KEITH WHITCOMB JR.

Staff Writer

DORSET -- It's become a familiar pattern in recent years: People with second homes leave the area for winter and return in the spring and summer to find their homes were broken into sometime in the past several months.

"A lot of seasonal homes"

It's a problem all over, said Lt. Reginald Trayah, commander of the Vermont State Police Barracks in Shaftsbury. "Dorset is not on an island," he said. "We have burglary complaints all over the place. The one thing that Dorset has that a lot of towns we cover don't, is they have a lot of seasonal homes."

Town Manager Rob Gaiotti said state police met with town officials and residents (about 100 attended the meeting ) earlier this year to talk about what can be done to curb the problem. He said the town had budgeted an extra 80 hours of state police service to patrol backroads in random intervals. That's nearly double the amount of hours, he said. The town had been budgeting between $50,000 and $55,000 for added state police service, and this adds about $10,000 to $15,000 to that, he said.

"It's a healthy part of (the budget)," Gaiotti said, adding that the town's budget is about $1.6 million, which mostly covers road maintenance.

Gaotti said the burglary reports seem to have gone down some in recent weeks, and the hope is people will remember what police have recommended when winter rolls around.

"It's frustrating for law enforcement when we have a seasonal home that doesn't have an alarm, doesn't have a caretaker, so when we try to put the pieces together, our time frame could be three to five months," said Trayah.

He said the burglary problems are not unique to Dorset and not all involve second homes. He said part of the problem is people seem reluctant to contact police immediately when they see something like a suspicious vehicle or person on foot. He said reports of a "green truck" can be useful when the call comes to police within minutes, but when they reports two days after the fact, the information is less useful.

Even when an arrest is made, if a suspect doesn't know where they were four months prior, it can be difficult to tie them to old burglaries.

He said the biggest thing people can do is get together with neighbors and report suspicious activity when they see it, be it a strange vehicle or person knocking on doors claiming to be looking for a dog or have the wrong address. What some of these people on foot are doing is seeing if anyone is home.

‘Nobody knows their community better than the people that live within that community," Trayah said, adding that people should not be shy about calling, even if the suspicious person is legitimate.

Internally, state police have created a central location for information they get on burglaries, and the local barracks has assigned a trooper to oversee them so connections can be made.

Second home owners, he said, should either install an alarm system or get a caretaker. Uncut grass, piles of mail, no lights, are all signs a house is left unoccupied and make it an attractive target for burglars.

"We don't have as many burglaries on houses with alarms," Trayah said. "They know that if they go into that house, we are going to get called immediately."

The following figures were provided by VSP Public Information Officer Stephanie Desaro. She said the numbers reflect incidents handled by the Shaftsbury barracks and do not reflect arrests. Jan. 1 - July 20, 2012

* Residential burglary with no forced entry: 20

* Attempted burglary of residence: Two

* Burglary with forced entry on non residence: Seven

* Burglary where entry was forced on a residence: 31

Jan. 1 - July 20, 2011

* Residential burglary with no forced entry: 21

* Attempted burglary of residence: One

* Burglary with forced entry on non residence: Three

* Burglary where entry was forced on a residence: 31

Calendar year total for 2011

* Burglary with no forced entry: 34

* Attempted burglary of residence: Two

* Burglary with forced entry on non residence: 14

* Burglary where entry was forced on a residence: 55

Contact Keith Whitcomb Jr. at kwhitcomb@benningtonbanner.com or follow him on Twitter @KWhitcombjr