After a spike in commercial break-ins to start 2017, Boston Police have seen a dramatic reduction of burglaries across the C-11 district in recent days in the wake of a number of solid arrests, said Capt. Tim Connolly.

Last Thursday, police patrolling around the Washington Street/Codman Square area just after midnight arrested a man named Michael Lockley after the officers noticed an open side door at the Daily Table store on Park Street at about 12:45 a.m. Inside, Connolly said, they found Lockley burglarizing the store.

The suspect was evasive in his responses to police questioning, Connolly said, claiming to be a nighttime worker at the store waiting for a co-worker named “Jimmy” to arrive. Police checked the premises and then arrested Lockley on charges of breaking and entering, possession of burglarious tools, and a default warrant for similar crimes.

“He’s categorized as a serial burglar because of his record,” Connolly told the Reporter last on Friday. “He had warrants and has been arrested for this stuff in the past.”

Part One – or serious – crime is up nine percent in District C-11 so far in 2017 compared to the same time frame in 2016, a statistic that Connolly says has been driven by a spike in commercial burglaries. There were 5 commercial break-ins last January and February; this year, there were 20 during the same two-month period. There have been 51 residential break-ins in C-11 this year to date, compared to 45 last winter; and auto thefts are also up slightly, from 22 to 25. Police have suspects in a number of the commercial, home, and vehicle burglaries, Connolly said.

Officers in the South End District D-4 have arrested a man for vehicle break-ins across the district, and another suspect believed to be involved in the rash of home burglaries in C-11was arrested in Roxbury’s B-2 district, Connolly said. “There are six to seven people that are literally wreaking havoc on C-11 across our borders,” he said, adding, “With the arrests made we’re strongly anticipating the numbers will drop much lower.”

C-11 officers are on the lookout for two or three commercial burglars, and they say they are confident that arrests will be made in the near future. Of course, new perpetrators filter in and out of police district boundaries, Connolly noted.

Overall, the captain said he is pleased with the district’s clearance rate. Crime has taken a slight dip in recent weeks, he said, noting nothing dramatic, but adding “it’s trending in the right direction, and it happens in little increments.”

The district is also seeing a decrease in violent crimes, he said, and a “huge decrease in street robberies after arrest of a juvenile crew working in the Fields Corner area.”

Officers rely on community members to flag suspicious behavior, he said, asking that residents not be worried about disturbing the police if they see something. “The more information the community gives us, the more we can do with that information,” he said. “We don’t know what we don’t know.”

Mike Folan, vice-president of the St. Mark’s Area Civic Association, said that last week’s civic meeting was a milestone for the group, which meets monthly in the basement of St. Mark’s church. Officer Mike Keaney, who visits the group and reads through police reports of incidents inside the civic association’s boundaries for the last month, had just one report to relay— of a minor incident.

“It’s a real achievement,” said Folan, who said that sometimes Keaney has had a tall pile of police reports to read. “We’re working closely with the police and it’s important that criminals get that message that St. Mark’s is a bad place to do business.”

St. Mark’s Area is not the only section of Dorchester that is seeing a reduction in crime, according to Capt. Connolly. And other indicators are more promising; reports of domestic and non-domestic aggravated assaults are both down slightly, as are reported rapes or attempted rapes.