I really do hate to tell people, "I told you so," but Northeast Baltimore resident John G. Egger was nice enough to volunteer to be flogged. Back in October, he complained about columns I wrote about crime in Belair-Edison.

He wrote that my articles painted a picture "of a neighborhood quickly slipping away and does not highlight very much promise of hope." His remarks were longer than that, and thoughtful, and I posted them and moved on.

So I was surprised when Mr. Egger called me a few weeks ago. Two months after he wrote me, his house was broken into. Then, at the end of January, his house was broken into again. There have been nine burglaries in Belair-Edison in six weeks, before police arrested a suspect earlier this month who might be responsible for some if not all of the break-ins.

Thankfully, Mr. Egger has a sense of humor, in that he didn't blame me. He told me that when he read my column about crime, "It didn't seem like that to me. Sure enough, a couple months later, my house got broken into."

Burglaries are a persistent problem in Baltimore, and are on the rise this year, even as other violence crime holds pace or even falls. Maybe it's a sign of the economic times, or merely new opportunities. And typically, not just one house gets hit, but several in a cluster.

The first time Mr. Egger's house got broken into was Dec. 18. He was at work and got notified by his alarm company. He also admits he was partly at fault -- over Thanksgiving, he opened his kitchen window to air out the room while the turkey roasted, and he forgot to lock it. The intruder only had to slide the window up and crawl into the kitchen. There he ripped the alarm keypad off the wall and threw it to the floor. For some reason, he only stole a bread knife, which he used to cut an outdoor television cable he apparently mistook for the alarm wire. Egger doesn't use cable -- he has satellite -- so it took him a while to notice the damage.

A few weeks later, his girlfriend was home during the day and saw a man with no teeth peering in the window at her. She shouted and he shouted back, "Sorry, wrong house" and ran away.

On Jan. 27, Egger believes the same burglar returned. This time, his kitchen window was locked and the intruder broke it to get inside. Egger told me the intruder had 16 minutes from the time the alarm went off until he and police arrived at the house. In that time, the intruder had "gone through every drawer in my house," stolen numerous items and escaped.

Among the missing items, according to the police report: a Gateway laptop computer worth $2,000; an Olympus camera worth $450, a safe worth $80; keys to a 2000 Toyota Tundra, the safe and the grill; three necklaces; a diamond necklace; four pars of earrings; a gold bracelet; a silver Ann Klein watch; and a light blue pillow case with bleach stains used to haul away the loot. The TV set was moved but not taken.

Earlier, residents had reported seeing a man with a shovel walking around the neighborhood looking for walks to clear of freshly fallen snow. They now think the man was looking for empty houses. Police noted footprints around Egger's house and his neighbor's and a woman told police she saw a man in back of Egger's house with a bag and a shovel.

Police held community meetings to discuss safety tips and search for witnesses. Egger vowed to put up a camera in his backyard to catch the suspect. He said the man knocked his alarm key off the wall in both break-ins. His window was valued at $350.

Police Agent Donny Moses, a department spokesman, noted the problem in the Belair-Edison area and said that "most crimes like this are crimes of opportunity. A lot of times the suspect finds, 'Oh, that was easy,' and unfortunately they do return to the scene of the crime."

Moses also said that police did make an arrest after a woman on Chesterfield Avenue, who had attended one of the community meetings, confronted a burglar in his home. The spokesman said the man, identified as Maurice Kelvin Washington, 45, had a red and a blue screwdriver in his pants pocket and that officers found items taken in various burglaries in his home and at pawn shops.

Washington lives a block of Egger on Dudley Avenue. Details on his arrest are below: