Home break-ins in Chapel Hill over the holiday season are down, according to Chapel Hill Police Lieutenant Josh Mecimore.
“We saw about a 25 percent reduction in the number of break-ins over the Christmas holiday.”
Prior to Christmas, Chapel Hill Police made an effort to share safety tips with the community, especially students. Mecimore said those tips might have helped stop some break-ins.
“Seeing the reduction, the hope is that message – and some better participation from students and the other residents – has led to seeing a significant reduction in break-ins over the holiday period.”
Police also increased patrols in neighborhoods that have been targets of break-ins in the past.
“We do some what we call directed patrols during those times. We used some historical data looking at break-ins over the holiday season for the past four or five years. We looked at the areas that had the most break-ins and we assign some extra resources to those areas.”
Mecimore said that often someone will break into several houses at a time and seeing a police officer on patrol can be a serious deterrent.
“What we see a lot of is that people will break into a couple of houses, store the items nearby and come back for them later.”
Tips like locking your doors, leaving valuables out of sight and making sure your home is well lit can help prevent break-ins year around.
Mecimore said police can’t point to a specific reason why break-ins are down this year but they hope to prevent even more next holiday season.
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