East Hampton Police-solved crimes tops state average

Overwhelmingly, the motivation behind these crimes has been drugs – specifically, heroin – the offenders are motivated by their addiction to commit crimes to get money to buy heroin. ----------

East Hampton Police have attained great success in solving residential break-in and thefts (formally referred to as burglary and larceny crimes) from 2008.

Officers have solved and made arrests in a record high 56.1 percent of reported residential break-ins and thefts.

By comparison, the state and national clearance average hovers at around 15 percent for communities with populations between 10,000 and 25,000 residents. (As the population of communities increases, the solve rate decreases, according to state and national Uniform Crime Reports statistics.)

Overwhelmingly, the motivation behind these crimes has been drugs - specifically, heroin. The offenders are motivated by their addiction to commit crimes to get money to buy heroin.

They are attracted to small towns like East Hampton because they are largely residential communities where the majority of the homes are vacant during the day, while the homeowners are at work.

All cases resulted in arrests

There are a variety of ways of classifying cases as “cleared,” and they don’t always include arrests. The East Hampton Police Department’s clearance rate is not only greater than three times the state and national average, but all of those solves resulted in arrests.

The translation is 23 of the 41 cases of break-ins and thefts from 2008 were solved and closed by arrests of the offenders in those cases.

A total of 18 offenders were charged with varying counts of burglary, larceny, criminal mischief and conspiracy crimes as a result of the investigations.

And more that $155,000 in stolen property was recovered, as a result of the investigations.

Working together with other departments

Many of the investigations also involved crimes that were committed in other jurisdictions. Therefore, these became multi-agency investigations that involved a great deal of cooperative effort with other police departments.

One group that included four offenders was responsible for five cases in East Hampton, three cases in Portland and one case in Glastonbury.

Another group of four offenders was responsible for eight cases in East Hampton, three cases in Portland, and several cases in Haddam, Killingworth and shoreline communities.

And you helped

A major factor in solving these crimes is cooperation by the town’s residents. For this reason, citizens are encouraged to report all suspicious activity to their police departments.

Of course, an important factor in our success has been the dedication of our police officers, and officers from other agencies with whom we have worked cooperatively.

These cases are never solved easily. They are almost always reported well after the fact and the offenders are generally uncooperative. Our officers have displayed great diligence, dedication and skill in solving these crimes.

Posted May 24, 2009

Tell them “I read about it in East Hampton Today!”