Holiday give & take

Black market goods are in high demand, evident by the jump in commercial and residential robberies, according to some police chiefs in communities north of Boston.

“It’s a great time of year, and people get caught up in the shopping. They’re feeling well, but keep in mind people are looking to remove them from their properties,’’ said Lawrence Police Chief John J. Romero.

Compared with last year, overall robbery rates in some communities have increased, ranging from car, home, and store break-ins, to late-night street robberies. Lawrence’s reported robberies increased 73.4 percent in the past year, despite relatively stable numbers in other areas of crime.

The same sought-after items on most holiday shoppers’ lists, such as GPS units, iPods, and laptops, are the same items thieves are after. And while police say shop pers should take precautions to avoid becoming theft victims, so should those who think they are getting a too-good-to-pass-up deal by buying heavily discounted goods off the street. Chances are those items are stolen, police say.

Lawrence is cracking down on black-market sales. People caught in possession of a stolen item will no longer get away with saying they didn’t know it was stolen.

Police have posted a crime advisory in public areas warning residents that they could be charged with receiving stolen property if an item is traced back to them. Depending on the item’s value, the penalties for a first-time offender could be a fine of up to $250 or as much as 2 1/2 years in jail.

As more consumers invest in tracking software for their high-end gadgets, such as laptops, it is becoming easier for police to recover those items. Anyone choosing to buy goods off the street, or even from websites such as Craigslist, should ask questions, Romero said.

“In a bad economy,’’ Romero said, “and more people are able to purchase an item from a secondary source. For example, if someone offers you a laptop for $300, you’d be crazy to buy a laptop. They now have LoJacks and we’ve made a number of arrests. The technology leads us right to the house.’’

Lawrence police recently recovered a laptop stolen from Lahey Clinic in Burlington at the home of a woman who had purchased it for $250 off the street, Romero said. She was arrested and charged.

“You can’t say, ‘I didn’t know it was stolen,’ if you bought it from the street,’’ he said.

While many studies point to a direct correlation between an increase in crime and a struggling economy, Romero is cautious about connecting those dots.

“I don’t think people become criminals because of a bad economy,’’ Romero said. “If you’re inclined to commit criminal actions, you’re going to commit them good economy or bad.’’

Thieves are more interested in supply and demand, and right now there is a higher demand for black-market goods as more people find themselves unemployed or with smaller incomes, Romero said. Lawrence has the state’s highest unemployment rate at 17.3 percent.

“Those stealing have more of a market now,’’ Romero said. “If you can buy a GPS for $50 and the store charges you $250, you’re not going to ask that guy where he bought it. You’re just going to justify it by saying, ‘I’m getting a great deal.’ ’’

For the second consecutive year, GPS units remain the number-one most stolen item in many local communities, according to police officials. That is closely followed by other high-end portable electronic devices such as the iPhone and laptops.

If they don’t resell them, some thieves will trade stolen goods as payment for drugs, officials said.

“We do find that a lot of defendants are probably addicted to some drug or another,’’ said John Reynolds, crime analyst for the Lawrence Police Department.

Of the city’s reported 163 robberies as of Dec. 2, about half have been street robberies, and the rest varying types of commercial thefts, Reynolds said. On the street, criminals are targeting cellphones and MP3 players, in addition to cash, officials said. The easiest targets are those coming out of bars late at night, said Chelsea Police Chief Brian Kyes.

“We’ve had a number of unarmed robberies that have taken place late at night, well after midnight, usually when the bars close,’’ Kyes said. Drunkenness, “is a factor, the motivating force to target them versus other people, but more so the fact that the item itself, the iPod and cellphone, is of significant value in excess of $100. It’s expensive, small, and if you steal it, it is not like a boom box or radio. You put it in your pocket and run away and at the end of the day, is there a market to sell this? Unfortunately, there is.’’

Like Lawrence, Chelsea has seen a significant increase in stolen property numbers between 2008 and 2009, and the main target is also GPS devices, Kyes said.

“We don’t believe the people who’ve lost their jobs or had their income affected are out there breaking into cars, getting a GPS, but what we do see is supply and demand,’’ Kyes said.

“You are not the type of person who’d buy something off the street because you figure it’s stolen, but maybe now you’d do it. So the black market is there, demand is very high.’’

In Peabody, home of the Northshore Mall, Police Chief Robert L. Champagne said professional shoplifters are more common. The city gets about 1.5 million visitors during the shopping season from the Friday after Thanksgiving through the first week of January, he said.

“We put an awful lot of energy to make sure the crime rates don’t go off whack out there,’’ Champagne said.

“What we’re seeing when we come across professional shoplifters, we’re seeing thousands of dollars of stolen goods.’’

But it’s not just the mall that police in Peabody contend with. Champagne said there’s, “an increasing amount of data that property crime is really on the rise in suburbia.’’

“I think there’s an alarming increase with people with addictions, drugs, and those sorts of things, and those habits are fed whether people are working or not,’’ Champagne said.

“And I think that there might be some connection to the economy because people steal things that are not worth stealing.’’

Peabody is also seeing a high number of GPS units, cellphones, and notebook computers stolen from cars. Champagne said police give shoppers standard warnings, such as be aware of the surroundings, lock purchases in a trunk, and avoid leaving expensive items in cars in plain view. Some people have to be reminded to lock their vehicles, he said.

“Everyone is of good intention,’’ he said, “but they’re also in a hurry. Then somebody comes by and steals these things because they’re easy targets or crimes of opportunity.’’

Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com