Juneau on track to see the most burglaries in a decade

Suzanne Hudson said she moved to Juneau with her husband 15 years ago, attracted by its peaceful quality and seemingly low crime rate. Now she sleeps with a gun in her bed.

“We left our house unlocked, we left our car unlocked and I felt perfectly safe,” Hudson said from inside the downtown antique shop Nana’s Attic that she runs with her husband. “I grew up in Chicago so I’m pretty street savvy and I was just blown away.”

Less than two years ago, Hudson’s shop was burglarized and she said she lost approximately $20,000 in irreplaceable items. She said it was the beginning of a string burglaries that other shopkeepers were reporting at the time and she hasn’t seen it slow down. Figures from the Juneau Police Department prove she’s not off-base — burglaries have dramatically risen in the past two years.

[Downtown businesses lose thousands from burglaries]

From 2011 through 2014, the number of burglaries hovered around 100 per year. Then, in 2015, there was a spike. A total of 169 burglaries were reported that year (that figure includes both residential and commercial burglaries because police do not distinguish between the two categories in their statistics).

Now, six months into this year, that figure looks like it will soon be surpassed. JPD spokesman Lt. David Campbell said the department has received reports for 113 burglaries so far in 2016. That’s through June 30, the latest data available.

If the burglaries continue at this rate, Juneau could experience the most burglaries recorded in more than a decade, according to figures available online in JPD’s annual reports that go back to 2003.

Overall, crime in Juneau in up. In 2015, Juneau homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults and burglaries reached five-year highs, according to JPD’s 2015 annual report. All “serious” crimes increased by 39.59 percent. A lot of those increased crime rates are directly related to drugs in the community, Campbell said.

[New crime report shows drop in drug seizures, spike in crime]

“There’s definitely a link between drug use and property crimes, we’ve always known that,” Campbell said. “You have to deal with it from both ends.”

Part of “dealing” with that problem means that JPD will soon start using two policing strategies that are new to the department: “geographic policing” to better address trends across town, and the “offender model” to try to identify repeat offenders. Campbell said those two new strategies will become effective starting in September.

But still, some people in the community, including Hudson, feel police aren’t doing enough, or anything at all, to stop the problem from getting worse. In an email to the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly, Fritz Cove resident Tom Koester expressed concern that “prosecutors will not prosecute property crimes” and that “police will not investigate property crimes” because of the high volume of burglary cases, the email stated.

“This is intolerable, as we have been suffering almost daily reports of break-ins, attempted break-ins, and thefts,” Koester wrote. “We suspect that much of it is driven by drugs, and the perpetrators are pretty much acting with impunity because they know there will be no police follow up.”

CBJ Municipal Attorney Amy Mead responded to Koester’s concerns by email and assured him that her office “fully prosecutes” such crimes, according to an email exchange that the city provided to the Empire upon request. JPD Lt. Campbell also quelled any rumors, saying the department is not ignoring calls about property crimes.

[Police arrest three in Douglas, find possible home burglary connection]

“Yes, there is an increase in property crimes that are going on and we do take it seriously,” Campbell said. He added that there is room for improvement and the department is well aware of that.

About one month ago, Campbell said the department took a patrol officer off of his beat to do a thorough examination of all of the burglaries reported this year to look for commonalities. All 50 sworn police officers on force handle burglaries and it’s possible there are links between them the department isn’t noticing because the work is spread out among different officers.

“We need to do a better job of saying, ‘Hey, there’s a bigger picture going on here,’” Campbell said. Officers could be dealing with the same suspect across multiple burglaries or other crimes, “but are those two cases being linked together” is the question, Campbell said.

Linking crimes

In order to address this issue within the department, two new policing strategies will be implemented. The first is the “offender model” which works to prepare as much information for prosecutors to make note of “habitual criminals,” Campbell said. Officers typically hand over information about previous crimes for defendants, but this model will include extra work for officers to prepare information about cases where a defendant is considered a person of interest or a suspect so that prosecutors can spot patterns more quickly.

Officers will also be working to spot patterns by way of the second model the department is implementing — geographic policing, or beats. Officers right now work in groups of five to patrol all of Juneau, and do so by dividing and conquering with one officer covering downtown, another covering Lemon Creek, another covering Douglas, and so on.

The new model increases the emphasis on officers responding to calls in their assigned area as often as possible so that people in that area know which officer to expect to patrol the area. It goes to “the heart of community policing,” Campbell said.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to be ignoring areas, but one team is going to kind of take ownership for (an area),” Campbell said.

But even with all of this in place, Campbell said people in the community cannot live in the past — Juneau is no longer the leave-your-door-unlocked place it once was.

“It hasn’t been like that for years,” Campbell said. “We have drugs, domestic violence, sexual assault issues, everything other cities have, we have here. … It’s quite possible for people who live in this town to think it’s this crime free utopia. It’s not.”

On guard

Hudson said she’s well aware now that Juneau isn’t crime free. She said she’s seen lewd acts outside her store and often deals with shoplifters. She’s doing what she can to protect her store from another burglary — she’s installed a security system that continues recording even if it’s damaged — but she said she feels like she has to watch out for herself because police don’t have her “back.”

“There’s still a lot of bitter feelings amongst the business (owners toward police),” Hudson said.

She may not have had her home burglarized, but her store is as good as her home in her eyes, she said, adding “you don’t feel safe ever” after a burglary. She said that burglars are becoming more brazen each time she reads about them, whether it be the weapons they carry or the stores they’re choosing to target.

This year, Juneau Racquet Club fitness center, Tracy’s Crab Shack, the Alaska General Store and the Juneau Arts and Culture Center have all been hit by burglaries, to name a few. It’s causing the way people run their businesses to shift, JACC Executive Director Nancy DeCherney said.

[Juneau man said he broke into Tracy’s Crab Shack to buy drugs, now he faces a felony indictment]

Nine new security cameras monitor the inside and outside area of the art gallery after the June smash-and-grab burglary. The JACC’s safe, which was previously stolen, has since been replaced with a vault that is embedded in the building, not likely to easily be carried off again.

“It’s just annoying that we have to live like this,” DeCherney said. “Not what we wanted but it’s what we have to do. … It’s just not a good time in Juneau right now.”

• Contact reporter Paula Ann Solis at 523-2272 or paula.solis@juneauempire.com.