Huntington Beach : Police Step Up Patrols to Combat Burglaries

Responding to a dramatic increase in burglaries over the last two months, police are stepping up their efforts to prevent and solve such crimes in a 2.2-square-mile area, Suzie Wajda, neighborhood watch specialist for the Police Department, said Thursday.

In the last two months, there have been 31 residential burglaries and 56 vehicular burglaries in the area bounded by Garfield Avenue, Newland Street, Slater Avenue and Golden West Street, Wajda said.

“Normally, it’s not that big of a problem,” she said.

Those figures for April and May--even before May has ended--are already nearly triple those for the previous two months. During February and March, there were 12 burglaries of homes and 19 of vehicles in the area.

Two weeks ago, detectives arrested two juvenile suspects, and police have since noted a decrease in the frequency of burglaries, Wajda said. “But we have some activity still going on since that time,” she noted.

Wajda was to meet Thursday night with area residents at Crest View School to discuss the rash of burglaries, to teach crime prevention methods and to seek new leads in the department’s investigation of the problem.

One detective has been assigned to coordinate the area’s burglary investigations, she said, and patrols in the burglary-plagued area have been stepped up.