By Natalie Pompilio, The Philadelphia Inquirer
A new Philadelphia Police Department guideline will divide the processing of burglary scenes between patrol officers and detectives.
Under a new protocol, outlined in a Sept. 16 memo signed by Chief of Detectives Joseph Fox and Chief of Patrol William Blackburn, patrol officers will process basic home-burglary scenes.
Detectives can visit any burglary scene they choose but will be required to process scenes at commercial establishments and at residences where more than $25,000 is taken or the victim was present when the crime occurred.
The division of labor, the memo notes, “applies only to scene processing. The investigation of all burglaries remains the responsibility of the Detective Division.”
“The truth of the matter is what we’ve tried to do is ensure consistent, improved service,” First Deputy Commissioner Patricia Giorgio-Fox said yesterday. “It wasn’t to eliminate work. It was to divide the work.”
Actually, she said, the policy is not new. Patrol officers have been trained and authorized to take fingerprints at burglary scenes since the late 1990s - and have done so with detectives’ permission, she said. It was a huge time-saver for detectives, who would then follow up on the cases, she said.
What the order does is guarantee services will not be duplicated, she said.
“We’re not asking any more of police officers than we’ve asked of them in the last five years,” Giorgio-Fox said.
The decision to separate the burglaries by residential and commercial, and to add the $25,000 caveat, was a somewhat arbitrary means of dividing the work, she said. Burglaries in which victims are at home when the crime occurs are given priority because there is more potential for violence.
“They’re a big concern to us,” she said. “My experience is you have to be pretty desperate to break into a home when somebody’s there.”
About 10,000 burglaries are reported in the city annually, police said. As of Thursday, the city had tallied 5,900 residential burglaries and 2,000 commercial burglaries.