The crime reports for November are below. Another good month on the overall numbers with only two residential burglaries. Two of the robberies I mentioned last time are shown below in this month’s report. No robberies have been reported thus far in December. Last month, I had given you some safety tips for the holidays, one thing I forgot to mention is to avoid having packages shipped to your home where they might be left on the porch. One option is to have them delivered to your office. Another option is to ask the sender to require a signature. But you can also have your packages sent to the UPS Store at Mockingbird and Greenville. They will receive and hold your packages until it is convenient for you to pick them up during normal business hours. They normally charge for this, but if you mention that you heard about it from the LGNA crime watch, they’ll waive the fee.

Attorney Found Beaten

One of our neighbors, a resident near Matilda & Lewis, was found beaten last Friday night near the front of The Crown & Harp (formerly the Cavern.) This is about a block from his townhome. The story has been in the media quite a bit, but police have very little concrete information so far. After having drinks in Uptown, the victim took a cab to near his home. He was picked up by the taxi in Uptown at 1:30am and was found beaten about 30 minutes later, so this happened in a very narrow window of time. Robbery does not appear to be the motive since his valuables were still on him. This was a very grave incident and the victim is still in a medically induced coma. There is a lot of speculation about what happened and potential motives, but it is purely speculation at this time. DPD could use your help. If you happened to have been in the area at the time and saw anything, please let DPD know.

Thieves Steal the Darndest Things

Two theft trends this month. The first is tires/wheels. There were three incidents this month of tires or wheels being stolen off of vehicles. They occurred on Penrose, Vanderbilt and Morningside all on different days. In two of the cases, they stole the tires off the car, while in the other case they stole only a spare. Our ENP officer tells me this is an easy score for the thieves during the holidays as the wheels are easy to convert to cash.  Also this month, we got a visit from the planter thieves. Two neighbors on Llano both had large planters stolen from their front porch. The good news is that these guys seem to have been caught. The media is reporting that just a few days ago, an arrest was made. These guys had been selling them to a third party who was in turn then reselling them. The thieves turned in the “fence” and all four have been arrested. These thefts had been happening all over town and video surveillance from a home in Highland Park led to a lead which helped police wrap up the case.

 Chop Shop Shut Down

For some time now, our ENP officer has been watching a home in the 6000 block of Belmont. It has been the source of numerous complaints from neighbors on that block. There had been a previous robbery (between known acquaintances) at the site and one of the parties involved was known to be connected to a gang. In the last week of November, in responding to a disturbance call, police discovered a stolen vehicle in the backyard. Other units were called in. It looks like these guys had been operating a chop shop in Oak Cliff but had just recently moved it to our area. Its been shut down now and last I heard there had been an arrest, other arrests possibly to come. Our ENP officer is contacting the landlord to discuss the benefits of doing criminal background checks on his future tenants. We’ll continue to watch the property on the ENP patrols to make sure the landlord doesn’t let this happen again.