Hastings' Mayor Peter Swiderski sent out a village-wide email addressing a number of notes he's received regarding recent burglaries reported in Hastings.

In his message, he states that "there is no upward trend" in burglaries; according to Hastings Police Chief Bloomer, Swiderski wrote that there were nine burglaries in 2011, which "five down from the previous year."

"This rate (equal roughly to 1.1 per 1,000 population) is a seventh of the national level, and less than a third of the norm for New York State or for other areas similar in location and type to ours," he wrote.

He does suggest getting a burglar alarm—and activating it. And, like the police have been saying all along, Swiderski implores residents to lock their homes and car doors.

Read the rest of the email below:

As our Police Chief Bloomer dryly puts, we’re not Mayberry and crimes do happen here.  (I don’t think anywhere is Mayberry, not even Mayberry, and a stop on Wednesday night at our Village court will underscore that.)  These statistics are hardly comforting when you are one of those nine burglarized, and I want to stress that our detectives have pursued these cases with great energy.   

I am happy and relieved to report that our police have helped to bring several of the burglars to justice.  Just a few days ago, a gang in Yonkers likely responsible for a couple of the most recent burglaries In Hastings (including the one on Burnside) (and many elsewhere in the region) were arrested through cooperative work among a number of police departments;  stolen goods were recovered as well.  

Some individuals have asked if the Village is adequately communicating about crimes out to the community. When there is a pattern of break-ins or other activity where the Police feel that the community should be alerted, the village has immediately done so.  However, I reiterate that while Hastings is generally a safe community, there is a certain level of criminal activity that happens regardless of public notice.  Broadcasting out every single event would create the sense that there is a crisis or crime wave – and there just isn’t.   

We live in a society where sensationalistic crimes and news dominates the television and many newspapers: it leads to a fear disproportionate to the actual risks we face in day to day life and can make us unduly anxious.  The local paper, the Enterprise, reports crimes in their blotter, as does the Rivertowns Patch.  They give a good sense of what is going on – and I am not inclined to amplify that unless a pattern of behavior leads the Police to believe a public notification is necessary. There is no such pattern worth reporting about now.

These simple steps discourage the easy crimes from happening.  (Chief Bloomer once described how his officers tried the doors on all the cars parked on a street and found most of them unlocked.)  The second step is that you call the police when you see something that causes you to wonder “hmm, that doesn’t look right”.  Residents who have done so have helped time and again, most recently when they called the attention of the police to a fleeing burglary suspect and resulted in his apprehension.   

We don’t believe we are at the point of a need for a formal “Neighborhood Watch” – rather, we should all just keep our eyes open and call the Police (478-2344) if you see something.  This is far preferable to ignoring something amiss only to find out the next day you could have stopped a crime. Normal vigilance and due diligence on locking up will go a long way to making things even safer than they already are.

If you ever have concerns or questions about personal safety, please do not hesitate to reach out to me (mayor@hastingsgov.org) or Chief Bloomer (dbloomer@hastingsgov.org or 478-2344).