Picture this!

One morning you remember you need to fill your gas can. You go to your storage shed in the back yard to get your gas can. You open the door and …

It’s gone! So, too, are most of your tools and other equipment.

Quick, what do you do? What does any good citizen do? You may take pictures. You may look around and do a quick assessment of the area. Then you grab your phone and call the police to report the theft of your property.

You will expect a response from your municipality’s law enforcement agency. You know the response probably will not be immediate, because this is not a life-safety issue. But you do expect the law enforcement agency to show up; take your statement; get a list of the missing items and file a report.

Your list of missing items might look like this:

(click on list above to enlarge)

In a day or two you might expect that there would be follow-up from the law enforcement agency. Certainly, you might expect to read a report of the incident in the POLICE LOG in the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era.

Surely, you think, the theft incident would be listed in a local blog with all the other listings provided by the law enforcement agency to the municipally-connected blogger.

Alas, there is no mention of the theft of your property.

And now, you reason, that the person or persons who have your property will try to off-load them. So, you visit local “buy and sell” shops and share your list of stolen items with the proprietors of those places … just in case.

Then weeks pass and you hear nothing more from the law enforcement agency.

That’s exactly what the folks at Laurel Hill Cemetery did!

(Click on above list to enlarge)

That is exactly what Jason Schmitt did.

When Columbia news, views & reviews spoke with Schmitt, the property manager of Laurel Hill Cemetery, he claimed that his grounds keeping supervisors did just that. In an interview yesterday, Schmidt and his staff told us that the most recent incident of theft is “not the first” one at Laurel Hill Cemetery. Over the night in late August, someone cut the lock on the secured facility and made off with the items on the above list.

Two Columbia police officers responded within 20 minutes; they conducted an on-site investigation; used a “fingerprint kit” and took a copy of the inventory. And they left.

So far, none of the items taken have been returned; nor have the local law enforcement authorities gotten back to him with any kind of report. And there has been no publication of the crime in the daily Lancaster newspaper, though many incidents from other municipalities are published regularly.

A source at Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. related that while the daily POLICE LOG is a not comprehensive list of crimes and offenses; a newspaper reporter edits the reports submitted by municipalities though it often does not publish the more mundane (traffic stops, obedience to traffic control devices, etc.) ones.

Columbia is one of the County departments that submits a prepared list of offenses and crimes “once or twice a week” – the source admitted that Columbia’s reports show “one of the least” active listing of crimes and offenses of all municipalities.

Strikingly similar

When a rash of home burglaries in the Millersville area, this Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era article began, “Millersville has been hit by more than a dozen house break-ins in the past several months, with the stolen loot totaling $50,000.”

Later in the month, citizens in Millersville (Manor Township, too) became concerned that they were uninformed about crime in their town. In a Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era newspaper article, one resident said, “We in Millersville don’t know what’s going on with crime. This is why we want a police blotter and more correspondence from the police department to the newspaper.”

In early August, “Millersville Borough police Chief John Rochat warned residents about the burglaries during Millersville’s July 27 borough council meeting.” (SOURCE: Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era)

Editorial Concern

When a home or business or a car or personal property is violated by theft or damage, neighbors and other citizens must be informed of the threats to the community. It is irresponsible not to cast alerts to the community when danger, risks and threats to personal and property safety occur.