For the past month or so, an unusual number of businesses and private homes in Orleans County have been burglarized.
In some cases, the burglars got away with some loot; in others they didn’t. In some cases, the items stolen were of largely personal value; in others they had financial worth.
The burglaries in themselves are distressing, of course, but it’s also distressing that it wasn’t common knowledge. It’s the Chronicle’s job to tell people about such matters, but we wouldn’t have known about the extent of the robberies if we hadn’t been burglarized ourselves.
We get information from word of mouth, but also from the police who may or may not issue press releases, which is apparently at their whim.
In this case, the police have done the community a disservice by reporting very few of the robberies. Many of the business owners we’ve talked to have said that, if they’d known there was a crime wave, they might have taken more precautions.
Homeowners have been surprised to learn that the theft at their house was just one more in a bigger pattern.
Had it been reported earlier that thieves are entering buildings by pushing out air conditioners, perhaps people would have removed those window air conditioners at night, something they never thought of before in a relatively safe community.
Had it been reported earlier that thieves are bent on stealing electronics, particularly laptops, perhaps their owners would be more careful of them.
You could say, of course, that everyone always should lock their doors, although that’s not always a guarantee either. You could say that businesses should have tight security with surveillance and alarm systems.
But the fact is you’d be talking about a profound alteration in how people in this place live. If people need to make that adjustment, hopefully temporarily, to protect their property, they should know there is a risk they haven’t had to realistically face before.
One business we talked to, a long-established one, couldn’t remember being robbed in decades, if ever, so it wasn’t on high alert.
Of the well over a dozen recent burglaries we know about, the police have issued press releases for less than half. Our assumption is that the job of the police is to protect. One way to do that is to let people know what to protect themselves from, and that would involve providing information. — T.S.
Opinion & Comments 
