Store break-ins are happening late at night

Unfortunately lately there have been store break-ins in the Center Grove. In the early hours of Wednesday into Thursday morning, the Isabel Riera clothing store on Main Highway had a brick thrown through the front door window and many items were stolen. This is the second time Isabel Riera has been hit this year.

We have so many loose bricks around here that thieves are taking advantage of those. I saw a crime scene detective carrying a brick wrapped in a paper bag and he said that was the weapon used to crash through the window.

Down the street a bit, another clothing store was broken into two months ago. Now many of the merchants are frightened and nervous. "I won't be able to sleep tonight," said one of the nearby store owners. 

When the other store was broken into two months ago, the owner was called in the middle of the night and he rushed over. He ended up sleeping in the store for the next few nights in fear of it happening again. 

These are high end clothing shops. One solution they were told was that they shouldn't have expensive items in the windows! When the landlord at Florentine Plaza was told about the break-ins, their response was, "What do you want us to do?"

The thefts have been between $5000 and $10,000 and not enough to call the insurance companies since that may be the deductibles I was told.

What they should do is put proper windows on the storefronts! A few years back, our last commissioner had all the protective grates from in front of the windows removed. His thing was to make the place look nice. Leave the lights on, take the grates off the windows and the lights will deter criminals. Only it hasn't. 

Sometimes the merchants are their own worst enemies. I'm told that the reasoning for the removal of the grates is because many times they were left down all day or left half-way down.  The BID has a program where they will pay 50% of the cost of heavy impact windows; not sure if anyone has taken them up on that.

Grates need to be back or windows need to be made of protective glass. Let's hope the clueless landlords don't charge the victims to repair the damage themselves.

Maybe cops can patrol the area or at least sit in their cars in front of the stores around the village, like they used to do in days past. There was a time when we saw police on bicycles every day and horseback and patrol cars. Their numbers seem to be down these days. Someone suggested that the BID can add extra security at night. Maybe they can.