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Crime

Stopping opportunistic crime before it starts

Don’t make it easier for thieves

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Detail view of illuminated police lights.
Detail view of illuminated police lights.

There are some noticeable similarities between Aledo and the idyllic town of Mayberry from the old Andy Griffith Show. Both are smaller communities where cordial folks walk down the sidewalk and know each other by name. 

But that’s just about where the similarities stop.

Aledo is a small community, but one that is rapidly changing. Unfortunately, with those changes comes an increase in crimes. 

As summer dawns, the past few years have taught us that crimes of opportunity increase exponentially throughout Aledo and the neighboring communities of Morningstar and Walsh Ranch.

While these crimes are nothing dangerous on their face, with the typical situation being a homeowner who figures out their unlocked vehicle in the driveway was rummaged through at some point in the night, by and large these crimes are easily preventable. Taking a few precautions will not only insure you are not a victim of one of these crimes, but will go a long way to ridding Aledo of this problem altogether.

An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

“The first step is, don’t make yourself a soft target,” said Officer Joseph Spragins of the Fort Worth Police Department. “Lock your doors. Keep stuff out of view. People have this false sense of security, because they’re in a nice neighborhood. The closer you are to the major outlets (FM 1187, Old Weatherford Road, I-20, etc.), the more of a target you become. Out of all the burglaries I’ve worked or seen a report on, especially in Walsh Ranch, I have yet to see one that was actually forced entry. At the end of the day, these are criminals are opportunistic. They’re just going for the easy target. If they’re walking down the street checking door handles and yours happens to be unlocked, they’re going to rummage through your property.”

Eliminate the opportunity

The math on this problem becomes real simple from here: Eliminate the opportunity, get rid of the opportunistic criminals.

How do you eliminate the opportunity?

First, keep valuables out of view, and make sure your doors on your vehicles, as well as your home, are locked day and night. On top of the door checkers who prowl around several of the local neighborhoods at night, there have been numerous reports of vehicles being broken into during the business day. 

In Walsh Ranch, a resident had a purse stolen from their vehicle in broad daylight while parked in their garage because the garage door was up and the vehicle was unlocked. It took mere seconds for a random passerby to help themselves to an easy score. 

Park vehicles in garages if you can. If you can’t, make sure all doors on the home and vehicles are closed and locked at all times. 

Spragins recommended if you have a truck with a tailgate or an SUV with a back hatch that opens, another precaution would be to back the vehicle in the driveway close enough to the house that the tailgate or rear hatch cannot be opened. 

Another thing to consider is lighting. Criminals prefer to work in the dark where they have a reasonable expectation of not being noticed or seen. Leaving front porch lights on all night, or installing motion-detecting flood lights are an excellent deterrent.

The next thing Spragins recommends is installing cameras.

“Cameras are everything,” he said. “A lot of people have these Ring doorbell cameras. They are very beneficial to us during an investigation. On top of that, having cameras on the corners of your house that can span a wider range is important. Know where those cameras are pointing and where the border is. 

“It’s super easy to pair another house camera with your doorbell camera. Camera companies these days are making it very easy. Even I can figure it out.”

On top of personal security cameras on your home, Spragins also recommended the Flock camera systems for neighborhoods governed by an HOA.

“There doesn’t seem to be any Flock cameras west of Walsh,” he stated. “When we got the three Flock cameras put out at Walsh, it has helped us tremendously. Your HOA can purchase it. It belongs to the HOA. But it links into the local law enforcement. 

“If I search a license plate of a suspected thief, I’ll search all of Flock. I’ll get hits for the same vehicle up in Flower Mound and all over. All of North Texas that has Flock is tied into the system for us to see on the law enforcement side.”

Avoice complacency

The next thing to do is simply don’t become complacent. As Thomas Jefferson said, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Recognizing how little time it takes for a crime of opportunity to transpire means taking that extra step to ensure potential opportunities are vanquished before they can be realized. 

A prime example Spragins mentioned was earlier this year when a resident in Walsh forgot something he needed for work when he left his house in the morning. He circled the block back to his house. Intending to just run inside to grab the item, he left the doors unlocked to his vehicle sitting in the driveway. In less than two minutes time while he ran into his home to grab the item, his firearm was stolen out of the center console of his vehicle. 

The last thing Spragins recommends is that, if you are a victim to a crime of opportunity, file a police report.

“I cannot stress this enough, even if your car was just rummaged through it’s still a BMV (burglary of a motor vehicle),” he emphasized. “It’s still a criminal offense. It still needs to be reported, because more than likely, in your neighborhood there were other hits that occurred.

Without your report, we can’t link timeframes. We can’t link direction of travel. We don’t have anything to go on. And, we don’t know what we don’t know. If it’s not reported, we don’t know it occurred. 

“It’s very frustrating because I’ll start getting calls asking what we’re going to do about this BMV trend that’s going on. But we don’t know anything’s going on because nothing’s been reported. That’s extremely frustrating for the police. We’ve got to have the community’s help.”

Don't chase

If you should hear something go bump in the night only to catch some would-be burglar in the act, Spragins stated it is important not to pursue a potential assailant. Laws in Texas protect homeowners from liability if force is used in the defense of their property. But the moment a pursuit takes place, the laws are dramatically different. 

“Do not chase them,” Spragins warned. “If you chase them and you get caught up in something, and use of force has to occur, it’s going to come back on the homeowner. If the person is trying to step foot in their house, different story. But when you see somebody in your driveway trying to get into your car, you spook them, they start running, and you chase after them, you’re opening up a whole can of liability.”

The better option in that scenario is to observe as many details as you can about the suspect. What are they wearing? About how tall are they? What direction did they head in? Did they drive off in a vehicle? If so, what color, make, and model was it? Did you get the license plate number? 

If you have your phone on you, take pictures or video or and report it to the police. 

“When a guy is going to work and notices his vehicle has been gone through sometime in the middle of the night and the call comes in, that’s a priority three call,” said Spragins. “That’s low priority. The offense has already been committed. There’s no suspect on scene. We’ll take the report and do what we can to catch the suspect. Versus, it’s 1 a.m. and the homeowner’s frantically calling 911 because he saw the BMV taking place. That’s a different priority call. The call taker’s going to dispatch police to the scene.” 

Aledo, Aledo crime, Parker County News

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