A while ago I wrote about a church here in Cincinnati that had been burglarized 8 times and the Pastor stated in a news report "This is really becoming a hardship for our church."

You think?

This past week I heard another news report on the same church and the update is they have now been broken into 20 times in the past 6 months.

Are you kidding me?

And again, the Pastor went on camera and stated "The reality of it is that if people really, really, really want to get in, they can."

What?

Now this church reported that they are "trying" an alarm system and "thinking about" security cameras.

I am the first to admit, after almost 30 years in this industry, that security is never 100%. I do agree that if someone really wants to "succeed" in a crime, it is hard to stop him or her.

That said in almost all church burglaries we are not talking about a Tom Cruise character, like in the movie "Mission Impossible", being lowered from a wire in the ceiling to steal a high-value item or the Pierce Brosnan character in the movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" where he develops elaborate plans to steal art from a museum.

I guarantee you these criminals that broke into this church 20 times are addicts, supporting their habit, probably barely functional in everyday life, and have discovered one thing: this church is an easy target and they are not doing anything to make it harder for them break into.

The church is reinforcing the criminal activity by doing nothing.

It is like training a dog; if there are no negative consequences for bad behavior, the dog just keeps doing it. In fact, it is almost like positive reinforcement, they keep getting rewarded for a certain behavior.

I am sure at some point Cincinnati police will catch these offenders. For every crime more evidence and the trail leading to them mounts, so it is really a matter of time.

But there is an underlying problem here and it can't be stressed enough with the Christian community - take responsibility for your own actions or lack of.

I saw this when I was working a very hot summer in Chicago in the mid 80's.

People in a particular neighborhood, that never had a crime problem before, decided that they would sleep with their windows, and I kid you not, sometimes their front doors wide-open because of the hot summer nights.

It didn't take long for the area burglars to catch on and before you know it we had dozens of residential burglaries every week in this area. There wasn't a time that I came in to work that there wasn't new home break-ins being investigated.

As arrests were made, these burglars would tell officers that they heard from "friends" that there was this pretty "well-to-do" neighborhood where people were leaving their windows and doors wide open every night. They would tell two friends and they would tell two friends...you get the picture. Soon there were up to 10 burglary rings working that area.

It was my job as the police department's Crime Prevention Specialist to go into these neighborhoods and meet with the residents, because they were pretty upset. I had to inform  them that they were the ones responsible for the crime spree - not the police, and really, not even the criminals.

They were inviting the trouble by their irresponsible actions.

They were shocked that I would blame them and they still wanted to blame the police for lack of protection, the criminals because of their behavior - basically everyone but themselves.

In one meeting I remember a woman standing up and saying "I have the right to sleep with my doors and windows open and it is your job to protect me."

I told her my recommendation would be to leave her purse and some cash at the front door so maybe the burglars would stop right there and not proceed into the house and possibly harm her and her family.

That was probably not the best response and I am sure I was spoken to by my supervisor about the comment, but it gets frustrating when people do not take responsibility to protect themselves and even act recklessly, inviting crime.

Churches are basically guilty of the same conduct.

Incident after incident we continue to hear the same comments like this one from a church member in South Carolina after offenders broke into their church and caused about $28,000.00 in damages and property loss: "We read about it. We hear about it way off somewhere. But when it hits home, it really hurts" she said.

Time to take responsibility for your own security because the losses will continue and the heartbreaks will continue.

It is up to church leaders to secure their churches and stop this cycle of crime so they may do the Lord's work, which is what they were originally called to do.

But only they can do it.

In Christ,

Jeff Hawkins

Executive Director