Buffalo Metro Crime Watch: Burglaries and Car Thefts, Week of July 27 – August 2, 2026
The last week of July stayed quiet on the burglary front and got interesting on the vehicle front. Across the towns the New York State Police patrol in Erie, Niagara, Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties, there was not a single confirmed forced-entry burglary on the reports — but Clarence produced a vehicle larceny and a theft arrest inside the same hour on a Thursday afternoon, and criminal-mischief complaints turned up three separate times. Add fourteen burglar alarms that all came back clean, five license plates gone, and a scattering of fraud, and you get a week that rewards anyone who bothers to lock up.
Below is the property-crime activity we pulled from this week’s New York State Police reports for the towns Troop A covers — Clarence, Lockport, Alden, Batavia, Boston, Niagara, Lewiston and the rural stretches beyond. City departments in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Lockport keep their own logs, so this is only the State Police slice of the picture.
A note on this edition: the State Police publish their daily blotters on a rolling seven-day cycle, and each day’s report is overwritten a week later. By the time we pulled this one, the Monday July 27 and Tuesday July 28 morning reports had already rotated off the site, so the figures below cover Tuesday afternoon, July 28 through Sunday, August 2. We would rather tell you exactly what the record covers than quietly present a partial week as a whole one.
This Week at a Glance
| Date & time | Town | What happened | Status | Incident # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 28, 1:50 PM | Lockport (Town) | Lost or stolen license plate | Closed | NY2600927324 |
| Jul 29, 10:20 AM | Alden | Fraud | Closed | NY2600930454 |
| Jul 29, 3:02 PM | Clarence | Trespass | Closed | NY2600931625 |
| Jul 29, 9:55 PM | Alexander | Lost or stolen license plate | Closed | NY2600933079 |
| Jul 29, 10:17 PM | Pendleton | Trespass | Arrest — adult | NY2600933270 |
| Jul 30, 11:34 AM | Eden | Lost or stolen license plate | Closed | NY2600934923 |
| Jul 30, 3:17 PM | Clarence | Larceny (theft) | Arrest — adult | NY2600935943 |
| Jul 30, 4:16 PM | Clarence | Larceny of a vehicle | Closed | NY2600936163 |
| Jul 30, 7:27 PM | Batavia (Town) | Fraud | Closed | NY2600937011 |
| Jul 31, 1:07 AM | Pendleton | Criminal mischief | Arrest — adult | NY2600937656 |
| Jul 31, 10:00 AM | Clarence | Criminal mischief | Closed | NY2600938800 |
| Jul 31, 12:08 PM | Clarence | Lost or stolen license plate | Closed | NY2600939378 |
| Jul 31, 12:27 PM | Lockport (Town) | Fraud — identity theft | Reported | NY2600939361 |
| Jul 31, 12:42 PM | Darien | Trespass | Arrest — adult | NY2600939675 |
| Jul 31, 4:43 PM | Newfane | Lost or stolen license plate | Closed | NY2600940518 |
| Jul 31, 6:14 PM | Boston | Larceny from a building | Closed | NY2600940935 |
| Jul 31, 10:32 PM | Lockport (Town) | Larceny (theft) | Closed | NY2600941390 |
| Aug 1, 10:59 AM | Batavia (Town) | Trespass in progress | Closed | NY2600944116 |
| Aug 1, 11:20 AM | Clarence | Criminal mischief | Reported | NY2600943458 |
| Aug 1, 12:45 PM | Clarendon | Trespass | Closed | NY2600943903 |
| Aug 1, 2:18 PM | Pavilion | Larceny (theft) | Closed | NY2600943955 |
| Jul 28–Aug 2 | Metro-wide | Burglar-alarm responses (14 runs) | All closed | 14 incidents |
“Closed” means the case was cleared or closed when the report was filed; “Reported” means the complaint was logged with no disposition yet listed. Charges arising from any arrest are accusations only, and everyone is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. We do not republish the names of people arrested in these reports.
Burglaries and Break-Ins
For the second time in three weeks, the metro towns logged no confirmed burglaries on the State Police reports. No forced doors, no pried windows, no smashed patio glass. That is a genuinely good run for this stretch of the summer, and it is the number we most like to write.
