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They want your TV, your laptop and your jewelry.

KHOU-TV

These are the burglary hotspots 11 News discovered.

They’re burglars, and they’re hitting houses by the dozens in some Houston neighborhoods.

If you live in one of these hot spots, check your street for stats

11 News put a special computer program to work to find house burglary hot spots and hit the streets to find why burglars are avoiding some neighborhoods almost entirely.

Analyzing raw numbers from the last two years, a special mapping program found five hot spots.

It found five hotspots, one in the northwest just off Antoine — a cluster totaling some 537 burglaries.

But it was in southwest Houston where the crime mapping program found four hotspots, two them particularly bad.

The Southwest Freeway split this one, sweeping north from Bellaire Boulevard all the way to Westheimer.

Burglars struck there 1,034 times in two years.

Farther west in the Alief area, a hotspot of 450 burglaries.

But south of there, in areas long known for crime, two big hotspots with intense clusters.

One between the Beltway the Southwest Freeway had 1,062 total burglaries.

The other, a couple-mile corridor crime: 1,011 total burglaries.

Breaking it down further, there were as many as 54 burglaries in just one year, in one neighborhood, on just one street.

“I’m thinking about moving into an area where crime isn’t too bad,” one resident said.

No one has to tell these residents crime’s bad, but what works to fight it?

Analyzing those burglary stats house by house led 11 News to a street called Ludington where something very strange was going on.

Following Ludington from the area with all the crime and crossing over Fondren into the Northfield subdivision, 11 News and found Homeowners Assocation President Etan Mirwis.

11 News: “How bad is the crime in your neighborhood?”

Mirwis: “It’s basically non-existent.”

No crime?

His neighbors have burglar bars and security systems, but so do some of the homes in the nearby neighborhood where crime is bad. 

The big difference: apartment complexes.

The high-crime side of Lundington Drive had lots of them — the low-crime side none.

“Well, I think it’s easier for people to move around in these complexes, lot of foot traffic in there,” HPD Officer Andrew Duncan said.

Duncan, working out the Fondern Division station, seldom leaves his cubicle but has solved hundreds of crimes.

“We have a database that allows us access to all their reports,” he said.

The database recently coughed up a report from a patrol officer who’d stopped a car leaving one of those apartment complexes.

The backseat was full of TVs and jewelry.

With no proof they were stolen, the officer had to let the driver go, but not before taking the pictures.

Using those photos, Officer Duncan searched crime reports and matched the merchandise to recent burglaries in an apartment complex.

Cased closed.

HPD has also added officers in the area and is working with apartment managers, but will anything match what the more affluent homeowners in that subdivision are doing?

Not only is it harder for a stranger to go unnoticed on these quiet streets, residents also pay for a round-the-clock patrols.

They also got Ludington turned into a one-way street where it enters their subdivision, drastically reducing the number of cars cutting through the neighborhood.

“Easy access is an invitation for problems,” Mirwis said.

More than individual homeowners fending for themselves, neighbors working aggressively through an association have helped cut crime here.

It’s led to a harsh reality: The amount of crime in this hotspot can depend on what side of the street you live on.