Email Archives
Subject: County Alert Re Recent Burglaries
Date Sent: November 18, 2014
Letter from Commander Falcinelli
Below is a message from the Montgomery County police concerning recent burglaries. This crime requires help from the community to prevent and solve. Please review the following information and call the police at 301-279-8000 for a suspicious situation or 911 for a crime in progress.
Dear Residents:
Recently, the 2nd District has been subject to several day time residential burglaries which may be related to a recurring transient criminal activity trend. Unlike other residential burglaries, these occur usually during daylight and during a short window of opportunity. This is one crime that will require the "eyes and ears" of the community to help prevent and solve. Please review the following information on transient criminals and be sure to call the police at 301-279-8000 for a suspicious situation or 911 for a crime in progress.
Consider that the typical "person sitting in a car unknown to the neighborhood" could be transients scouting a neighborhood. Call the police as soon as you observe the suspicious behavior. Try note a tag number and vehicle/persons description if possible. Take pictures if you can.
Although there isn't a specific look to transient criminals, they have often times been described as the following:
- "The appearance of a transient criminal can generally be described as medium to dark complexioned Caucasian, who are often mistaken as Hispanics. Dark hair and dark eyes are common characteristics. The number of suspects involved can be between two and six. At times, American transient criminal women and children will accompany a male suspect, or two women will work as a team. A look out is often used and usually sits in the vehicle and may sound the car horn if the police are spotted. You should note that transient criminals are experts at false identification and will use a variation of family names and birth dates."
- The vehicles usually have out of state tags, especially Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
- Women are often times the lookouts.
- They are known to use walkie talkies.
- They are known to mark the homes or the streets in front of the homes with some type of marking to denote if the house should be entered by the break-in team and when the homeowner may be absent from the home. If confronted in the home, the burglars usually use a ruse like they are looking for somebody who used to live there and apologize to the homeowner.
- They also employee the WSSC uniforms and divert the homeowners to the basement while an entry team goes inside and steals jewelry and silver ware.
- Sometimes multiple females will show up and ask to use a phone. While one is using the phone, the other may go and steal property from within the home while the owner is distracted.
- One suspect will knock on the front door and if no one answers, they will enter through a side door or rear window.
Transients tend to stay in local motels for a few weeks, commit their crimes, and then head back to where they came from. These criminals are good at what they do and blend in very well. I have spoken to many residents who said that they had seen people sitting in a car in their neighborhood around the time of a burglary but the people didn't arouse suspicion so the police weren't called.
Please help us by paying attention to your neighborhoods and calling us immediately upon observing suspicious behavior, especially if you observe out of state tags on a vehicle. Thanks for your help!
Captain David Falcinelli
Commander – 2nd District
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Best wishes,
Ted Garrett,
BCA President