One of the major concerns every year in the Fifth Precinct is burglary—whether it is business, residential, garage, forced entry or non-forced entry. While we are still seeing reductions in burglary, we are not seeing as significant of reductions as we have in the past.

We feel that by working together, we can make substantial reductions in burglary in the Fifth Precinct.

A connected community makes it that much more difficult for criminals to escape notice. Our goal is to create an uncomfortable feeling for anyone intending to commit a crime. Career burglars have said that they will avoid areas where they feel neighbors are paying attention and where it is more likely that they will be recognized or caught.

Currently, Fifth Precinct has an evidence-based protocol where officers will be collecting evidence, including fingerprints, canvassing for witnesses, utilizing our Crime Scene Analysts, and so on. Not all scenes will contain evidence but officers will be looking to ensure that where evidence exists, it will be collected.

On a weekly basis, we review crime trends in the precinct. We use this information to analyze where crimes may occur and create focus areas accordingly to allocate our resources most effectively.

However, we need the community’s help in order to reduce the number of burglaries.

What Can You Do?

Following are some recommendations to help decrease the opportunity for crimes in your neighborhood: Please pass this information on to your neighbors and block clubs.

1. Lock all garage doors, including service doors. Avoid driving away as the overhead door is still shutting; the door sensors may trip and leave your garage open all day.
2. Keep your garage doors locked and shut even when you are home to avoid having items stolen from the garage while you are out of view.
3. Keep your house doors locked even when working in the yard. Do not leave your front or back door vulnerable while you work on the opposite side of your house.
4. Watch for ANY suspicious activity/behavior on your block; trust your instincts when something does not fit for your neighborhood. If you see ANYTHING suspicious, call 911. Don't be afraid to use 911 to let us know something suspicious is happening on your block. You are our partners; we need you to call.
5. If you witness a crime, try to look for this information:
   1. People: Estimated height, weight, build, age, race, gender, distinguishing features, and clothing. 
   2. Vehicle: License plate number, make, model, year, and color.
   3. People and vehicles: Time they came/left, and what direction they were last seen headed. 
   4. Also note if a weapon is involved.
6. Attend or start a neighbor Crime & Safety Committee meeting. Be informed and help keep your neighbors informed.
7. Make sure your motion lights work and that when they go off at night, you or your neighbors pay attention to why they went off.
8. Cut down foliage that is blocking lines of sight. We need you to be able to watch out for your neighbors and your neighbors to be able to watch out for you.
9. Stay in contact with your neighbors and welcome anyone who has recently moved in (or those you haven't met yet that have been there for a while).
10. Lock your windows and if you don’t have air conditioning or have to leave the windows open, use sash locks or pin your windows. 

For more information on home security (how to pin windows, etc), please visit http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/police/crime-prevention/ under Home Security Information. All of the current crime prevention brochures are available online in this location for you to download and distribute freely.

Please see attached for further information on how to prevent residential burglary.

What is Fifth Precinct Doing?

Below, we have included the 5^th Precinct Burglary Protocol that has been implemented.

Please note that this protocol does not mean that we are de-emphasizing other crimes. However, property crimes such as burglary affect residents in this entire precinct. We want to continue to increase the livability and safety of the precinct for all residents.

5^th Precinct Burglary Protocol

1. Officers to collect fingerprint evidence if possible.
2. Call out Car 21 if appropriate.
3. Canvass homes in neighborhood.
4. Stop and ID suspicious persons on bikes, especially at night.
5. Coordinate/assign some proactive burglary suppression squads when over minimums.

In addition:

Crime Prevention Specialists will provide burglary prevention info to all block leaders/neighborhood associations.

Sector Lieutenants will coordinate with probation on home checks/warrants on known suspects.

Property Crimes will continue to check pawns daily and get out important information.

Hot spot maps will be put out on a regular basis for directed patrols.

CRT/DP will conduct details to pick up outstanding PC pickup and warrants.

The CodeFor Unit will:

1.  Chart and map a historical beginning of your protocol initiative. Continue to graph the trend week to week with an eye on peaks.

2.  Number the trend or trends using the pattern tracking method to provide the foundation for analysis and reporting at each CODEFOR meeting. 

3.  Create a list of the most prominent suspects, track MOs, ID vehicles used, probationary status (and other tools for patrol) and create analysis for patrol that targets the most prolific property crime offenders for use in virtual roll call.

4.  Measure and report examples of displacement. We can also measure and map the activity/effectiveness via CFS of the assigned squads.

5.  Once five or more burglaries are attributed to one pattern, group or individual, attempt predictive analysis to help you direct squads to an area/time.

6.  In time and after demonstrable results we should use RAND formulas for cost of burglary and estimate the cost benefit to society for the reduction.

7.  Attempt to measure the relationship between burglary rate and incarceration rate of our known and identified offenders from your initiative. 

8.  Explore new channels for communication with street cops, especially those working at night.

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Through cooperative policing efforts (by engaging the community and utilizing police resources) we feel we will be able to substantially reduce burglary in the Fifth Precinct. Please join us in making this precinct an even better place to live and thank you for all that you already do for your community.