Springs Police: certain crimes more frequent in the heat

Posted: Aug 4, 2011 10:19 PM by Matt Stafford
Updated: Aug 5, 2011 6:50 AM

Interesting numbers are coming from Colorado Springs Police concerning crime; when our temperatures warm up, they say we all need to be extra vigilant at home. Springs Police looked at calls from the last two years and they're finding that the number of calls certain crimes rise right along with your thermometer.

Some places have more than others, but every neighborhood deals with a certain level of crime. Officers say though that calls for certain services tend to go up in the summer months.

They looked at several specific categories, including; domestic violence, disturbances resulting in cases, all disturbance calls, and burglaries. Some categories remained at constant levels, like domestic violence and disturbance calls resulting in cases, no matter what the temperature was. But the number of calls for burglaries and all disturbance calls increased as the weather got warmer.

"As the temperature went up, they went up," says Sgt. Steve Noblitt with C.S.P.D.

From the dead of winter, to the middle of summer; the number of burglary calls jumped to around 30 percent, the total number of disturbance calls rose by nearly 40 percent.

Police say lock your doors and windows, and make sure the garage door is down; those are lessons that some people learn the hard way.

"We've had a few break-ins and we've had things stolen, like a motorcycle," says Kevin Schroeder, a Colorado Springs resident. "Usually it does happen in the summer."

Schroeder says he had his bike ripped off from an alley behind his home, but now he's cautious about keeping valuables in that area.

"We make sure that we don't do that anymore and we make sure things are locked up," says Schroeder.

That's advice that police say we should all follow.