By Toby Jones
According to The Police Executive Research Forum a number of police departments believe they're seeing an increase in crimes directly related to the poor state of the economy.
It seems this trend is even affecting Bay View, a summer only Northern Michigan resort community.
In a typical off-season, 2-3 cottages will be broken into. But since November, 38 cottages have been burglarized.
Bay View is an idyllic summer Chautauqua community made up of 435 Victorian cottages. To be on its grounds gives one a taste of America in the 1950's. Residents rarely lock their doors and children have free reign to run the grounds day and night. But this winter, nearly 10% of these summer only cottages have been broken into and burglarized. Bay View's Executive Director and former police officer John Stakoe is concerned and a bit baffled by this unprecedented string of burglaries.
"Clearly as you've pointed out this is something that is extremely new to Bay View in its 136 year history. We've been very concerned about it. Internally, we're doing everything we can to keep the cottagers apprised, and handle things on, from an administrative basis. We're working very closely with the State Police and the Sheriff's Department. We're sharing intelligence information. And we're very pleased with the response that we're getting from the police agencies, they're as concerned about this as we are and hopefully we can wrap this up fairly soon."
Bay View cottage owners are receiving regular security reports and updates and will continue to until these burglars are apprehended and brought to justice.