A fourth home has been burglarized during daylight hours in September, police said, and this time, guns were taken.

“To do a daytime residential burglary, it’s pretty brazen,” detective Matt Fleming said. “They’re going up to homes and taking a gamble that nobody’s going to be home.” The department also responded to five residential burglaries in August, he said.

“We’re starting to see that kind of increase a bit. Some of that could be kind of a sign of the times,” he said.

“One of the things we look at immediately when we start having burglaries and we get several in a row, we start looking for any potential connections that may exist,” Fleming said. “We do believe that there is a likelihood that some of these are connected in some way.” He said looking for connections includes not only examining evidence, but also the types of items that are taken, looking for similarities.

Police were called to the home on Wallace Road near the intersection of Ministerial Road for a reported burglary at about noon yesterday. The residents had left the house in the mid-morning and returned to find garage doors, front doors and some windows had been pried by some kind of tool, police said. Burglars eventually got in by smashing the glass of the rear sliding door and ransacked the house, taking several guns and other items, police said.

“They certainly were intent on getting into this home and took every means necessary to get in there,” Fleming said.

He said in a forced-entry type of burglary, it often does not matter that a house has been secured – burglars are “still going to gain entry to your house somehow.” But Fleming said it is still extremely important to lock up.

“If you discourage them and slow them down, then they may not get in, and they may even get caught,” he said.

Fleming said the department takes all burglaries very seriously, has several people investigating, and is stepping up patrols. He said gun thefts are especially troublesome.

“We don’t want (guns) to end up in the hands of people on the streets that can use them for other things,” he said. He urged neighbors to be vigilant and report anything unusual.

“Typically what happens in the residential burglaries is, they happen during the day, they’re taking place in neighborhoods where people are home and they don’t even notice it,” he said.

He said sometimes “it doesn’t look all that out of place but police want them to call, he said.