COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- There have been over 100 home burglaries across Kootenai County since September, but now authorities are saying the crime wave appears to be shrinking.

The reason: Over the last several weeks more than 20 people have been booked into the Kootenai County Jail for burglary. It's like a cause and effect relationship; with arrests going up, burglaries are going down.

Shawn Lambert says his Coeur d'Alene neighborhood on Fallview Drive is a good one, though a few weeks ago, he got some unexpected visitors asking a strange question.

"Is Linda here? I said there is no Linda here and she went oh sorry and they got into their car and drove 3 houses down," Lambert said.

The pair went up to a neighbor's house and tried to get in, until someone inside locked the deadbolt and the burglary suspects fled.

"They just looked like a normal younger couple around here," Lambert said.

While that break-in attempt failed, many other have been successful. Since September, there [have been more than 125 home burglaries. Suspects were checking if people were home; one way was by offering dog walking services, another was to sell firewood. If the coast was clear, the suspects would break in the front door and grab easy to get items like jewelry.

But now the spike in crime seems to be flattening out. The Kootenai County Sheriff's Department is reporting burglary numbers have been dropping for several weeks, and there has been a significant drop in the kick-in the door, in-and-out burglaries as well.

"We were running three, four burglaries a day and we we're down to one to two of that type of burglary a week now," Major Ben Wolfinger with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department said.

Investigators aren't saying how they are tracking these suspects but are saying investigations continue.

"We've always thought there's more than one group responsible out here that's why detectives continue to work these things so hard," Wolfinger said.

The drop in numbers is good news for Coeur d'Alene residents who are hoping for a complete stop to the crimes that left so many people uneasy.

"We got a lot of neighbors that are home during the day we kind of watch out for each other so it's a good thing," Shawn Lambert said.

Both the Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene Police Departments report they have also seen a drop in residential burglaries, though in Post Falls that's not the case with auto thefts.

Even though the number of burglaries have dropped, authorities remind residents to continue being vigilant.