The Ironton Police Department has seen numerous instances of break-ins over the past two weeks.

“We’ve had a tremendous amount of breaking and enterings in garages, buildings and vehicles,” IPD Detective Joe Ross said. “I just took a report this morning (Thursday) of almost $8,000 in items stolen from a garage.”

Ross said that the department urges people to keep their vehicles and doors locked, as well as writing down the serial numbers of equipment, such as lawnmowers, weed eaters or chainsaws, or at least mark the items in some way for police to easier track them down if they come up missing.

“We’ve had around 12-15 instances just within the past two weeks, and we’ve also had a lot of vehicle batteries or heavy equipment batteries stolen as well,” Ross said. “We believe a lot of this stuff is happening late at night into the early morning.”

He added that if anyone sees any suspicious activity to call the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office, which is who dispatches for Ironton police, at 740-532-3525 or Ross at 740-532-5606.