Ripped Off. Fed Up. Where Are Police?

ATLANTA, Ga. -- Here's how bad that a crime wave in one Atlanta neighborhood has become: while 11Alive News was on the way to the neighborhood on Wednesday to check out the emails that viewers had just sent to 11Alive.com about the crime wave, burglars hit two more homes.

"There's nothing you can do" to stop them, said one frustrated and angry resident, Rachelle Willoughby, "if they want to come in [to your home], they come in."

The burglaries are concentrated in the Riverside neighborhood of NW Atlanta. It's off of Bolton Road and Hollywood Road, not far from the James Jackson Parkway bridge over the Chattahoochee River.

Homeowners are aware of 28 break-ins in their neighborhood just in the past two months alone, an average of one every other day. The burglars always strike when the residents are not at home, as if they're staking them out.

They broke into Erik Guberman's house one evening last month just before he came home from work.

"They came in about 7:30 and took all my TVs, all my electronics. Trashed my house."

He said the crime cost him and his insurance company about $40,000.

Residents say police have told them there may be three teams of burglars targeting Riverside.

The burglars keep coming back, often to the same homes they've already burglarized once or twice. Even the burglars police have caught and arrested simply get out within days and come back to the same neighborhood to steal again.

"Our police officers are doing everything they can in our neighborhood," Willoughby said Wednesday. "They're understaffed. They have made arrests. The people are turned right back into the streets."

Willoughby said that, in one case, the burglar went straight from a court hearing on his case back to the neighborhood, met his accomplices and burglarized, again, the house of the woman whose information helped police arrest him.

"Yeah, they came back here. They broke into her house and actually urinated on her back porch. Just to let her know that they didn't appreciate her participating in the patrols and turning him in."

Don Hall has lived in Riverside for 22 years. He has had to install burglar bars over all his windows. He has two, big dogs. Burglars have skipped his house, so far. But Hall recently managed to chase one group of them when he saw them breaking into a house across the street, and he said the neighborhood's crime has never been as bad as it's been the past few months.

"One of them has dreadlocks. Little, twisty dregs in his hair. Got a scar face. Young guy," Hall said. "We have never had a problem over here before. This has been the best community. The break-ins started after the new houses came. They put new houses in. That's saying, you got new stuff. You know, they got TVs hanging from the wall they can see from the streets."

Riverside is in Atlanta Police Zone Two. Major James Sellers of Zone Two told 11Alive News by phone Wednesday evening he is aware of the burglaries and the homeowners' complaints, and has assigned undercover officers to patrol the neighborhood. He said the officers have already made arrests. He said he was still gathering information about the burglaries and would speak more extensively on Thursday about what more he will be able to do to combat the crime.

"We're under seige by criminals," Willoughby said. "And we need help. We need the support of the city, we need the support of the mayor, we need the support of Chief Pennington. We need them to put feet on the ground in our neighborhood and stop this crime wave."