Over the past few years, Doylestown, PA, has seen an increase in crime, raising concern from township members. Despite being ranked one of the ‘safest’ towns in Pennsylvania, there has been an increase in vandalism, theft, fighting, and drug usage.
When asked about what types of crimes have been happening the most over the past few years, Robert Landis, the police officer stationed at CB West High School, said, “the biggest thing is theft, porch pirates, and breaking into cars.”
He claims that these individuals who steal “don’t do it because they are bad people, but because they need to.” Due to the increasing inflation rates, prices have majorly gone up leaving many in poverty. This leads people to resort to stealing out of necessity to survive.
According to the manager of Jules Pizza in town, Briahna Jon-Boyer, most of these crimes are done by “middle or high school students going into town afterschool or on the weekends.” She claims that while Jules Pizza may not specifically experience these crimes, she tends to see teens stealing at stores with tinier objects, since they are “easier to steal”.
A student from Lenape Middle School, located in town, stated “kids would vandalize the bathroom. They would rip the dispensers off the walls and put ketchup on the floors.” Not only has crime in town increased, but also the crime in both CB West and Lenape, the two schools located in the heart of town.
With the hopes to reduce the amount of crime, the principal at Lenape Middle School, Geanine Saullo, said that there has been a “increase in supervision with more teachers in the hallway and the security guard.” While this may have helped prevent some crimes at Lenape, in town and at West crime rates continue to rise.
According to the recent crime reports of the Bucks County Police Station, there has been an increase in juveniles committing crime specifically in the years after 2019. This proves to be correct because Landis explained that after the hardships of Covid many “teenagers have problems and don’t know how to cope. [Stealing] is their coping mechanism.”
When asked about the craziest crime in Doylestown that they witnessed, the student from Lenape responded by saying that after one of the football games they witnessed a fight between two girls. They explained that one of the girls had to go to the police station while the other went to the hospital.
According to the student, “vaping became a big issue.” Officer Landis also confirmed this by saying that “vaping in the bathrooms” is one of the most frequent crimes he sees committed by teens. He continued by stating “consequences for that are pretty steep: detention if not suspension. If caught with marijuana, they get arrested and go to court.”
All in all, the people of Doylestown who once felt safe and secure, are starting to question if their town is truly a safe place to live due to these high crime rates. When talking to the student from Lenape, they shared that they “feel safe for the most part but there definitely needs to be a change.”
According to Officer Landis, with the rates of crime in Doylestown on the rise, it is important “as a society to take measures, security cameras, RING, lock your doors, educate yourself, see what’s going on, watch the news, and use common sense.”
