly ever. But this condo village is right by the interstate highway, both on the road in and on the road out. And we’re not actually part of the town that’s on our mailing address, so we don’t get patrolled by that town’s police. We actually live in a township, and that township does not have a police department. Instead we rely on the state police, who have a barracks 2 miles down the highway from here. But they spend most of their time taking care of the highway, and almost never patrol here. When you consider the ongoing vinyl siding project here, the never ending repaving and water pipe repair projects going on here, all the people delivering things, and the steady stream of workers who go up and down the main road to get to the diner over the top of the hill where they all work ... an awful lot of people are going through our little village all day and night, every day. And every one of them only has to think about it for a second to realize they never see a cop here.

Yeah, I’m definitely looking into some kind of alarm. A really REALLY loud one.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/25/2009 at 01:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Daily Life •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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