SAN JOSE — The Cory neighborhood, nestled just north of Westfield Valley Fair and consisting of more than 1,200 households strong, is on the offensive.

After a streak of nine burglaries in about two weeks earlier this month, there have been few naked street poles in the area, with brightly colored warning fliers adorning the rest. Neighbors are watching over each other’s homes and chronicling any suspicious movements on social media, as well as trading notes about things like how to choose home-surveillance cameras.

The self-help efforts in Cory and other neighborhoods along with focused operations from a small but determined police unit, seem to have paid off, according to authorities. Burglaries are down 16 percent in 2016 compared to last year, and police say they anticipate arresting several serial burglars in the near future.

Bahia Fear, a longtime San Jose resident who has lived in the Cory neighborhood for 12 years, described the response as an “organic effort.”

“Basically one of the neighbors put a thread out and said we need to do something about this,” Fear said. “I hope that it has a deterrent effect, with criminals knowing we are all organized to make sure whatever happens is reported.”

Already, Fear said she and neighbors are noticing more police visibility on their streets.

“Having support of police is helpful,” she said. “Understandably there is a resource challenge. Where there is lacking, our neighborhood is taking on that part of it.”

Reading this on your iPhone or iPad? Check out our new Apple News app channel here and click the + at the top of the page to save to your Apple News favorites.

That banding-together mentality has taken hold in neighborhoods all over the city in recent years, with chronic understaffing at the San Jose Police Department creating a new reality that residents have had to accept: Burglary response, while perhaps the most prominent crime in San Jose, has been shelved to prioritize violent crimes and 911 emergency calls.

“We have to triage,” police Chief Eddie Garcia said.

But the financial-crimes unit, which covers burglaries and is staffed on the field level by one sergeant and four detectives — a far cry from the two-dozen officers that filled the unit in the department’s not-so-distant heyday — is working feverishly to make as big a dent as they can.

It’s a tall order given that San Jose gets on average 600 new residential and commercial burglary cases each month, making the 16 percent decrease appear all the more pronounced. And within that decrease are sharper drops: the Evergreen area saw a nearly 50 percent decrease in burglaries from 2015.

That micro-trend occurred in large part to a significant bust spearheaded by the unit in September, which thwarted an East Palo Alto gang-based burglary crew tied to over 200 burglaries that centered primarily on Evergreen. Home-security video, which captured the crew’s distinctive use of high-end cars like Porsches, BMW’s and Mercedes-Benzes, were vital in breaking the case.

Garcia said these busts have an outsized effect on burglaries, which are often committed en masse.

“You arrest one crew, and you’re going to solve a number of them,” he said.

Unit commander Lt. Chris Monahan said city residents should expect more of those large-scale operations, spanning home break-ins and porch thefts, in the near future.

“We have numerous suspects identified in multiple package thefts from throughout the year that we hope to have in custody soon,” Monahan said. “Despite a skeleton crew of investigators, the unit is still making active cases all the way through prosecution.”

Within that “skeleton crew” is seasoned Detective Ashley Weger, whose work has formed the basis of several major burglary arrests over the past year. She stressed that residents’ tips and surveillance videos are crucial to her work, but that more residents need to call police with burglary reports.

A typical occurrence that has arisen in the era of affordable home surveillance entails a resident posting footage of a suspect online, whether it’s social media or elsewhere, and believing their work is done. While of some of the video eventually makes its way to police, Weger urged that people take the final step of contacting the SJPD burglary unit.

“Sometimes the video never gets to us, it’s just posted on social media,” she said.

Otherwise, Weger advised that residents wary of burglaries and porch thefts take basic precautions, well beyond the holidays:

Schedule deliveries when someone’s home to receive it

Use tracking numbers to closely monitor when packages arrive

If practical, utilize a postal drop for receiving packages, and locked mailboxes

Connect with neighbors to make arrangements to sign for and receive each other’s packages when the other is not home

Affix security-camera angles so that they are not too high, capturing the tops of people’s heads and allowing them to more easily obscure themselves with a hood or hat

Use cameras that record in 1080p resolution and have night function

Utilize interior cameras, as intruders tend to let down their guard after they’ve entered a home

After a burglary, ask for neighbor’s surveillance videos, since they may have captured different angles and activity

Weger also noted that as incriminating as video surveillance images may seem, even when they capture a clear photo of an intruder, it’s important for residents to try to document ancillary information like license plate numbers and the like.

“A video is not an arrest,” Weger said. “But if you have video and other evidence, please report it.”