Orinda Burglary Rate Soars; Chief Jennings Talks Prevention

Police Chief Jeffrey Jennings calmly addressed Orinda City Council members Tuesday and brought them up to date on measures his department is aking to bring down a recent uptick in residential burglaries.

“This year we have had over 40 residential burglaries which is a 100 percent increase over what we had this time last year,” Jennings told the council. “Due to this jump, we have made some adjustments in the deployment (of the officers). We have had to reach back to the resources of the sheriff’s office, brought in reserve deputies, adjusted schedules to meet the needs of the burglaries that we have detailed by our crime analysis unit of the sheriff’s office.”

Jennings said most of the burglaries he is seeing are “9 to 5 (daytime) residential burglaries” – where a target home is selected because no one is at home. A typical pattern is for one thief to knock on the front door of a target residence to check if anyone is there, while a second thief looks out for suspicious neighbors. Jennings emphasized that these criminals are not “confrontational” and are not looking to enter if someone is home.

The sheriff’s department analysis also revealed there are several groups who have come through Orinda in the last few months.

“With the residential burglary numbers, there is a concern regarding that this is an 'Orinda' issue, but this is a regional issue, a Northern California issue,” Jennings said. “We are in line with the uptick in South County, Danville, and Oakland - where they have a whole other level of residential burglaries they are dealing with. Not that that would bring a whole source of feeling safer, but knowing that we are not being targeted and that we are still in a safe community.”

Asked by Mayor Victoria Smith about the sudden surge, Jennings said he believes the downward economy is causing people to travel to areas further away to do the crime. In past years, residential and auto burglaries were committed by criminals from surrounding areas, but recently, arrests have been made of people who live in Sonoma, Antioch, Dublin and Concord.

Orinda police maintain that many residents are still leaving their front doors unlocked and garages open even after many warnings to residents about the recent rash of burglaries through the city-wide email alert system.

The chief also informed the council about the department’s Burglary Prevention Audit, a process intended to teach residents on ways to make their homes less attractive to thieves. Residents requesting such an audit will have an officer visit their home "point out the obvious things that make the house less attractive to burglars and talk about the audio, visual and even the landscape of the home to make it less appealing to thieves,” Jennings said.

Currently, Orinda Police have about 60 residential audit requests, but Jennings is hoping to get about 1700 in the coming months.

“I am a firm believer in the audits and a firm believer in alarms that work properly,” he said. “We want to make sure the alarms in homes work properly so we don’t get too many false alarm calls that take us away from doing other important things.”