'Tis the season ... for burglaries

This story originally ran on the private Methods Web site Nov. 20.

As Officer Jason Dewey pulls away from the Skokie Police Station a little after 8 p.m., the laptop screen next to his seat lights up with rows of burglaries, robberies and domestic disturbances. There’s only one available patrol right now, he says, pointing to a blank line. He radios in, and now there are two.

“If you see a white block truck, let me know,” he tells me. He explains that a man was awakened earlier by a burglar carrying his television out of the house – and possibly right into a white block truck.

“This time of year is burglary season,” Dewey says as he turns onto Niles Center Road. Holiday lights illuminate the wreaths mounted on the street lights, which cast a yellow glow across the darkened streets of Skokie.

According to Dewey, the end of daylight savings time means a spike in burglaries because it’s darker earlier. There have probably been six burglaries already today, he says. It’s 8:30 p.m. It’s a Thursday night, and he’s headed toward the latest victim.

A sturdy man with short hair and attentive eyes, Dewey has been on the force in Skokie for 10 years. He’s an evidence technician, a job he describes as a crime scene investigator – different departments have different names for it, he explains.

But that doesn’t mean he likes the television show “CSI” or any of its various incarnations. Leaning back in his seat with his radio in hand, he blames the show for the public’s misconceptions about forensics. He tells the story of a woman who insisted he dust her dog for fingerprints because a burglar might have petted him. She saw them lift a fingerprint from a horse on TV, she told him.

The patrol car pulls onto a quiet, residential street and stops near a street light. The house is warmly lit. The neighbor’s house is dark.

It turns out there is no neighbor. The houses next door and across the street are abandoned, and the one next door has a “for sale” sign. This makes the victim’s home a prime target, Dewey says. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that this is the second time the home has been burglarized in two years; three vacant houses grouped together make an easy target for criminals, he says.

Speculating the burglar came through the open back gate, Dewey questions the neighbors whose houses share an alley with the victim’s. They come to their doors in pajamas: a man and a little boy who tells Dewey their dog has been barking, a young woman who was at school all day and an older man who hates the security system commercials that feature an intruder violently breaking down a front door. Dewey tells him the police have noticed more people coming in through windows.

No one has seen anything unusual, nor have they seen the victim’s cat, which is missing. “She’s worried about her cat,” Dewey says.

It’s not surprising that they haven’t seen anything. One empty house blocks the victim’s backyard from the street, as does a thin veil of trees, and the duplexes on the next block shield the alley. It would be easy to slip out undetected, especially during the day when the neighbors are at work.

Four patrol cars have arrived in total, and the officers scour the house and block with flashlights. But Dewey says there’s only about an 8 percent chance of catching burglars and recovering stolen belongings nationally, though he estimates that figure is more like 12 percent in Skokie. “Not excitingly higher, but…” he adds.

He pulls the patrol car in front of the house and checks his cell phone. He laughs as he shuts it. “They found the cat inside,” he says. Another officer approaches the car and leans in the passenger window. “We found the cat. You got my text, right?” Officer Divita asks Dewey.

“It was in the basement, after I ran around the neighborhood,” she says, laughing a little. But Divita’s hardly annoyed. “That cat is like a child to her.” She says she knows what that’s like.

As Dewey drives away from the house, he says there’s a difference between burglaries and other crimes. “A lot of the crime we respond to is bad guy to bad guy,” he says. “Burglary is one of the crimes you have with a true victim.”

“I enjoy catching burglars,” Dewey says.