Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
While many were still sleeping, Falls Township police gathered for roll call and were briefed Tuesday about the spike in crime in the community’ trailer parks in the Morrisville section.
From there, about 10 officers descended upon the Pennwood Crossing mobile home community to work with management to check for squatters in abandoned trailers and make them secure for Pennwood Crossing crews to board up the empty dwellings.
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Police dubbed the mission Operation Take Back. The officers are working to take back the streets in the lower end of the township, a section where crime has grown to concerning levels in the past five months.
Police are focusing their efforts on a 1.2 mile stretch along Old Bristol Pike where crime has jumped. In the past five months there have been 142 thefts, 88 thefts from vehicles, 75 drug incidents, 25 burglaries, 22 stolen cars, 15 fights and 4 armed robberies. Last week there was an attempted abduction reported, but police are not sure if that is related to the mostly drug-fueled crime wave.
“A lot of people in the other end of the township have no idea this exists,” Lt. Hank Ward said as he drove his patrol vehicle. Ward gave LevittownNow.com, and several other media outlets an inside look at the operation.
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“We’re trying to make it better for people trying to do the right things.”
In all, police cleared more than half of the empty trailer homes in the Pinewood neighborhood before management kicked them out. The management team asked police to stop their work after they grew weary of the media attention Operation Take Back brought.
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No squatters were caught during Tuesday morning’s operation. Ward did note that many of the homeless have cell phones and are able to communicate with one another to avoid law enforcement.
See EXCLUSIVE photos from Operation Take Back
“We’re not here to arrest them. We’ll check their names for warrants and then tell them to go if they are clear,” he said.
Tuesday morning’s part of the operation was only phase one of three. The second part will encompass targeted enforcement using a recently active narcotics strike team and the third phase involves bringing the fire marshal, code enforcers and public works together to fix quality of life issues.
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While Pennwood Crossing is a “responsible” trailer park owner, there are more that don’t cooperate with police, Ward said. “One way or another, we’ll get in them,” he added.
One nearby trailer park is behind a rundown old house, which is believed to belong to the landlord. Inside another, a trailer owned by an elderly man in state prison for drug convictions sits ripped apart. Thieves have turned the trailer from livable to a dangerous mess in the past month. All the visible copper is gone and other metals have all been taken.
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Ward drove to one trailer along the Delaware Canal that is already seeing theft. “The skirting (made of aluminum) is usually the first thing to go,” he said, pointing at the exposed foundation of the home. Next, he said, is the copper piping under and inside the trailers.
It was the theft of copper piping from an elderly woman’s trailer last week which caused police to put Operation Take Back Together. Ward said copper piping was stolen between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. from underneath the inhabited trailer in Pennwood Crossing. The woman noticed something was wrong when she went to use the bathroom and it wasn’t working. A plumber came out and police were alerted.
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“These guys are getting pretty brazen,” Ward said.
Police said they will be concentrating extra patrol to the trailer parks, which make up just a small portion of the 28-square-mile township.
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“The operation will take some time but the Falls Township Board of Supervisors and the Falls Township police are determined to improve the quality of life of those living in this part of the township,” a police memo on the crime problem states.
