The Southwest Precinct says two recent arrests appear to have solved a lot of burglaries — at least eight, and potentially more. We’ve spoken with both Detective Nick Bauer and Sgt. Jeff Durden to get the details you’re about to read: It started with a burglary on August 7th, 3400 block of 47th SW (map) – the resident(s) left the house for just 15 minutes, with a window unlocked or cracked open, and that’s all it took for burglars to get in. With some description information from neighbors, and a GPS-equipped BlackBerry stolen in the break-in, police tracked two suspects – one adult, one juvenile. That led to a search warrant for a house in the 1800 block of SW Brandon (map), where police found stolen property – “tons of it,” as Det. Bauer put it. Read on for the rest of the story:
What they found included laptops, flat-screen TVs, DVDs, cable boxes, and more. And as they’ve continued to match the property – and in at least one case, a suspect’s fingerprints – to other break-ins, they so far have linked these two to at least 8 burglaries (all but one in West Seattle).
Both have records, Det. Bauer tells us, and prosecutors will be reviewing the cases for possible use of the Repeat Burglar Initiative (explained here). As he explains it, that initiative is being used to get longer sentences for burglars who are charged with multiple crimes – rather than just prosecuting them one case at a time, which may amount to nothing more than sequential small sentences. “Case by case, it may not mean much individually, but if you look at a pile of them at the same time – you can see the impact (the criminals) are having on the community,” he notes.
So where are these two suspects now? we asked. When we talked with Det. Bauer yesterday afternoon, he said the juvenile had just been “re-arrested … for a separate offense” hours earlier. And they had a warrant out for the adult suspect. We don’t have names at this point but have asked the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to check into the status of the cases, particularly given the possibility the RBI will be involved.
With that, both Sgt. Durden and Det. Bauer mentioned something of importance that we’ve shared here before, but bears saying again: Make sure that you have identifying information regarding your valuables — serial numbers, photos, maybe even an ID etched/engraved if appropriate. Det. Bauer says it is a massive task to try to match recovered property to crime victims if that sort of information is not available – “I’ve got 10 laptops, I don’t know who they belong to,” he said, as just one aspect of this case. “I’m literally going report by report, calling people.” (Most of the burglaries involved here are in that same general area “behind Madison (Middle School),” he added. Checking our Crime Watch archives, we found this report from April, with burglary victims who said they’d been told about multiple break-ins nearby.)
Det. Bauer said that prosecuting these two should put a dent in the local burglary rate – at least for now.
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