What troopers did answer were fourteen burglar-alarm calls, every one of them closed without a break-in. Clarence led the alarm board again with five runs, followed by Lockport with two, and single calls out of Wheatfield, Somerset, Elma, Lewiston, Alabama, Pavilion and Akron. That is the same geography we keep flagging: Clarence and Lockport light up the map week after week, which is exactly where a hard target earns its keep. An alarm tells you someone is already inside. A deadbolt is what keeps them from getting there.
Source: NYSP Troop A daily blotters, July 28–August 2, 2026 (official report index)
Car Thefts and Vehicle Break-Ins
A vehicle taken in Clarence — and a theft arrest an hour earlier
The week’s standout is a pair of Thursday afternoon entries out of Clarence. At 3:17 p.m. on July 30, troopers logged a larceny that ended in an adult arrest. Fifty-nine minutes later, at 4:16 p.m., a separate report came in and was categorized as larceny of a vehicle — the State Police label for a vehicle actually taken, not just rifled through. That case was closed on the report.
Two theft reports inside an hour in the same town is the sort of pattern that usually means somebody was working an area rather than getting lucky once. And the thing worth understanding about a stolen vehicle in 2026 is that it almost never involves defeating a lock. It involves a key — one left in the cup holder, hanging by the door, or handed over with a spare that nobody ever accounted for. If a set of keys to your vehicle is unaccounted for, the vehicle is not secure no matter how good the locks are, and the only real fix is to make the missing key stop working.
Source: NYSP Troop A reports, July 30, 2026 — Incidents NY2600935943 and NY2600936163.
Five license plates gone across five different towns
Lost-or-stolen plate reports came in from five separate towns this week: Lockport on Tuesday, Alexander on Wednesday, Eden on Thursday, and both Clarence and Newfane on Friday. Spread that wide, it is not one thief working a street — it is the steady background rate of plates coming off cars all over the metro.
A missing plate sounds like nothing more than a DMV errand, but stolen plates get bolted onto other vehicles to beat tolls, gas drive-offs and red-light cameras, which is how an innocent owner ends up explaining a violation they never committed. Anti-theft plate screws cost a couple of dollars; our automotive locksmiths keep them on the van.
Source: NYSP Troop A daily blotters, July 28–August 2, 2026 (official report index)
Theft, Fraud & Commercial Crime Watch
Beyond the Clarence pair, three more theft reports rounded out the week: a larceny from a building in the town of Boston on Friday evening, a late-night larceny in the town of Lockport, and a theft in Pavilion on Saturday afternoon. “Larceny from a building’’ is the category worth knowing: it is theft from inside a structure without the forced entry that would make it a burglary. An unlocked garage, a shared hallway, a business propped open for a delivery. Opportunity crime, and the fix is a door that latches and a lock somebody actually turns.
Fraud produced three reports — Alden and the town of Batavia, plus an identity-theft complaint out of the town of Lockport on Friday. Suburban identity theft still very often starts at the curb with a check or a pre-approved credit offer lifted from an unlocked mailbox, which is why a proper mailbox lock remains one of the cheapest pieces of identity protection you can buy.
Criminal mischief showed up three times — Pendleton at 1:07 a.m. Friday, which ended in an arrest, plus Clarence on Friday morning and again on Saturday. Trespass complaints came in five times across Clarence, Pendleton, Darien, Batavia and Clarendon, two of which ended in arrests. No robberies and no commercial burglaries appeared in the State Police metro logs.
Source: NYSP Troop A reports, July 29–August 2, 2026 — Incidents NY2600940935, NY2600941390, NY2600943955, NY2600930454, NY2600937011, NY2600939361.
The Week by the Numbers
| Category (State Police metro towns) | Count |
|---|---|
| Confirmed burglaries | 0 |
| Robberies | 0 |
| Vehicles reported taken (larceny of a vehicle) | 1 |
| Larceny / theft reports | 5 |
| Lost or stolen license plates | 5 |
| Fraud & identity-theft reports | 3 |
| Criminal mischief / vandalism | 3 |
| Trespass complaints | 5 |
| Burglar-alarm responses (all closed) | 14 |
| DWI stops & arrests | 7 |
| Suspicious activity / person / vehicle calls | 13 |
| Property checks | 34 |
| All other State Police calls (aid & assists, accidents, welfare checks, traffic, and the rest of the routine log) | ~300 |
| Total State Police incidents logged, metro towns | 394 |
These totals cover New York State Police Troop A activity in the Erie, Niagara, Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming County towns it patrols, for the reports covering Tuesday afternoon, July 28 through Sunday, August 2. The Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Lockport city police departments patrol their own jurisdictions and report separately, so citywide crime is not reflected here. See the official NYSP blotter index.
