NJ Jewelers Hit by Rash of ‘3-Minute Burglaries’

New York--In the past seven months, there has been a rash of “three-minute burglaries” in northern New Jersey, in which the suspects get in and out of the store quickly.

According to an alert distributed by the Jewelers’ Security Alliance on Wednesday, between February and August there have been a total of 12 of these burglaries.

In these cases, the suspects cut the power to the stores’ surveillance cameras and/or alarm systems before smashing a window or breaking open a door to get into the store. Once inside, they grab any merchandise that’s been left out overnight in showcases before quickly fleeing the scene.

They are called three-minute burglaries because that is the approximate amount of time it takes to complete the crime.

Three-minute burglaries usually happen in the middle of the night, as has been the case with the dozen recent burglaries in New Jersey.

According to the JSA, most of them have taken place between 2 and 4 a.m. on Fridays, while some have occurred between 1 and 5 a.m. on other days of the week.

The JSA recommends that jewelers put merchandise away in the safe at night. If it won’t all fit and the store’s insurance policy permits out-of-safe storage, then leave out lower-end merchandise and put it into locked drawers or cabinets.

Merchandise left in showcases overnight attracts three-minute burglaries, the JSA said.

The suspects in the New Jersey burglaries are reported to be black males driving a dark-colored sedan that’s possibly blue or purple. Surveillance video of the most recent three-minute burglary, which happened at a jewelry store in Perth Amboy, can be seen on NewJersey.News12.com.

Anyone with information about these three-minute burglaries is asked to contact Lt. Omar Diaz of the Real Time Crime Center in Newark at 973-877-9351.

Last year, three-minute burglaries accounted for nearly half of all burglaries perpetrated against jewelers; out of the 256 burglaries reported, 124 were classified as three-minute crimes, the JSA’s crime report for 2015 shows.

They fell 20 percent in number compared with the previous year, but the average loss increased, from $17,000 in 2014 to $23,000 in 2015.

The most popular day of the week for three-minute burglaries in 2015 was Thursday, while the month in which the most occurred was April, followed by August.