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It is 8 p.m. Nov. 18, but the shift has just begun for Sgt. Kurt Gilbert and his squad of Takoma Park police officers. By 9 p.m., Gilbert and his crew were busy as ever doing what all officers do on slow nights when residents aren't calling in: looking for crime on their own.

Cruising through a dimly lit back parking lot of the Parkview Towers Apartment building on Maple Avenue, Gilbert swept his window-mounted floodlight over the darkened cars, searching for cagey thieves breaking into cars. In a city that has seen a spike in break-ins to vehicles and a handful of alarming violent crimes over the last two months, it is unfortunate that much of Squad 1's proactive activity goes unnoticed by residents in the dead of night.

Gilbert is no stranger to residents accusing officers of sleeping on the job after a particularly upsetting string of crimes is reported. Despite the fact that the department is almost fully staffed with 41 sworn officers, when big crimes happen, residents demand increased vigilance from patrol officers.

"Chances are we made it down your street at least twice during a 12-hour shift," Gilbert said, pulling onto Lincoln Avenue to investigate another building and a known hangout for troublemakers. "If you're not looking out your window one of those two times, no, you're not going to see us; but we're there."

Some time during the night of Oct. 16 or early the morning after, a group of criminals broke into and stole property from 14 vehicles, most of them along quiet residential streets, including six on Lee Avenue and two on Westmoreland Avenue. Broken windows and missing GPS devices, iPods and other valuables were shared traits in most police reports.

Following the first night, the break-ins continued in scattered bursts. Between Oct. 15 and Nov. 19, a total of 32 larcenies of auto parts or other items from automobiles were reported in the city's three police districts, not a significant number compared to the 82 larcenies reported last October and November, but enough to cause discomfort among residents.

Alison Baker, who lives at 7209 Cedar Ave., had four cars broken into at her house Nov. 6. Baker and her husband, Jim Colwell, had locked their doors and parked the vehicles behind their house under a motion-sensor light, precautions they thought would keep them from becoming targets.

"You're really stuck with a feeling of vulnerability," Baker said. She doubts they will ever hear back from detectives regarding the break-ins. "They did fingerprints and responded quickly once we discovered it, ... but it certainly would be helpful if someone would call and say, you know, ‘People have been apprehended,' or, ‘Here's the status of your case.'"

In addition to the break-ins, eight armed robberies or assaults have also been reported in the city from October through Nov. 25, including one victim who was assaulted with a baseball bat and robbed, two robberies that ended with the victims being assaulted with knives and a sexual assault that occurred Nov. 19 on the Sligo Creek Stream Valley Trail.

Appearing before the council Nov. 23, Chief Ronald Ricucci informed the city that officers were doing everything possible – including adding two more patrol officers to night shifts – to stem the recent increase in incidents.

"Unfortunately, some suspects have gotten away," he said, tempering news of increasing robberies with the decreases to burglaries and other crimes. "Burglaries are down, thefts from autos are now going down and continue to go down, which I attribute to the recent [increased] presence of the patrol officers and plainclothes officers on the street."

While police have yet to tie recent arrests in with the string of car break-ins and robberies, Sgt. Gilbert echoed the police chief's comments that each of the city's officers takes crime statistics as a personal challenge.

"If at some point in time during the night a couple of cars gets broken into, they get pissed," he said of his squad as he eyed a group of 15 to 20 teens disperse from the steps on an apartment building on Lincoln Avenue, shying away from his approaching patrol car. "They've got a lot of beat pride here. We don't like it when something happens on our watch."

Later that night, Officer Carla Magnaye, one of the six officers in Gilbert's squad, tailed an SUV after matching the tags to a vehicle frequently used by a known drug dealer. When she eventually pulled it over on Maple Avenue, it was only in part to talk with the driver about the vehicle's broken light.

"After you identify [a criminal], they'll likely stay out of the city, and that one time they come back you get on them so they're like, ‘Those guys know me over there, I'm not going back to Takoma Park,'" she said. "It sends a message."

The dealer was not driving the SUV at the time, and Magnaye sent it on its way, but immediately resumed trolling the city for new crimes, her eyes surveying each passing car and seeking out the dark corners of each seemingly empty parking lot for a chance to snuff out a crime before it makes the next day's front page.

"When it gets quiet, then I go look for stuff," she said with a grin, zipping out of a dark side street to follow another suspicious vehicle, seemingly for speeding, but possibly for something more.