Princeville residents continue to be victimized by burglars who they say seem to know their every move. Last January, residents of Princeville Phase II held a community meeting with Kaua‘i Police Department to discuss a neighborhood watch initiative in response
Princeville residents continue to be victimized by burglars who they say seem to know their every move.
Last January, residents of Princeville Phase II held a community meeting with Kaua‘i Police Department to discuss a neighborhood watch initiative in response to a rash of home burglaries. They were concerned about six burglaries in the area between Dec. 6 and Jan. 3.
As of Friday, residents are reporting more than 58 break-ins since January. A neighborhood watch program is effective, but the burglars are keeping one-step ahead by carefully casing the homes.
David and Lisa Tompkins have lived in Princeville Phase II for the past five years. They experienced their first break-in last month and say they lost $10,000 worth of items and the contents of a safe.
“They just pried the safe and packed it out,” Lisa said.
It is frustrating because she said the victims are not just the unoccupied homes, but also the families that are just going out for dinner. This happened to one neighbor who recently lost $80,000 worth of jewelry to a burglary, Lisa said.
Waiting for the burglars to get caught is frustrating, and Lisa said the rest of the island should be aware to help prevent more crimes and to perhaps catch someone in the act.
“We should be doing something,” she said.
The neighborhood watch works well, but the work always seems to fall on the shoulders of a few determined people. Lisa said that as people move away or lose interest, the shifts get longer and more frequent.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she said. “It helped, as it united us as a group, but the break-ins still happen.”
She said residents are putting a reward together to encourage others to turn in the burglars. Most homeowners now have security systems and regularly update a secure community web page on home activity.
Early on, it was assumed the burglars were few and on foot. They targeted safes, jewelry and cash — high value, but portable items. Now, the residents report losing larger items that would require the use of a vehicle.
Rory Enright, general manager of the Princeville at Hanalei Community Association, said the private community is divided into two neighborhoods.
Phase I was developed in the 1970s and has six private security guards and a supervisor working around the clock. It still experiences burglaries, he said.
The Tompkin’s are part of Phase II, which was developed around 1990. Its residents are association members but elected to go without the private security.
Phase II borders a golf course and residents said the darkness serves as an escape route to burglars. This makes the neighborhood watch even more important.
“When they got hit in the beginning of year, there was no neighborhood watch in Phase II and that was a great step in making that happen,” Enright said.
Phase I is older and larger with an active neighborhood watch program as the first-line of defense, Enright said. Despite the watch and roving security, some homes get cased and burglarized.
The only luck comes when security cameras catch burglars in the act or if someone is alerted and calls the police in time. The only other hope is when stolen goods are discovered and lead police on a trail back to the robbery, he said.
“Burglary is the toughest crime to solve if you don’t see them,” Enright said. “You have to be idiot today to leave any evidence.”
These burglaries seem to be an organized effort of a few people with the occasional opportunist burglary taking advantage of an unlocked door, he added. This type of crime is a problem all they way up the North Shore and island-wide.
A private community has the ability to control access and security. That is a fine line, however, as Enright said the residents do not desire to create an unfriendly environment.
Anyone can come into Princeville through its roads to hotels or beaches. He said Phase I has no gates and Phase II does but chooses not to have controlled entry.
As a vacation area with rentals and part-time homeowners, it is not always easy to know who is supposed to be your next door neighbor. Enright said that security is good at distinguishing suspicious characters from people passing through before inviting anyone to leave.
“We certainly want to have aloha and friendliness,” Enright said. “We don’t want a barricaded neighborhood.”
The Phase I community held a meeting in January where neighbors initiated a system to let each other know when they are gone, who is house sitting, what kind of cars are coming and going and the names of their contractors, landscapers, gardeners, pest control professionals and delivery people.
The Kaua‘i Police Department said in January that the scenario looked like an inside job. The increased number of undetected burglaries has some residents agreeing to that assumption.
The police said video surveillance is an excellent tool for aiding prosecution of a case but all too often, they choose bargain systems with grainy images that won’t serve as evidence. They encourage systems with maintenance and upgrade service, good resolution and facial recognition software.
Read the KPD home security checklist at www.kauai.gov/police and click on the Community Relations tab for more information.
• Tom LaVenture, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or tlaventure@thegardenisland.com.
