APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – As the weather gets warmer, law enforcement says crimes will likely tick up, specifically break-ins.
The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office is warning people on Facebook that an unknown person is walking into open garage doors in the Buchanan, Combined Locks, and Kimberly areas. And now it’s Appleton too.
“Then entering further in the house, whether its the basement or in a number of cases up into the attic access,” said Sgt. Nathan Borman.
Borman says there’s no evidence that this person is stealing anything.
He says it could be someone with a mental illness or someone snooping around.
Borman says there have been close to 10 instances within the past six weeks.
So far, they haven’t been able to catch the suspect on camera.
“We’re getting to that time of year, where it’s obviously getting nice out, people have their garages open, people are moving around a lot more, so this is an opportune time for somebody who wants to get into homes,” said Borman.
Appleton Police Department says since the beginning of the year there have been 19 vehicle thefts, and only one was a locked vehicle.
“Sometimes credit cards are stolen, identifies being taken and credit cards being used,” said Meghan Cash with Appleton Police Department.
Cash says there’s usually an uptick in property theft during the warmer months. But numbers show things are getting better.
“What we’re looking at for numbers last year we probably had more, but I think one thing that we’re seeing now is that we’ve been doing a lot of education publically about locking your doors, locking your vehicles, and we hope we can continue to see to see these numbers go down,” said Cash.
Overall Cash and Borman’s biggest piece of advice is to close those garage doors and to make sure that the doors and windows around your house are locked.
Officials say they will continue to put reminders on social media to lock up and keep neighborhood watch groups up-to-date on suspicious activity.
If you see something suspicious, call the Outagamie Sheriff’s Office at 920-832-5000 when it is happening.
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