Thousands of dollars worth of chairs and tables have been stolen from Swiss Avenue Historic District homes east of Downtown Dallas.
A rash of patio furniture thefts has made for some bare porches along Swiss Avenue, east of Downtown Dallas.
Cameron Kinvig described the situation as "an epidemic."
Kinvig, president of the Swiss Avenue Historic District, is himself a victim of one of at least six burglaries of furniture from front porches. Like many of his neighbors, what hasn't been stolen has since been taken inside Kinvig's house for safe keeping or has been locked down.
"When something like this happens, word gets out to all the neighbors and we start locking things up," said Jeff Bryan, a retired Fort Worth police officer who was targeted by a burglar back in the spring.
Someone stole six pieces of patio furniture from Bryan's porch. The table and chairs Bryan bought to replace what was stolen has now been chained to an exterior brick wall.
Many of the burglaries are happening during the daytime while the homeowners are away at work, according to Bryan.
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One of the neighbors, a surgeon and father of two young children, ages two and one, told NBC DFW that in late June his wife called to say she was home with the kids and she'd noticed that much of the furniture on their front porch was gone. Before he could return to move the rest inside, the man said the thieves had returned to take the rest.
"You know, it's pretty brazen for somebody to take that kind of a risk," Bryan said. "So they evidently need money pretty bad."
The thefts amount to thousands of dollars in losses, according to Kinvig.
"It makes me mad and frankly it's a real short jump between stealing patio furniture and stealing something inside a house," Kinvig told NBC DFW. "It's an 1/8 inch pane of glass [that] is really the only difference. And that's the big problem."
