Nassau police team fights back as home burglaries spike

Residential burglaries have spiked 28 percent in Nassau County this year, prompting police to start a task force aimed at stemming the crime outbreak.

The new Burglary Pattern Team, comprising four detectives and a detective sergeant, began operating in mid-January as burglaries increased and is focused exclusively on “highly organized” burglary rings that use “professional methods,” said Nassau Chief of Detectives Kevin Smith.

“Burglaries are traumatic for people,” Smith said. “Someone has violated your space.”

As of March 9, Nassau police recorded 172 residential burglaries across the county — up from the 134 in the same time period in 2015, a 28 percent increase, according to department statistics.

Residential burglaries rose in all but one of the department’s six police precinct areas, including a 57 percent increase in the Second Precinct, which saw 44 residential burglaries this year through the end of last month versus the 28 at the same time last year, department statistics show.

A number of factors could be fueling the increase, such as the region’s heroin epidemic and simply thieves seeing opportunity in affluent communities, Smith said.

Overall, major crime is down about 1 percent over the same time last year. But the burglary spike comes as the department has also seen an increase in street robberies and felony assaults from last year at this time.

“Burglaries account for a significant percentage of our crime index,” said acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter. “It’s an invasive crime, and we wanted to take a different approach toward reducing the burglaries in the county.”

The pattern burglaries team was created on Jan. 11 and its members have collectively 87 years of experience in areas such as the robbery and narcotics squads, and one detective worked previously in the NYPD’s major case squad, Smith said.

The team uses predictive analysis, surveillance and coordinates with the Intelligence Unit and other area police departments. Using these tools, it has already made arrests in half its caseload.

So far, the team has solved two of the four patterns of crimes, which date back to 2015, and closed another three patterns of the six patterns that occurred this year. Each pattern consists of five to nine burglaries, Smith said.

At the same time residential burglaries have gone up, commercial burglaries are down 26 percent — there were 67 so far this year and 91 in the same time period last year.

The discrepancy between residential burglaries rising and commercial burglaries decreasing may be attributed to property owners taking stronger security measures at their businesses, Smith said.

Homeowners also need to be more cognizant of the need to secure their properties and install alarms, floodlights and motion detectors, he said.

“It’s time to beef up your security at your own home,” Smith said he would advise homeowners.

The residential burglary surge comes as street robberies and felony assaults are also on the rise. As of March 9, felony assaults were up countywide by about 22 percent, according to department statistics reporting there were 67 this year and 55 during the same time period last year.

Street robberies have also risen about 45 percent, with 68 this year and 47 in the same time period through March 9 last year, department statistics show. “Street robberies are up as well; what drives that? It’s hard to say,” Smith said. “Is some of it fueled by the heroin problem that we’re having right now? It could be. But we’re making a lot of headway.”

The felony assaults, Smith said, are in some cases part of street robberies and are sometimes gang-related, drug-fueled or young people engaged in confrontations.

There doesn’t appear to be a correlation between the burglaries and assaults, Smith said.

“Most burglars want to get in and out. And they don’t want to confront people. I’ve had experience with going to burglary situations where the homeowner has told you, ‘Yes, I confronted the guy and he dove through a window to get out.’ He doesn’t want the confrontation.”

In one case, the new burglary team arrested a Brooklyn man who they say is responsible for 17 burglaries across Nassau County. And Smith said investigators could charge him with more.

Mamuka Bokuchava, 31, of Brooklyn, who worked as a waiter at the high-end Manhattan restaurant Cipriani, was arrested last month and charged with eight burglaries in Port Washington, two each in East Williston and Williston Park and one in Oyster Bay, East Norwich, New Hyde Park, Manhasset and Mineola.

Task force detectives arrested him after a witness described a vehicle fleeing one of the scenes and investigators used license plate reader technology to identify the likely vehicle owner.

The department would not reveal the detectives’ identities because of the surveillance work they do.

“They work with the precinct detectives and analyze their burglaries and say, ‘You know what, is this part of a bigger pattern, does this go across precinct lines, squad lines, village lines?’ ” Smith said. “And they’ll say, ‘You know, we’re gonna work on that one. We think we can make a dent in that.’ ”

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.