Riley County Police Department Director Brad Schoen told county commissioners Thursday morning car burglaries are on the up tick in the county and while he didn’t have exact numbers in front of him, he said the increase is substantial.
“Vehicle thefts are up a bunch,” Schoen said. “It’s kind of unusual for Manhattan, quite frankly.”
Schoen said investigations in the thefts have identified leads within the community and possible outside help from parties in Topeka connected with the burglaries.
“It’s one of the more significant things we’ve been paying attention to so far this year, because it’s really just so unusual for Manhattan,” he said. “I’d have to go back a long ways before I remember us having as many vehicle thefts as we’ve had this year.”
Schoen encouraged citizens to keep vehicles locked and to not leave valuables in plain sight.
“Interestingly enough, a lot of stuff that is stolen out of vehicles is stolen out of unlocked cars,” he said. “You’d think that if you’re going to leave something relatively valuable in your car, you might at least have the sense to lock it.
“But apparently that’s not the case, so we put those reminders out regularly.”
In other commission items, county Register of Deeds Debbie Regester said her office is ahead in revenue compared to this time last year.
So far her office has brought in $550,962, compared to $373,887 through May a year ago.
“We’re going into our historically busy time of the year, where there are more houses sold and people are moving more in the summer months,” she said. “So hopefully we’ll get some pretty good numbers coming through in the next couple of months.”
