What’s the best defense against burglary and theft?
Common sense.
Medford Police Chief Richard Meder said that, since June 1, Medford has seen an increase in vehicular residential burglaries.
About 50 vehicle burglaries and 16 residential burglaries have occurred since then.
While Meder says normally there is an increase in crime over the summer, mostly to unsecured vehicles, this summer was worse than last year.
He said opportunity for criminals is a big factor.
“One of the things that we try to do here in Medford when the warm weather hits is we send out Nixle messages, we post on our website and on Facebook to have people lock their doors, keep an eye out for their neighbors, shut their garage doors, and take personal property out of their cars,” Meder said. “A lot of that has to do with minimizing” access.
He noted the vast majority if not all vehicular burglaries were of unlocked cars.
Nixle is a community alert website which has been part of the Medford system for several years. People can sign up for free and get alerts about criminal activity, roadway accidents, detours, and the like.
Meder said his department used Nixle a lot during Hurricane Irene — what was flooded, where electricity was out and where it was restored, and road reopenings.
Nixle sends texts to cell phones or to email addresses.
Meder said Medford Police sent three Nixle messages this summer addressing the recent thefts. He said it’s hard to say how effective Nixle is because people have said they got the messages but forgot to secure their vehicles.
“We’re hoping that that information gets out more and more and Nixle is something that we want to continue to use,” Meder said, noting the service also updates the Medford Police Twitter account.
The chief since May, Meder has been with the department almost 16 years.
He said every year is different and that it’s hard to say if there’s been a rise or decline in crime because the types of crime and locations change.
Crime typically spikes during the summer because people leave windows open, garage doors open, and leave their homes unchecked while on vacation.
“When the warm weather hits, they tend to not be as diligent as they should when securing their property,” Meder said.
He also said he believes there are a number of different groups perpetrating crimes all over south Jersey.
“These crimes are occurring all over our neighboring towns,” Meder said.
With nine officers laid off this year it’s obvious the remaining force will have to make do with that they’ve got.
“It changes the way we do things,” he said. “We now have to prioritize things, what we’re going to investigate what things we can’t investigate.
“We have to now concentrate on the prevention of crime, the investigation of crime, and the response to it,” Meder added.
He said community policing programs will “most certainly” be affected.
However, since the laid off officers’ last day was Aug. 1 the effects of their departure still remain to be seen.
