Burglary ‘seasonal spike’ continues in Scarborough

SCARBOROUGH — If you’re at a store or restaurant this week, and you find a customer paying with a wad of $2 bills, there’s a good chance they may have been stolen.

On Friday, 300 $2 bills were taken from a home on Maple Avenue in Scarborough, along with jewelry and an extensive coin collection. It was one of three burglaries reported in town on that day along, continuing a streak of nearly 20 break-ins Scarborough police have investigated since Oct. 1.

And that’s just cases categorized as burglaries. Last week alone, there were nine reported thefts in Scarborough, including a $1,200 MacBook Pro laptop taken from a home on Jasper Street and a $1,500 Husqvarna chain saw found missing from a Dresser Road property.

In addition to the Maple Avenue incident, there were three other burglaries in Scarborough last week, on Ross Road, Grasshopper Lane and Woodspell Road.

Scarborough Detective Rick Rouse said it’s almost impossible to know how many of the burglaries, if any, are related.

“There are only so many ways you can break into a house, so going by M.O. (modus operandi) is not always easy,” he said.

However, two thefts last week can probably be connected by the method of the perpetrators. On Sunday, wallets were reported missing from employee break rooms inside both the Michael’s arts and crafts and Lamey Wellehan shoe stores. Calls to police from the shops, located about a half-mile away from each other on Payne Road, came in about 20 minutes apart. 

“You have to believe those are probably connected in some way,” said Rouse.

Meanwhile, with no other leads in the home burglaries, police tend to canvass area pawn shops, hoping to find the stolen items on the shelves along with a connection to those who sold or pawned the objects of interest. 

“Not all of these thefts are just for the property,” Rouse said. “They [the thieves] often will sell of trade whatever they steal to get money for drugs. That’s a big part of it. But we always see an increase of thefts in the late fall. People always seem to be hard up for money this time of year.”

Although the rise in burglaries may seem unusual, Rouse said, the numbers actually are “about average” with recent seasonal spikes in crime.

According to police reports, one trend in the recent rash of burglaries appears to be the targeting of homes that are unlocked or unoccupied. Both happened to be the case at the Maple Avenue address, where Rouse said there were “no signs of forced entry.” Instead, the son-in-law of the occupants reportedly arrived to check on the home, finding a door unlocked “that is usually secured.”

Also taken from the home in addition to the $2 bills was a white-gold, diamond-and-sapphire ring valued at $2,000, several 1-ounce silver bars valued at $2,400 and $80 in rolled Susan B. Anthony and bicentennial coins, along with proof coin sets from 1980-1989 and an unknown number of silver half-dollars, liberty half-dollars and assorted other coins.

“We’ve contacted different pawn shops in the area,” said Rouse. “Something might turn up, but a lot of that stuff is not traceable, so it’ll be hard to ever prove a connection.”

Taken from the Ross Road address, where there also was no forced entry, was $149 in cash, an Omega watch valued at $500, a men’s diamond wedding ring valued at $5,000 and an iPod Touch valued at $200, along with a box of cigars, with which the thieves presumably celebrated their windfall.

Somewhat ironically, in the one burglary last week in which doors definitely were locked, the cost of the damage done during the break in (roughly $600 worth, to three doors) was greater than the value of the stolen items. In that case, a man checking on his parents’ house found the doors broken and the contents of the master bedroom ransacked, although only a jewelry box was missing. Rouse said that as of Monday, the contents of the box had yet to be been itemized by the victims, but they were believed to be of “incidental value.”

Similar circumstances surrounded motor vehicle burglaries in Scarborough last week. On Thursday, a passenger window was smashed out of a car parked at Lifestyle Fitness on Pleasant Hill Road, while the same damage was done on Sunday to a car parked on Pine Point Road. In both cases, the criminals left $300 in damage, but took nothing. Only in the latter case was anything actually removed from the vehicle – an empty fanny pack later found on the ground “a short distance away.”

Rouse said that, in the case of automobiles at least, his best advice may be to leave doors unlocked when it’s certain nothing of value has been left inside. After all, a window is not much of a deterrent to someone who is after the vehicle itself.

“It’s kind of a shame for the victim,” he said, “because a lot of times people will smash in a window because they think they see something inside, but then they end up taking nothing.”