News of Madison Valley

During September, burglaries in Madison Valley dropped to nine from their August level of fourteen, but because the levels of other kinds of crime remained roughly the same, the overall number of police reports dipped only slightly to 49. Car prowl theft returned to the Arboretum in September and accounted for about a third of the Madison Valley reports of that crime.

As was true in August, the police have not posted descriptions of several of the nine September burglaries. Also, there was an interesting incident at the Safeway store in which a shoplifting incident turned out to be a burglary.

1. On Sept. 1 there was a unforced-entry burglary at a home on 24th near Howell.

2. On Sept. 4 at about 9:50 AM police were called to a home on 26th Ave. near Howell to investigate an attempted burglary that had just occurred. When they arrived, a resident told the police that she had been sleeping but was awakened when she heard her bedroom door open. When the intruder entered her bedroom she yelled at him, at which point he left the room, ran out of the house, and ran northward in the alley west of the house. Another resident was on the second floor when this occurred and gave chase to the intruder but was unable to find him. The burglar apparently took nothing from the home before running away, and police were unable to find suspects in the neighborhood.

3. On Sept. 8 a forced-entry burglary occurred at home on 29th Ave. near Pine.

4. During the morning of Sept. 11 a burglar used a ladder stored behind a residence on Pike near 25th to remove an air conditioner from a bedroom window. The burglar then stole jewelry, bicycles, computers and a handgun, in total worth approximately $17,000, from the home. Police found no usable fingerprints at the scene.

5. On Sept 14 an unforced-entry burglary occurred at a home on 30th Ave. near Howell.

6. On Sept. 23 police were called to a residence on 31st Ave. E. near John to investigate a burglary that had taken place during the previous weekend while the resident was away from home. When she returned, the resident noticed that items in her home had been moved during her absence, and she subsequently discovered that six coats, worth approximately $800, were missing. The resident told police that she suspects that her son, who has a drug problem and a key to her home, was the burglar.

7. Sometime during the night of Sept. 23-24 a burglar entered an unlocked garage on the alley between 29th and 30th near Pike and stole tools and bicycles worth approximately $2400. No usable fingerprints were found on the door through which the burglar entered the garage.

8. During the morning of Sept. 24 police were called to an apartment building on 24th Ave. E. near Denny to investigate the burglary of a storage unit in a secured area of the building. The burglar pried open the door of the storage unit and removed items from it. The person who rents the storage unit is on a long trip out of the country, however, so the police and other residents were unable to determine what had been taken. Police found no fingerprints.

9. On Sept. 25 at 9 PM police were called to the Safeway store on Madison and 22nd to deal with two shoplifters who had just been apprehended by store employees after attempting to steal merchandise. One of the shoplifters was known by the “loss prevention officer” at the store to have been arrested for shoplifting at other stores and, as a result, to have been banned from entering any Safeway store in the Puget Sound area. As a result, that shoplifter was arrested for burglary. The other shoplifter received a trespassing warning.

There were two robbery reports during September, one of which appears to involve extreme action on the part of an apartment owner/manager.

1. On Sept. 17 just before 8 PM a robber, described only as a black male, assaulted another man at 22nd and Union and took his shoes and cell phone. The robbery was witnessed by plain cloths detectives who reported the robbery to police headquarters. The robber fled before a squad car arrived and apparently no one noticed which way they fled. The victim told the uniformed policeman that he did not know the robber, but refused to answer any other questions. The victim then left the scene apparently unhurt.

2. On Sept. 23 at around 8:30 PM police were called to an address on 25th near Howell to investigate a fight involving several people. When the police arrived they located a man at 24th and Howell who told them that he had been the victim of a home invasion. The victim told the police that he was living in an apartment on 25th near Howell, but two days earlier had been notified by his landlord that he had to vacate it. He was still in the apartment on Sept. 23 when two men and a woman, apparently relatives of the owner or manager of the apartment, came to his door and demanded that he leave the apartment and turn over the keys. When he refused, the males broke a window and came into the apartment armed with a metal baseball bat, at which time the victim fled. The males gave chase and caught up with him at 24th and Howell where they started beating him with the baseball bat. They then forced the victim to give them his pants, which contained the keys to the apartment, and then left to go back to the apartment. After hearing the victim's story, which was corroborated by a witness who at the time was returning home from the nearby YMCA, the police went to the apartment and found the victim's pants but no one in the apartment. The victim was then taken to Harborview for treatment of his injuries.

Lowell Hargens is a Madison Valley resident and former University of Washington professor of sociology specializing in the statistical analysis of data.