burglary arrest in SE Richardson

A Signal 37 call (suspicious person) from a citizen on Stillmeadow resulted in multiple arrests for burglary today.

The good news:
* RPD handled the situation professionally after they engaged it
* 4 burglars caught
* no LEOs hurt

The bad news:
* The first officer started underway to the location eighteen minutes after it was called in. The dispatcher gave the "holding a 37" notification three times before it was picked up.

Here is unedited audio of RPD radio traffic during the event. Note that not all the audio is relevant to the burglary, particularly for the first few minutes while the call is awaiting assignment.

I think we got lucky on this one. Professional burglars would have been in/out well before that 18-min mark. I suspect there is a significant gap between the level of concern homeowners have about residential burglary and the level of concern within RPD about the same crime. I get it. It's not exciting for cops to chase burglars (unless you can catch them in the house as heard above). But the citizens care deeply about it.

The situation will change when one or more of these events becomes commonplace:

* Richardson residents start applying Castle Doctrine to the defense of their home.
* Richardson residents get injured or killed by burglars.
* Richardson residents resort to hiring private crime scene examiners when RPD declines to do simple detective work like photography and fingerprinting.
* A city official personally experiences burglary/robbery.
* Richardson residents start running their own armed patrols to secure their neighborhoods. Think this is a stretch? Anyone remember pictures of the "Collin County Militia" that used to be on the walls at the Main Street Liquid Company?
* The white-flighters that rushed to Richardson in the 1970s (now retirees) either sell their houses and retire elsewhere, or start demanding nontrivial amount of attention from city officials.

I am not recommending, I'm predicting. None of these will look good on the local media. And that, as far as I can tell, is the only real leverage anyone has over city government. Reality is useless. Perception is everything.