Season to be wary

Home invasions, burglaries, frighten Five Towns

By Michael Orbach

Issue of December 4, 2009/ 17 Kislev 5770

At 3:58 on Wednesday afternoon, Judith Greenberger was in her office when she received a phone call from her cleaning lady. Two men had broken into her house. A neighbor saw them run through the glass back door to a vehicle waiting on West Broadway, carrying pillowcases and shopping bags.

When she arrived home minutes later police cars were parked around her house. In the middle of the afternoon, in broad daylight, the thieves had ripped the deadbolts off of her front door; four upstairs rooms were ransacked.

“They found pretty much everything,” Greenberger said.

Besides laptops, digital cameras, money and her husband’s coin collection, the thieves also made off with jewelry that belonged to her mother, who passed away in May.

The sheer brazenness of the robbers is what Judith finds most frightening.

“They could’ve come through the back door — I have a glass door. They pried the [front] door open, there were roofers working across the street, gardeners down the block, my next door neighbor doesn’t work,” she said. “They’re getting away and very, very few of them are getting caught. That’s what’s encouraging them to have the guts to keep on doing it.”

There have been seven burglaries in the Five Towns in the last month. The day before Greenberger’s home was hit, two armed men locked a mother and her infant in an upstairs room while they robbed her home; the woman had left the door open to take her other child to his school bus. A month ago, two men dressed as utility workers tied up a homeowner in Hewlett as they robbed his house. The recent spate of burglaries has placed pressure on the Fourth Precinct, which includes the Five Towns.

“Either they really make their presence seen on the streets, or we’re going out to get some gun permits,” Greenberger said. “What are our options?”

In a sharply worded letter to Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, Legislator-elect Howard Kopel asked, “Is [the] Nassau County Police Department taking these home invasion crimes in the Five Towns and elsewhere throughout the Seventh Legislative District seriously? ... What demonstrable steps has NCPD taken to combat them?”

“It has been going on for a while now,” Koppel said. “I only know what I’ve read in the newspapers and what I’ve read is unacceptable. “

Ironically, the Fourth Precinct has seen a recent decrease in crime, overall, according to the precinct’s major crime report. The total number of crimes in 2009 so far is down more than 10 percent from 2008; residential burglaries are down 33 percent. There have been 81 so far this year, down from 122 in 2008. There have been 22 burglaries in the Five Towns since the summer: eight in Lawrence, six in Hewlett and Hewlett Harbor, and four each in Woodmere and Cedarhurst. There have been 82 altogether in the area of the Fourth Precinct’s responsibility.

Inspector John Capece, the commanding officer, describes the recent burglaries as seasonal in nature.

“We always have a spike in burglaries during the holiday season but when you add the economy and other factors we want to prevent the trend from becoming too problematic,” he explained, cautioning that residents should always lock doors and windows whenever they leave the house. Alarm systems and motion detectors should be turned on. Car windows should be closed; doors locked; valuables such as laptops and GPS units should be hidden out of sight.

“We’re putting directed patrols in the Five Towns and we’re directing our attention to possible known suspects in the area and we’re targeting suspicious vehicles and people that are acting suspiciously,” he said.

“We need the public’s help to assist us in this and to call 911 when they feel something is not right.”

A suspect who is possibly related to the recent burglaries was arrested Monday in Lawrence.

Questions or comments? Contact Michael Orbach at morbach@thejewishstar.com