Dear Officer KC,
I have tried to reach you by phone a few times and left messages.
I would like to mail you additional notes via email if you are interested.
I believe that some of what is happening in our neck of the woods might be related to the
trio of suspects caught about a month or so ago.
The guys who got into my home,
went for identity mainly, but they also purchased some sporting goods and dumped our
duffel bag in the Sun Valley Mall parking lot.
There had to be a team of thieves in our house that day because my
husband came home and surprised the thieves at lunch time. They escaped over the back fence leaving some of our credit cards scattered in the yard. They left behind all of our electronics which were beside the patio door with cords wrapped round them ready to be taken.
Whomever was in our home had enough time to comb through our file cabinets in search of account info and ID's, they rifled through every single cabinet and drawer and upturned several onto the floor in search of something to take. They went through clothes drawers as well, which gave me the most sickening feeling of being violated.
Police reports later found that a young blonde man had gone into Head's Up Sporting Goods Store in Concord and charged things on our credit card.
They also got our passports, our SS cards, cash, jewelry, small electronics including a Palm Pilot, CD' player, etc.
By the way folks...
dogs give you a false sense of security, because our
80 pound dog was at home
and in the house at the time of the break in.
In any event, the criminals entered our home through a 6 inch square cat door that was beneath a door that didn't have a deadbolt.
I remember that the guys you caught, also had similar circumstances. I did interview 2 door to door salesmen, that I feel may be a part of this large theft ring. I remember them well cause I
asked them if I could see their ID badges and I held these badges as I detained them for quite some time and called police.
After talking with residents all along
Morello Ave from Taylor Blvd.- to
Chilpancingo and the off shoot streets along there,
there is definitely a pattern of break ins that are concurrent with the constant barrage of door to door salespeople.
Each new block that was solicited, was then broken in to within a day or two.
Our 4 block radius was
regularly solicited for about 2 months and several homes were broken into. The solicitors were African American males aged 18-20 or so. Some weeks they
came 3 out of 5 weeknights in a row and sold after dark as well. Very odd
circumstances!!! One salesman actually displayed an attitude when one couple turned them away.
Our group of watchers did such a great job tracking the solicitors that even police were
SHOCKED at how often our homes were being solicited.After our first crime watch meeting it was determined by J, a neighbor whose home was also entered in a similar fashion to ours, that J had found the tool used to gain access to our back doors. J found a ratchet on a pole in his driveway that was used to reach up (from the broken cat door,) to turn the inside knob.
Also determined in that first crime watch meeting was a neighbor who witnessed a large cadillac parked in J's drive (at the time of his home break in,) he noted that the vehicle that was "backed in" and had a woman sitting in the passenger seat as I recall. This observing neighbor assumed that the occupant had hired some helpers.
Had we not held a crime watch meeting, we would not have been able to put these pieces together. Hence the importance of neighbors holding a regular crime watch meeting and talking about things they see and hear that are out of the ordinary. J's things were later recovered by an officer in Nevada who caught someone trying to use a credit card taken from his home. It was determined that this suspect was part of an extensive ID theft ring.
