People east of Davis, please keep an eye on your cars

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

We are really getting a rash of car break-ins concentrated in a certain neighborhood. Check out the police logs in this week's Journal; there's more in the area immediately east of Davis than _anywhere else_ in the city. Especially Highland from Davis to Cedar, up and down Willow, and different side streets off of Lowell, south of the railroad tracks. Last week's was similar too.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/police_and_fire/x603845130

People, please call the police if you see something that doesn't look right, like people walking around peeking into car windows. If you're not sure it's something that qualifies as an emergency, you can always call their non-emergency line at (617) 625-1600.

Comments

[mperrotti76.livejournal.com]

And...

If u see a big dude with a beard and a cowbell looking in yr windows...

That's just anomie666.

And that's really out of the ordinary, now is it...

[anomie666.livejournal.com]

I have no more beard.

[mperrotti76.livejournal.com]

WTF!!?? So then who was looking in my window the other night??!!

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

But...reporting suspicious activity plays right into the hands of the state in its attempts to stamp out terrorism and will result in the bomb squad being called in. Not to mention the fact that this totally infringes on my rights to peer into vehicles whenever I wish.

[snerk] The only thing this newly informative post forgot to include was the fact that a group of people seem to be blaming this rash of break ins on a mysterious heroin addict.

That's addictivism and we shouldn't stand for it anymore than we should stand for our car-peeping rights being infringed upon like this.

[jspazzer.livejournal.com]

"1:09 p.m., report of a motor vehicle break-in at 4 Newman Place"

Who knew that our own Ron Newman has his own Place? Even the city of Somerville recognizes his value to society.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Ron Newman was declared Emperor of Somerville in the last mayoral election.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for them to name a square after him.

[jspazzer.livejournal.com]

Hey, who are you to name Ron a square? He does seem a bit geeky sometimes, but who among us isn't?

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

[facepalm]

You are SO going on my List of People Who Make Terrible Puns and Must be Avoided at All Costs.

[jspazzer.livejournal.com]

That would be most welcome as I have been listless lately.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

(http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v46/emileestrange13/Macros/?action=view&current=1164440638885.jpg)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

*lol* Thanks for the amusement!

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

:::headdesk:::

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Well, they DID name a town after him a while back, but they had to abbreviate his name. You might have heard of it, Newton?

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

This should come as no surprise to you. After all, it is Ron Newman.

Much as the fact that there has been a rash of vehicle break ins should come as no surprise to anyone who's been reading the posts in this comm for the last few days.

[ron_newman]

Seriously folks, we don't need a new post on this subject every day. Better to add that link as a comment to one of the earlier posts.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

I smell a meta...

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

But would many people take note of it, especially with all the excitement over the meetup since then?

[ron_newman]

I think so, yes. People do generally remember what was posted here the day before.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

But they probably wouldn't keep refreshing the article to see if someone had added a link to the Journal and a summary of the article.

[ron_newman]

LJ does have the "track this" (thumbtack) button. I don't know how many folks use it, though.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Yes, despite comments from people who obviously didn't read the post, it is just a few streets, and just a few eyeballs could have prevented it.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Sheesh, do we have to go through this dance every time someone posts a community bulletin?

What was new in this post was the going-over of what was in the paper. It was uncanny how some parts of Davis were completely left alone - there was only one car broken into west of College Ave - while Highland near Willow was a different story.

And if somebody else in this community finds their car broken into, by all means post it here. I'd rather the word get out the morning after than a week and a half later in the paper.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

If you hadn't taken notice, even with the meetup excitement, there was already another announcement this morning in this comm...one yesterday, one the day before that...

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

If we could get people along Highland, all down that way, to take a look out their window late at night, we might have a solution to this problem.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Here's a map (http://www.batchgeocode.com/map/?i=0d4a176e4d23ce21ba652c20c6b5ffe6) of all those locations, with the times listed if you click on the points.

Hope it helps someone.
for some reason, all the ones coded as the 20th are showing up as "others"
courtesy of http://www.batchgeocode.com/

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. It really shows where our trouble area is better than I can explain in words. I'm also wondering if reviewing the police blotter should become a weekly thing in this forum.

