|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A recent rash of burglaries has unsettled, upset and frustrated residents of the Sharon Heights neighborhood in Menlo Park, and they have implored the city for help.
“We are in the middle of a wave of home burglaries in Sharon Heights,” resident Jacqueline Wender said in an email to The Almanac. “Home burglaries are a problem throughout the city and the entire region, but right now, Sharon Heights is getting hit really hard.”
The level of worry in the neighborhood has reached a point where more than 100 residents recently gathered at a community meeting to lay their concerns in front of police and city leaders and ask for what can be done, including the possibility of employing automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology despite the issue of privacy.
The affluent, lush-landscaped neighborhood with a golf and country club has experienced more than a dozen burglaries in a little over a month.
According to police, 14 break-ins occurred from Jan. 4 to Feb. 12. No arrests had been made.
One of those break-ins happened Feb. 10, the day of the community meeting attended by about 125 residents and police and city representatives, such as Cmdr. William Dixon, Mayor Cecilia Taylor and Council member Maria Doerr, in the auditorium of St. Bede’s Episcopal Church on Sand Hill Road.
The Sharon Heights Community Association arranged the meeting in partnership with Doerr, who represents the neighborhood in western Menlo Park along Interstate 280 and Sand Hill Road.
The association also wrote a letter to the council, summing up the meeting.
“None of us wants to live in an atmosphere of fear as many of us are now experiencing as to the safety of our families and homes because of the surge in break-ins,” the association said in the Feb. 13 letter. “In view of the rising number of break-ins, how does our council propose to protect and serve our residents?”
‘None of us wants to live in an atmosphere of fear as many of us are now experiencing as to the safety of our families and homes because of the surge in break-ins.’
Feb. 13 Sharon Heights Community Association letter
The letter signed by association members Maya Sewald, Brian Kissel, Cat Carlton and Derek Marsano raised the idea for the council to pursue ALPR as a tool to help combat crime.
Other nearby jurisdictions such as Atherton and Woodside have already installed the camera system that identifies vehicles of possible suspects in crimes. In September, the Menlo Park council studied tech company Flock Safety’s ALPR system with gunshot-detection capability but held off moving in that direction, citing privacy, cost and other issues.
However, the association said in the letter, “prioritizing safety and security over privacy seems to be an obvious choice” given the recent burglaries and other crimes.
The association urged the council to ensure the neighborhood’s safety by keeping police fully funded, which it said could lead to deploying crime-fighting tech such as ALPR, hiring additional officers for patrols, establishing community-watch programs or exploring other initiatives.
The association acknowledged that Menlo Park needs to balance resources across numerous objectives but argued that residents’ safety and protection of their property should be near if not the top of the city’s priorities.
“We encourage the council to move quickly to determine and implement the most cost-effective solutions to address the increased crime in our community,” the association said. “We don’t want Menlo Park to become an easy target for home break-ins and other crime among cities on the Peninsula.”
Doerr told this publication that the city is responding to the residents’ concerns.
“I’m very concerned about the break-ins in our community,” she said. “The police are doing their best to investigate these occurrences and doing extra patrols.”
ALPR remains on the table, she added.
The council has not taken any formal decision against the system, she said. “The conversation is ongoing.”
Police Chief David Norris agreed, telling The Almanac that his department will bring the matter back to the council at a certain point.
Many cities in San Mateo County and Palo Alto already use ALPRs, he said, but “we’re not looking to jump into Flock cameras just because all of the other agencies are using them. We are looking to get into Flock ALPR cameras because they are an effective crime-solving tool and crime-prevention tool.” Flock ALPRs are installed in Atherton, Woodside and Portola Valley.
With or without ALPR, he said, police are taking the burglaries in Sharon Heights seriously and investigating them accordingly.
“Any crime that occurs anywhere in the city is of concern to us,” Norris said. “When someone has their home broken into, that can be a particularly difficult and nerve-wracking experience for the people in that residence.”
He added: “We are very interested in bringing the people who are responsible to justice, and we are using all of our available tools as well as working in a team environment with other agencies that are experiencing similar problems to try and identify the people responsible and to get them held to account.”
Just late last week, several residential burglaries (a third was reported on Lupin Lane on Friday evening, Feb. 16) in Atherton were reported in as many days.
Menlo Park police are also spreading crime-prevention tips to residents, department spokesperson Nicole Acker said. Those include making sure their doors are locked, installing a home-alarm system and improving lighting around their property.
Inside Facebook Marketplace’s thriving – and largely unregulated – food businessApril 7, 2026 8:58 am