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Mission Hill apartments being broken into, ransacked of late

Boston Police report somebody is breaking into Mission Hill apartments by opening unlocked windows or doors

Six apartments have been broken into and ransacked since Thursday; all had opened windows or unsecured doors, police say. Taken was what you'd expect: Laptops, ATM and credit cards and coins.

They've happened 115 Fisher Ave., 10 Parker Hill Ave, 12 Parker Hill Ave., 846 Huntington Ave. and twice at 852 Huntington Ave.

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Comments

How hard is it to run sting ops to catch criminals? Pay some dirt poor NU kid X to use his place for a sting. Dim the lights, hide a cop under the bed, and when somebody breaks in, nab 'em.

I'd rather pay a cop to do that than to sleep in the car like the cop I saw last week.

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To lock your doors and windows.

This is a constant in Mission Hill and pretty much the only bad thing that happens here. Don't forget the cars too. The kids leave laptops, iPods etc lying in clear view in a car.

You have mostly 18yo kids living with each other, 1st time away from home, not knowing responsibility. They are probably used to Mommy and Daddy doing everything for them and they just don't pay attention. This is great feeding ground for easy thievery.

Also, take your EarPods out, watch where you walk and pay attention to your surroundings, then maybe somebody won't walk up to you and snatch it out of your hand or ears.

Eventually they learn. Too bad.

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Sounds like someone really hates young people and savors blaming victims.

It's more difficult to make sure apartments are secure when you have 3-10 people coming and going from them all day because you can't afford a place with fewer roommates. You're more likely to have one person forget to lock up. Accidents happen sometimes. I'm sure you've probably left your car unlocked accidentally once or twice before. Everyone has.

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Technically it is victim blaming I guess, but in these situations it is very justified. It's the city, if you can't lock your shit up don't be surprised when it's not there anymore.

PS I'm also a young person with multiple roommates who has never forgotten to lock my car (or leave valuable in it for that matter) or apartment - its common sense.

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Why blame the victim and excuse criminal behavior? There's a big difference between "It's the city, if you can't lock your shit up don't be surprised when it's not there anymore" and "It's the city, if you can't lock your shit up don't be surprised when it's not there anymore because the city is full of low-lifes who will gladly part you with your shit." You people love using the have-not excuse, but haves and have-nots is always a relative concept - I'm a have-not when it comes to a $30K platinum Rolex Day-date just like some hood rat is a have-not when it comes to the latest and greatest cell phone and $300 headphones. Both are unnecessary luxuries one wouldn't mind having but can easily do without, but you don't see me sticking a gun in some lawyer's face and ripping that Rolex off his wrist yet there's plenty of report of people getting beaten (and sometimes murdered) over a crappy cell phone. Shouldn't people have a reasonable expectation of personal safety, or have we turned into a society where everything of value must be locked away in a safe and never shown in public as not to tempt the have-nots who are not responsible for their actions?

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There is a "reasonable expectation of personal safety" in Boston. With and without the proper precautions a large majority of the time you go out of the house you'll be safe. Sure anyone can get mugged or robbed, but if you lock your doors and be mindful of your surroundings you reduce the risk significantly.

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Not to mention that scum in the neighborhood pray on naive students, and then complain about "loud parties." Can't have it both ways.

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You honestly think the people complaining about loud parties are the ones stealing? If that's what you meant, you ought to think a little more.

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Given the frequency of inspections and absentee slumlords, it may be possible that apartments don't have locking windows.

If any one of these kids has a record requesting that locks be fixed, a landlord will have some explaining to do.

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It's not victim-blaming to teach young people common sense from early on, in order to at least minimize one's chances of becoming a victim of a burglary, robbery or whatever. When you get so many people living together, somebody in the group should at least emphasize to everybody the importance of being responsible and locking up whenever one comes and goes to their apartment. It's not difficult at all, and if somebody persists on being irresponsible like that, they should be given an "either shape up or ship out" warning or two, before asking them to leave.

If one leaves his/her car or house unlocked accidentally once or twice, they generally remember and not do it again.

I'm long out of college and live in a large apartment complex here in the Boston area. We always tell people not to leave the front door propped open, to wait for the garage door to close before either driving away from the building and/or re-entering the garage to park, and to lock our apartment doors whether we're home or not, because not doing any of these things breeches the security and makes us all more vulnerable to assault from the outside and puts everybody in danger. The same kind of thing should apply here, imho. If a bunch of 18-20 year olds are old enough to go away to college and live together, they're old enough to display some good common sense and keep those in line who are prone to being less responsible about security.

