Written By: Juliana Bomark, Food and Drink Editor
Photos By: Isaac Jessup
In an area with a reported population of 70,383 in 2024, according to the World Population Review, Grand Junction, Colorado is no stranger to property crimes. Many articles and statistic websites have labeled Grand Junction as a High-crime city, but can readers trust everything they read online? What do the professionals have to say about the crime in the Grand Valley and how does property crime impact the whole population of Grand Junction?
Grand Junction is one of the smaller Colorado towns but is a high-traffic area, bringing individuals in from the local surrounding towns such as Fruita, Delta, Palisade, Loma Colbran, and Mesa that do not have the same resources. This makes the county a business hub area where most big-name shops like Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, and City Market reside. Grand Junction is also a very close exit from the high-traffic interstate I-70, so this location brings in a lot of individuals from out of town, making Mesa County a higher-risk area when it comes to property crimes.
Lieutenant Mark Johnson, a lieutenant at the Mesa County Sherrif’s office described property crime as something where the crime is committed towards a piece of property. There is a victim but the crime is not done towards the person as the victim, so when you steal something you are taking an item from somebody so you have a person thats a victim but no physical harm was committed,“whereas if you hit the person thats what we would consider being a person crime,” Johnson said If you break into a person’s house and you steal their belongings we classify that as a property crime, even though you’re violating the very sanctity and the privacy of their home”
This means that a property crime can only be labeled as one if no persons involved in the confrontation are injured, but as soon as an assault or violent action takes place, this is no longer a property crime but a crime of violence
The Mesa County Sheriff’s office deals with these property crimes daily, and Johnson labeled the property crimes the deputies deal with as the Big Five: Auto theft, burglary, criminal mischief (typically labeled as vandalism), theft, and theft from auto which is theft from motor vehicles.
In an October 2023 article by Travel-Safe Abroad about the 10 most dangerous cities in Colorado, Grand Junction was titled the most dangerous city in Colorado regarding crime and property crime rates. The article states that there is a 1 in 23 of becoming the victim of a property crime in Grand Junction.
Wendy Likes, the Public Information Officer from the Colorado Sherriff’s office ran the Travel-Safe Abroad article through an Artificial Intelligence (AI) detector and found that AI wrote the piece. While sourcing the information backward, it was found that these statistics were false, and seemingly made up. Likes warns consumers to do thorough research before falling into the trap of falsified information posted online. The internet does not have enough regulation to stop these articles from making it to the top of the search engine pages. Even though this article was proven to be a hoax, the rates of property crimes are still a very prevalent factor in Mesa County that can impact anyone at any given time.
The property crime rate in the Grand Valley has been on a steady drop, According to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office website there was a noticeable drop in property crime of 24.7 percent since 2008. The Mesa County area has continued to see a decline in each category of crime, although the area still deals with about two or three property crime cases per day.
According to the Mesa County Serrifs Office theft is the highest percentage of property crimes that occur in the Mesa County area, but other crimes such as burglary and auto theft are also very common.
While interviewing with the sheriff’s office at 3 pm, two different live property crime cases were ongoing in 45 minutes. This is just a one-off experience because crimes have no set period of when they will happen.
So what are some practical ways citizens of Grand Junction can avoid becoming one of these victims who is impacted by property crime?
“By in large the vast majority, 99% of all thefts from auto (vehicle break-ins) are young people who go around neighborhoods trying door handles, and if they find that your car is locked, they keep going and they are playing the odds that you didn’t lock your car,” Johnson said.
This means that citizens of Mesa County can prevent themselves from becoming victims of property crimes simply by locking their car doors while leaving a car behind for prolonged periods do not leave any valuable items behind, because in the end the perpetrator does not care who the person they are stealing from is, all they see while breaking into your car is the value of the items, according to Johnson.
The other things that the sheriff’s office recommended to keep reducing these numbers of property crimes are lighting on houses, trimming bushes to provide fewer areas for perpetrators to hide, and working on installing better home security systems that cover more acres than the typical household security systems.
Another big spot for burglary and theft is in big and small businesses. There are multiple cases of shoplifting where the business lets the suspect get away due to a lack of loss prevention officers, Johnson said.The impact of shoplifting is what makes it important to the sheriff’s department because the more missing inventory the higher the spikes in prices will become to account for those lost products.
Boot Barn, a local business located at the Mesa Mall, has witnessed these shoplifters and had hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise stolen. Due to the ongoing cases Boot Barn was not able to speak on this topic, but an anonymous source from the location offered one perspective.
“ Property Crimes are not a small issue, every buisness will deal with them at one point or another, it’s just how we go about taking addressing the issues and making sure it does not go unnoticed,” they said.
Browns Cycles, A small business located on Main Street, an area with high foot traffic, has faced the harsh truth of property crimes. After two of the bikes they had placed on display, they have done all they can to get these bikes back. Including spreading their information and images throughout other local businesses and to the Police Department to retrieve these bikes. Luckily for the owner Chris Brown, one of these bikes was returned and the other was spotted around the Grand Valley area.
Another business that has seen a heavy impact is Moon Mountain Gems, a locally owned small business that sells unique rocks, minerals, and crystals. Jeremy Bergen, a professor at Colorado Mesa University, owns this business along with his wife. Owning a business while also working as a full-time computer science assistant professor, has shown its true hardships. They have owned the store for about a year and three months and have learned the harsh truth about property crimes.
“I know of three verified instances of shoplifting, I strongly suspect that has been going on a lot longer than that, we really didn’t notice or have evidence of the first shoplifting until October of last year but I believe it has probably been several other instances in the past year,” said Bergen.
The workers have dealt with different grades of shoplifting such as petty shoplifting; where only small amounts of products are taken(less than $300)—and high-stakes shoplifting; where the value of items stolen slowly increases in value. In one particular case this January they dealt with an individual who gathered over $400 items.
“We are a small business, my wife and I both have full-time jobs, and we have two employees here, sometimes it is painful to see these people pocket various items and then walk out without paying for them, and unfortunately thats the world we seem to live in these days,” Bergen said.
After sending the security footage to the police department, it took almost seven months to get this information posted to crime stoppers. After seven months of silence and not hearing from the Police Department the article was posted on crime stoppers without any prior knowledge from the owners.
Bergen wants to keep the business open and successful for as long as possible. “ I have two employees to think of I want them to have a constant paycheck, and if people are stealing from us well that runs the risk of us not being able to pay the bills. The store is profitable, however with the shoplifting that cuts into the profitableness.”
While speaking to the surrounding business the owners feel that the only way to combat this issue of stolen merchandise is simply to work together and produce a safer security system while keeping higher valued items protected in cases, Bergen said.
blockpartygj.net 