Greenwood and Leflore County are continuing to see a rash of residential burglaries as the holiday season approaches.
Greenwood Police Chief Ray Moore cautions that often this time of year, ’tis the season when burglars are out in force.
After at least three home burglaries were reported in southeast Greenwood in the past month, Moore put extra patrols out in the neighborhood and urged neighbors to be on watch.
But additional burglary reports have surfaced, including one on Tuesday by a McCool Street resident. She said she’d been out of town and came back to find her house ransacked and several valuable items missing, including a large flat-screen TV, a car speaker, an Xbox, a PlayStation, a bicycle and a car from outside.
Another city resident reported Saturday that she had left for a few hours and came home to find her house broken into and two televisions, an Xbox, video games and some jewelry missing.
In the Birdland neighborhood out in the county, Lawrence Horn reported an intruder had entered through a window where an air conditioning unit had been removed and two televisions and a laptop computer had been taken.
“It happened on Sunday when we were in church,” Horn said. “We came back, and everything was dumped on the floor.”
Horn speculated that the burglar in his neighborhood had been watching to see when the house would be vacated.
Using a window where a portable air conditioning unit sits is a popular form of entry reported in several recent burglaries in the city.
Horn said an acquaintance in the Glendale neighborhood had told him her house was burglarized while she was at work. The perpetrator kicked in her front door and took off with all the Christmas gifts she’d purchased for her family.
Both Chief Moore and Leflore County Ricky Banks agreed that at this time of year, residents need to be extra vigilant against intruders.
“This time of year, I don’t know what it is, but it’s the season to steal,” Moore said. “We start a holiday detail about this time of year, putting extra officers out patrolling neighborhoods.”
Banks said the county has seen a number of burglaries in the last couple of weeks in several different areas along Highway 430 and out by East Elementary School.
“We’re working on them, but so far no luck,” he said, adding that often in the county, even when an alarm goes off, by the time the signal has been relayed to his department and officers have responded, the intruder has fled.
“When it gets toward December or Christmas, yes, we usually see an increase,” he said. “Probably knowing that Santa Claus is coming and people know there’s a lot of new items in the house — TVs and stuff — that has something to do with it.”
Moore recommends that neighbors watch for strangers hanging around or for lingerers who appear to be watching houses.
Residents who see anyone suspicious lingering or entering a house or who have information about burglaries should call the sheriff’s office at 453-5141, the police department at 453-3311 or Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
