Anecdotal evidence that crime is up in Brighton?

We've been living in Brighton Center for over a decade and until recently never had to worry about crime. The worst we had to put up with was drunken parties thrown by the BC students who rent on our block, and some years even that isn't a problem if the students are polite.

(A couple of years ago there were a couple of really talented guitar players renting across the street from us. They often jammed late into the night with their friends, but man, they were good, so we didn't care. Wish they'd stayed!)

Then, a few months ago, someone broke the rear windshield of our neighbors' car just to steal some toys and kids' cassette tapes. Man, talk about despicable!

Shortly after that, "Do not leave valuables in vehicles!" signs started popping up on the lampposts all over Brighton Center.

Still, we treated the theft from our neighbors as an anomaly. That was probably naïve, but we just didn't want to admit to ourselves that crime was going up.

Well, it's pretty impossible for us to ignore it now, since somebody stole our kids' $100 Radio Flyer wagon right off of our front stoop some time last week. We're not even sure when it was stolen; all we know is that we noticed it was missing yesterday afternoon when we went to use it to take the kids to the park.

I filed a police report to help the BPD with their statistics, and I reported the wagon missing on trace.com, but I honestly don't expect to ever see it again.

More details at http://tinyurl.com/ourwagon, along with a picture of the sign I posted in front of our house this morning in an effort to get our wagon back on the off chance that someone took it by "accident." Yeah, right, good luck with that.

*sigh*