AURORA | Lyn Massey is a believer in the venerable adage that casts suspicion on the acts of those nocturnal.
“Nothing good happens after 10 p.m.,” Massey, manager of Iliff and Peoria Self Storage in Aurora, said with a chuckle in a recent phone interview.
That precept and the nefarious connotations it carries are what spurred the overseer of some 450 central Aurora storage units to recently bolster her security systems. On top of the existing 30 cameras, she added lights, changed all the locks and curbed access, only allowing tenants the ability to check their units between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. instead of 24 hours a day.
“That seems to have really cut down on stuff,” said Massey, who’s managed her location at 2445 S. Peoria St. for the past 13 years. “ … Or maybe I just have relaxed little bit, and I’m not worrying about it in the middle of the night. But since (reducing the hours) we have not had any break-ins at all. I think it’s been good to do it.”
The Sentinel pays for a unit at Massey’s facility to store print editions of its weekly newspaper.
In recent years, Massey said her facility has been the target of several break-ins a year.
But despite the bust of a fentanyl lab in one of her units last year, she said 2020 was not particularly crime-ridden at Iliff and Peoria.
“As far as break-ins, it was about the same as any other year,” she said.
Other storage facilities across Arapahoe County were not as lucky, data show.
The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office reported a some 80% increase in burglaries at storage units across their jurisdiction — which includes unincorporated Arapahoe County and several policing agreements with smaller municipalities — between 2019 and 2020.
“They are out of control,” a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office recorded 115 burglaries at 35 different Arapahoe County storage facilities in 2020 — approaching a two-fold increase from the 64 such burglaries reported in 2019, according to the office’s data.
Thieves were more efficient last year too, data indicate, with 15 units hit in a single push in 2020. That dwarves the nine units pillaged in the most prolific storage unit theft of 2019, according to Ginger Delgado, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office.
In Aurora proper, thieves were even more prolific at the locked personal caches, with a reported 91% increase in such crimes when comparing 2020 to 2019, according to departmental data. The southeastern portion of the city alone saw a 173% uptick in such crimes.
Officials said burglars use a variety of means to ransack the local containers, including following paying tenants on foot, plowing vehicles through fences and hopping gates.
And many are repeat offenders, according to Sgt. Matt Davis with the sheriff’s office.
“Right now we have one crew we’re investigating that’s good for 10 to 15 burglaries,” Davis said in a statement.
He implored residents to use the beefiest locks they can find, remove big-ticket items from their units and catalogue their goods by taking pictures of serial numbers.
“Inventory and take photos of the stuff you’re storing in there,” Davis said. “ … Even if it’s in a safe, a safe can walk away.”
He said motorcycles, ATVs, sports memorabilia and even SCUBA equipment have been some of the recent items nabbed out of local storehouses.
Davis speculated that a confluence of factors has likely contributed to the recent rise in property crime, including economic unrest spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer people tending to their units and an inability to keep repeat offenders in jail due to virus-related detention protocols.
“From a COVID standpoint, there are more summonses being issued for release pending charges, so we aren’t jailing people,” he said. “And there are a lot of people that are simply out of work and looking to see what kind of things they can find in a storage unit, and most facilities don’t have anyone there between 5 p.m. and 5 am., so they can just have kind of free reign of the place.”
Massey speculated that thieves are capitalizing on an increasingly fractured and competitive industry.
“I think they’re picking up on the changes … and as that grows, problems arise,” she said.
Aurora saw a roughly 10% rise in overall burglaries last year over 2019, with 1,645 such crimes reported. Total property crime rose about 17% last year, including a 70% spike in motor vehicle thefts, according to numbers presented to an Aurora City Council policy committee last month.
The seven major crimes the department tracks to gauge the city’s overall crime rate, including homicide, robbery, rape and several others, rose by a combined 18% in 2020.
Denver saw similar increases, Aurora officials have said.
Combatting that upswell in local violence will remain a top priority for local politicos, city council members have said.
“The loudest concern I hear form constituents is about our increasing crime rate,” At-large Councilperson Dave Gruber said at a public meeting in January. “Our residents of Aurora want those rates to drop.”
Why would this be happening? I can’t believe people would be this brazen and start attacking storage units. Where are the police? Ahh I forgot – the police aren’t needed and we can use social workers to take care of society’s problems.