As an aside, some streets in the Davis area have their own email lists or Yahoo groups for "neighborhood watch"-type talk. Sounds like it's time for the people living in the area with the car breakins to start their own list.

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

some streets in the Davis area have their own email lists or Yahoo groups for "neighborhood watch"-type talk

funny you should mention that! :)

there already exists, in fact, a Davis Square-specific group that meets monthly to discuss issues of crime prevention and safety. we get support from various City departments, including the police and SomerStat (http://www.somervillema.gov/Division.cfm?orgunit=somstat) (if you think pierceheart's map was awesome, you should see what the SomerStat folks can generate).

we generally meet one Monday a month, and have recently been meeting at Johnny D's. to get more information, please subscribe to the mailing list by sending mail to watch-subscribe@vecna.org (mailto:watch-subscribe@vecna.org). if you experience any difficulty subscribing, please send mail to watch-owner@vecna.org (mailto:watch-owner@vecna.org).

thanks,
-steve

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Yes, the "vecna" list is kind of a low-volume super-list that's used for setting up the meetings and passing along important items that bubble up from the other groups, including this journal. Some of the local politicians are on the list too.

I'd recommend that people interested in this sort of thing attend. They're real meetings, with sign-in and minutes, etc. Don't know when the next one is though.

P.S. Didn't the meetings move to the TAB building on Holland St, or are they back at Johnny D's?

[toodleskitty.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I don't own a car but I let my landlord know.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Don't forget students, retirees, and others in your building that have unusual schedules but might not keep up with the news every week.

Like I always keep saying, make friends with the nosy old lady across the street. And give her a pair of binoculars.

[toodleskitty.livejournal.com]

Great advice!

Thanks.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Here's a map (http://www.batchgeocode.com/map/?i=2bc58aa1f1f8600a49f3f822f14e6c51) of the prior week's break-ins.

batchgeocode.com's software needs 27 points, minimum, to show them as dots, and not huge ugly flags, so I had to add 4 "null" points at the intersection of harvard and boston in medford - those are NOT BREAK-INS!

If anybody wants to help with this mapping project, what is needed is the data in either a tab or | delimited text.
I'm using Date|Time|Address|City|State|zip for the columns, and you have to be careful with locations like "spring and Summer streets" because the system parses that to somewhere in Kentucky! I rewrote it as Spring St and Summer St. Avenue should be ave, and some "intersection" addresses need to have the street names reversed, such as (using the earlier example) Summer St and Spring St.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Another option would be to include vehicle break-ins from North Cambridge, but it sounds like there's more to using that tool than pasting and pressing "go".

I wonder if there's also a site that lets you create custom filters to parse things like that into tables, just by pasting it in or giving it a URL. Maybe Yahoo Pipes, which I havent had time to experiment with.

[mihmo.livejournal.com]

Do you want the address my car's break-in occurred at? It was (in that format)

Jan 20|11:59PM|11 Park Avenue|Somerville|MA|02144

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I don't see your break in in the police blotters ...
14-20 Jan (http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/police_and_fire/x603845130)
unless you are the "8:35 a.m., report of a motor vehicle break-in at Park Avenue" on the 21-27 Jan list (http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/police_and_fire/x1059370042).

[mihmo.livejournal.com]

That is mine. I called them at 8:35 am but I put the time around midnight since I know it happened between 7 pm and 8:20 am.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Update: They caught somebody.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

I wonder when? I was leaving my house about half an hour ago, and I noticed a car right in front of my next-door neighbor's house had been broken into. When I called the police to report it, they told me they already knew about it.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Ball Square area, this afternoon. There's already a new post all about it.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

I can't find any post about the police catching a smash-and-grab thief. Do you have a link? Thanks!

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

Steve Bagley must have had the day off.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

The guy whose guest's car was smashed posted about it here.

Link to last weeks break in plot map

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

http://www.batchgeocode.com/map/?i=1ae11c99319e5868d7cb05fae20c2cb2

Re: Link to last weeks break in plot map

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Willow-Cedar area again, a few near Powderhouse.