When Santa Fe police arrested three men Monday on charges of burglarizing a car in southwest Santa Fe, they didn't need introductions.

All three men — Rex Corcoran, 25, and brothers Jonathan Sereno, 26, and Alfred Sereno, 21 — already have been charged multiple times for crimes in and around Santa Fe.

"We've become familiar with these guys over the years," Capt. Gerald Rivera said.

That familiarity with repeat offenders, according to investigators, is at the heart of why crime statistics released Monday by the Santa Fe Police Department show residential burglaries were at a 15-year high in 2010.

According to the statistics, there were 876 residential burglaries investigated in the city limits in 2010 — about 2.4 a day. That's up 7 percent from the 820 in 2009, and probably an all-time high, though accurate residential burglary data was kept only from 1995.

"We arrest a lot of the same guys for burglary charges over and over it seems," Rivera said. "Burglaries are not really considered violent offenses, and because of that, the judges seem reluctant to give burglars any real time. But if you think about it, with residential burglaries especially, there's a real potential for something violent to happen."

And that is why Sgt. Peter Neal, the head of the city's Property Crimes Division, has recently compiled an unofficial list of about 50 people considered the most problematic repeat offenders.

He has posted the list in the police briefing room, and a packet of the mug shots has been distributed to pawn shops and gold and jewelry buyers. The list also is shared with prosecutors.

"They know who these guys are, and we don't always have the same familiarity with them," said District Attorney Angela "Spence" Pacheco. "Keeping that communication only helps us in focusing on these repeat offenders."

In Monday's arrests, Rivera says the Sereno brothers and Corcoran are accused of stealing a GPS device, a radar detector and an iPod from a car parked at the Santa Fe Place mall.

According to online records, Corcoran has been booked into the Santa Fe County jail 31 times since July 8, 2003, on charges of probation violations, DWI, drug possession and larceny.

Jonathan Sereno, according to jail records, has been arrested and booked into the jail seven times since Feb. 11, 2006, including multiple probation violations and a past DWI charge.

Alfred Sereno, according to jail records, has been arrested 10 times since Jan. 1, 2008.

State District Court and New Mexican archives indicate Alfred Sereno was one of 10 young people charged in connection with a youth burglary ring police say operated from July 2007 through January 2008. Police have said the burglary ring had a day crew of mostly juveniles who focused on breaking into homes, while a night crew concentrated on hitting businesses. Cocaine was the motivating factor for members of the ring, police and prosecutors have said.

"It's hard to say for sure how much the numbers of these burglaries would decrease if the repeat offenders were doing more time," Rivera said.

Neal has said in the past that a small number of offenders are committing a large number of the property crimes in Santa Fe.

But there are other factors, too.

"It's not really surprising the numbers are the highest they've ever been because of a lot of factors, mainly the economy," Rivera said. "People are out of work, and that is a big part of it, but also the city has grown quite a bit in the past couple of years, and there seems to be an increase in the amount of drugs coming through the city."

It should be noted that auto and commercial burglaries are down 21 percent in a four-year comparison between 2007 and 2010, dropping from 325 to 257. During the same time, auto burglaries fell 5 percent, from 1,206 in 2007 to 1,150 in 2010.

And police emphasize that while the 2010 residential-burglary count is likely an all-time high, they note that it is only a 17 percent increase over the 744 reported in 1996, when the city's population was significantly lower.

Regardless, police aren't denying it's a number that needs to improve.

"It is a focus of ours to get these numbers down," Rivera said.

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3076 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at SantaFeCrime.com.