news-record.com

My newspaper column:

Many years ago, thieves broke into my home and stole a television, jewelry and cash. I still remember my anger at feeling victimized and unprotected in my own home.

I thought of that incident when I read Dioni Wise’s story last month, in which Greensboro Assistant Police Chief Dwight Crotts said that five to 10 homes in Greensboro are broken into every day.

Five to 10 homes? Do a little math and that comes to as many as 3,600 reported home burglaries a year.

To put that into a rough perspective, that equates to about 3 percent of Greensboro households. To loosely paraphrase the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, a couple thousand here and a couple thousand there and pretty soon you’re talking real crime.

Since Dioni’s story, we have followed up with several stories that explored crime trends, why and where the break-ins are occurring, and what you can do to protect your home.

Last Tuesday, we published a map that plotted the location of the city’s residential burglaries for the week of Oct. 16-23. That week, there were 63 break-ins or an average of nine a day.

We’re going to make that map a regular feature on Sundays. This week it is on page B3. It will show you not only where each break-in occurred, but, over time, it should help you watch any patterns that may emerge.

I suspect the map will become as popular as the Guilford County’s Most Wanted feature, which we publish on Mondays.

If you have crime-related questions or story ideas for us, send them to us.

That indirectly leads me to a second topic: Is the performance of the police department the biggest problem facing the city?

Some candidates for Greensboro City Council think so, a fact I learned from this newspaper.

Of all the things a newspaper does, helping readers learn about political candidates is among the most important. Because our belief in the importance of democratic principles is so strong, we devote a great deal of time and effort to covering candidates and issues.

For the past month, we have published numerous articles about each of the Greensboro City Council races, PAC endorsements, bonds and bond debt. Don’t worry, though, if you missed an issue or haven’t been paying close attention. You have plenty of time to catch up so that you can vote on Tuesday.

To begin, we have published a guide to the municipal elections in Guilford County on page A7. Then, you can find everything we have written about the candidates and the issues at news-record.com/election.

I hope you’ll take the time to vote. In last month’s primary, 94 percent of the electorate stayed home. Allowing just 6 percent of registered voters to determine how the city is governed is shameful.