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well, sure, except for robberies at gun-, machete- and bong-point, carjacking, shootings on Assassination Road, the odd bank robbery … and that's just a quick search on UHub. Yep, them college kids and their unlocked windows and Mommy issues, hoo, boy, I tell ya, this used ta be a safe neighborhood… Remember when "Mission Kill" only referred to how well the local pub trivia team did? Place has gone to hell now.

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While it's unfortunate if somebody gets ripped off in some way or other, it's important to use some common sense.

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Thanks, Miki.

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Where did you see a cop sleeping in a car last week. Let me know and I will take care of it. You should have the guts to do that. In fact, send me a private message and I'll get back to ya.

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You clowns seem to be forgetting that nearly every cop will get to deal with something out of ordinary (i.e. not sleeping in a car/drinking dunkies) at some point, like a gun-toting thug, axe-wielding deranged ex husband or a friendly bomb-lobbing chechen. That's like bashing pilots for sitting back, relaxing and letting auto-pilot do all the work and forgetting that every once in a while they have to land the plane in zero visibility, with 40mph crosswind. It's still a part of their job, but thankfully it doesn't happen on a daily basis.

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Construction worker is more dangerous than being a police office.

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I also believe that our community is overstaffed with them.

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So you'd prefer that there were no cops around? We need cops, whether people like them or not.

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What kind of moronic inference process leads from "I think police are overstaffed" to "I think there should be no police."

Seriously?

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What kind of moronic inference process leads from "I think police are overstaffed" to "I think there should be no police."

Welcome to the wonderful world of the internet.

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The commander of our local district said, almost word-for-word, "I don't have enough manpower to enforce traffic laws". That doesn't match my definition of "overstaffed".

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But enough to put a police officer onsite every time NSTAR opens a manhole cover? Maybe it's a management problem not a manpower problem?

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Officers aren't assigned to paid detail; they volunteer. It's off-duty work. Enforcing traffic laws requires on-duty officers, which apparently are in short supply in my district.

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we, the taxpayers are the same people as we, the utility ratepayers.

We, through our system of laws and through the workings of our government, have chosen to allocate the funds to pay for police officers to work details at construction sites, while at the same time we have chosen not to allocate the funds to pay for police officers to enforce traffic and other laws.

I think that's a screwed-up set of priorities.

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The people who pay ultities are spread throughout the country and world (National Grid being an international company), while your traffic enforcement officer is being paid pretty much by the taxpayers of Boston. So the City likes to increase detail rates instead of pay raises.

So you aren't allocating funds for details the same way you allocating funds for line officers.

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Somewhere, the utility has a cube farm full of accounting people whose job it is to allocate costs (such as construction, permitting, details, etc.) at the state and municipality level; they then use this information to go to the utility regulators to set the rates paid by ratepayers. So I pay for the details in Boston, but not in London; the London ratepayer pays for the details in London, not in Boston.

The city likes details because it's a way of paying for police without it showing in the budget, but at the end of the day it's somewhat intellectually dishonest, since it comes out of my pocket one way or the other, irrespective of whether it's paid by the City of Boston payroll department or by Keyspan.

In any case, I'm not particularly against details, I'm simply against the way they are accounted for.

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If the City agrees to increase the detail rate in exchange for the Union paying more of its heath insurance costs. And that is what the City does, and sometimes the union takes it, sometimes they don't.

And details also bring in a few million dollars a year in surcharges (the city gets 10% of every detail dollar worked).

And the City gets more cops on the street that can listen to the radio.

Of course the cops don't care about the above reasons for the most part, they just want as much money as possible. But our discussion is about the City and how they look at details and account for them.

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How hard is it to do arithmetic? How frequently is the typical apartment broken into? That number would tell you, on average, how many decades the cop would have to wait under the bed before nabbing the first crook. Maybe not the best use of resources?

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Another brilliant suggestion from the incomparable Will The Tulip. Budget problems be damned, I can only hope that the City of Boston hires him as a special consultant, and soon, since he seems to know a simple and obvious solution to every single crime that is reported on UH. The city can't afford to be without his inestimable brain power a moment longer.

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Prop a window and put something valuable in conspicuous sight. That's what a sting is. Bait the trap.

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You could prop the window open WITH a plasma TV and kill two birds with one stone! Or hang a big banner outside the window saying "Valuable stuff in here! Please do not steal!!"

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But I'll bet somebody would be dumb enough to fall for that. I'm satisfied if we catch one guy.

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I know you're speaking facetiously

See, I knew you were smart!

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THAT'S ENTRAPMENT WE ARE GOING TO SUE FOR MILLIOOOOOOOOOOOONZZZZZZ

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