What This Week’s Cases Mean for Your Locks
“Zero break-ins two weeks out of three — that is a good summer around here. But look at what did happen. A vehicle taken in Clarence. Five plates unbolted in five towns. Things walking out of open buildings. Not one of those needed a lock to be picked or forced. They needed a door left open, a plate left loose, or a key nobody kept track of. If a key to your car or your house is out there somewhere and you cannot say where, you do not have a lock problem — you have a key problem, and that is the one we fix in twenty minutes.” — Simon Goodman, Defense Locksmith, Buffalo NY
Here is how we would turn this week’s blotter into a short list:
- Account for every key to your vehicle. The Clarence case is the reminder. If a spare is missing, or you bought the car used and never got a full set, an ignition rekey or key reprogram makes the unaccounted-for key stop working. Start with a car key replacement.
- Treat side and garage doors like front doors. The building theft in Boston is the classic pattern. Our residential locksmith team can put a real deadbolt on the doors you forget about.
- If a house key is unaccounted for, rekey rather than wonder. After a move, a lost key or a tenant turnover, a deadbolt rekey makes every old key useless without changing your hardware.
- Put security screws in your plates. Five plates vanished this week across five towns. Two dollars of hardware closes that door.
- Lock the mailbox. The identity-theft report is the nudge — mail theft feeds identity theft, and a mailbox lock is cheap insurance.
- Know who to call at 2 a.m. The Pendleton mischief call came in at 1:07 in the morning. Trouble does not keep business hours; our emergency locksmith line does not either. Keep (716) 803-2934 in your phone.
For business owners
The building theft and the trespass calls are a reminder that most commercial loss walks in through a door that was supposed to be locked. Worth pricing out with a commercial locksmith: a master-key system so one lost key never means rekeying the whole building, a proper audit of your exterior doors and closers, and access control that logs every entry so you know who opened what and when.
We will keep reading the blotters so you do not have to. Stay locked, Buffalo.
Catch up on recent editions: July 20–26, July 13–19, and July 6–12.
Questions Buffalo homeowners ask us about the blotter
Why does this edition cover six days instead of seven?
The New York State Police publish their daily blotters on a rolling seven-day cycle, and each day’s report is replaced by the next week’s on the same slot. When we pulled the records for this edition, the Monday July 27 and early Tuesday July 28 reports had already rotated off the site. Rather than estimate the missing days or quietly present a partial week as a full one, we tell you exactly what window the numbers cover.
What is the difference between a stolen vehicle and a break-in to a vehicle?
“Larceny of a vehicle” means the vehicle itself was taken. “Larceny from a vehicle” means someone opened it and took what was inside. This week the metro towns had one of the former and none of the latter. The first almost always involves a key that was available; the second almost always involves a door that was unlocked.
Zero burglaries again — do I still need to worry about my locks?
A quiet week is the best time to fix things, because you are not doing it in a panic the morning after. Every theft on this week’s blotter came through an open building, an unsecured plate or an available key — none of it required defeating a lock. Rekeys, deadbolts on side doors and accounting for spare keys are exactly the low-drama jobs worth doing on a calm week.
Someone stole my license plate. Is that really worth reporting?
Yes, and quickly. Stolen plates get put on other vehicles to dodge tolls, gas drive-offs and camera tickets, and those violations come back to the registered owner. A police report creates the paper trail that protects you, and a couple of anti-theft screws stops it happening again.
How do you know none of this happened in the City of Buffalo?
We only report the New York State Police Troop A blotter, which covers the suburban and rural towns — Clarence, Lockport, Alden, Batavia, Boston, Niagara, Lewiston and the rest. The City of Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Lockport city departments patrol their own streets and publish separately, so citywide crime is not part of these numbers.
Next edition: Crime Watch, August 3–9
Sources: incident details in this post are drawn from the New York State Police Troop A daily public information reports covering July 28 through August 2, 2026, and each case is tied to its official incident number; aggregate counts come from the same reports via the official NYSP blotter index. Charges arising from any arrest are accusations only and everyone is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. We do not republish arrestee names, and juveniles are never identified.