Daylight robbers target Indian American community

Washington, Oct 14 : A spate of daring daylight robberies specifically targeting the Indian American community in Fairfax County, Virginia, has created panic.

The robbers have taken away large amounts of jewellery, passports, electronic goods like laptops and digital cameras.

Police complaints and desperate follow-up activities have met with little success so far.

The crime is almost like photocopies. The robbers drive in around mid-morning, when the people in the house are away, may be at school or work.

They generally enter through the backside of the house or even break open the front door, go to the bedrooms, ransack and then carry away whatever they could grab.

To protect themselves, the Indians have scrambled to instal security devices. But in some cases, the gang was able to disable the system by cutting all the wires and also by ripping off the key board (which regulates the alarm system) from the wall.

Eleven Indian American homes have been robbed in the County so far and the last four happened last week.

According to the police, they are unable to follow up more closely because of budget crunch. They also feel the gang of robbers could be out of work people and may have taken to stealing due to economic hardships.

In one such incident, the next door neighbour was looking through the window, when she spotted a strange person running out of his car in the parking lot and shortly heard a big banging sound. She thought some work was being carried out in the house and did not take any further interest.

Unfortunately it was a robbers gang that was breaking open the front door. They ransacked the bedrooms and escapted with gold worth more than 20,000 dollars.

Similarly the Indian American community in New Jersey and Texas, especially in Houston, has also been targeted. The community feels the robbers could be following them from Indian grocery shops to find out where they live. Some fear the robbers are carrying metal detectors to locate the gold kept inside the house.

According to crime statistics compiled by the Texas Department of Public Safety, there were 15 burglaries in the city of Oak Ridge North during this year.

Twelve burglaries have been committed in the past two months alone. The sudden spike in that type of crime prompted the Police Department to issue a Nixle alert on October 9 to the city’s approximately 3,800 residents.

Police officials say some of the increase in the break-ins can be attributed to current economic conditions.

"People are out of work and they’re having hard times," they say.

"People take to crimes, as jobs are hard to find, and maybe they have families, children to feed." Meanwhile, the Indian community has been running from pillar to post to get elected representatives to hear their case and also to bring the matter to the attention of the Indian Embassy in Washington DC.

The Indians are so scared that they have printed flyers to let everyone know that Indians are being targeted. Even the local media has been carrying about the burglaries. However, main newspapers like the Washington Post and the Washington Times have so far not taken any note of the crime.

--UNI

(c) 2009 Published with permission from United News of India.
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