Plainfield crime waves: Make dots. Connect.

Seems two forms of crime are jockeying to become 'Plainfield's latest crime wave'.

I reported about a month ago on my car being broken into for chump change (see here) and then a few days ago on a vacant house that had been looted of copper plumbing and other items (see here).

Then on Sunday, while mowing the lawn, my new next door neighbor, a recent transplant from Staten Island, stopped over to chat and told me that their minivan had been broken into last week and the GPS unit and some change taken. Same M.O.

While my neighbor's idea that the police should stake out the neighborhood may not be realistic, given manpower constraints, he is not unrealistic in expecting SOMETHING to be done.

Another neighbor a few houses down the street in the other direction is retiring and he and his wife had a going-away party for family and neighbors to which I was invited.

While chatting with the husband, who owns an electronic security business, I told him of my car breakin. Funny, he said, same M.O. as when his was broken into a year ago.

But with a difference. He has motion-activated silent alarms covering his yard and house and he not only was warned the breakin was happening, he ran outdoors and caught the perp while his wife called 911. (Do not do this at home, kiddies!)

What amazes me is that the police never got back to any of us that there have been similar incidents in the neighborhood and that they were checking to see if there was any connection. (Though I did get the actual police report on my break-in a timely fashion.)

Now, the Robinson-Briggs administration has made a great deal of its initiatives against crime (and Assemblyman Green recently touted how safe 'Mayor Briggs' has made Plainfield). The Police Division is supposed to be using Comstat-like techniques to record and quantify crimes by type, location, M.O., etc.

But I begin to wonder though what good it does to make dots if you don't seem to connect them.

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• 9/16/2008: "Welcome to Plainfield's latest crime wave"
• 10/6/2008: "Plainfield's latest crime wave?"
  

-- Dan Damon

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