My wife and I were taking a walk yesterday afternoon in our neighborhood and learned about a series of robberies that had taken place- something that doesn't happen very often.
We were concerned when we learned that we knew most of the homeowners and they were elderly.
It was good to see that the robberies were made public this morning with a front page story in the Springfield Republican. Here is a link to the full story. Alerting all home owners in the affected area as well as the rest of the town is good policy. Hopefully, a tip from an alert home owner will eventually result in capture of the individual(s) involved with these break-ins.
In the past the town of Longmeadow has been relatively slow in publicizing such events. Reading the weekly police log in the Longmeadow News or the Daily Log (updated once/ week) on the Longmeadow Police Department website is not an effective way to alert town residents.
We have a high speed automated phone system that can alert all town residents or a specific section of town about a problem or issue within minutes. It has been used in the past effectively to find missing persons, water main outage, etc.
Why wasn't it used to alert town residents about these robberies?
Not everyone gets the Springfield Republican newspaper delivered or watches the local news everyday. I as a resident in the affected area of town want to be informed. Perhaps, such a call would have encouraged a town resident to call the police if they spotted a suspicious individual in their neighborhood.
Our Longmeadow Police Department should consider implementing a more rapid reporting of incidents in our town. Amherst and many other towns in Massachusetts use a system called Crime Reports. Crime in Amherst is updated by the Police Department on a daily basis. Below is a sample of how and what is reported...
If you haven't signed up for the automatic town wide phone list, you should plan to do so.... Click here to signup. In a town wide emergency you will be glad that you did!