Update as of 2/12/2010:
Called the Bonaire Police today. They said they recovered some items, but none of our stuff. (I doubt they recovered anything significant because they were quick to say none of our stuff was recovered.) They had a few people in custody, but we heard there were more burglaries after the arrest. They confirmed this. The groups committing the burglaries may be part of a 'ring', but there seems to be no direct connections that led to more arrests or recovery of any of our stuff.
Additional Details (I wanted to add this to the initial post, but I can't seem to edit it anymore. Perhaps a mod can do it for me.):
Our plane from JFK to BON landed at 4:35pm (a little late because of weather). By the time we got our bags and got to our rooms it was about 6:00pm. There were 5 in our group spread between two adjacent rooms (3 in one, 2 in the other). We unpacked some of our stuff and put the important things into the safe. Then, we made a run to the supermarket to get some essentials (Amstel Brights). At about 7:30pm, we decided that we would go out to dinner instead of cooking (big mistake). We locked all the doors and headed out. I should note that only 1 out of the 5 rooms in the immediate area was vacant.
We got back from dinner at about 9:00pm. We decided to have a few beers together, so we walked together to one room. We noticed the door was open and the room was ransacked. I immediately ran to the other (my) room and it was also completely ransacked. The door had a deadbolt, but it appeared that a crowbar was used to break in. The door frame was destroyed to point where it would no longer close. The safe was also broken into. I started screaming obscenities and got everyone's attention. (I just got hit for about 6k, no insurance.) Nobody saw anything, and nobody heard anything.
All of our phones were taken, so 2 people drove off to get the police. I ran around the area to see if I saw anyone, but they were long gone. When the police arrived, I finally took a good look at what was taken (I already knew all the stuff I cared about would be gone). They unfolded every piece of underwear, every pair of socks, and opened every zipper. They must have filled our carry-on bags with our stuff because those were gone. To make matters worse, my passport and my wife's passport were taken. The thieves seemed to be smart enough to take only the (slightly) older US passports w/o the chip. The passports were in the safe in a pouch. Unfortunately, in that pouch were the photocopies of the passports.
The police had us write down the things that were taken. They said there had been a lot of burglaries lately. I was angry when I heard that because if I would have known I would have brought my passport, laptop and video camera with me to dinner. (Some people may find that odd, but those items are always on my person when I travel to Europe.) The police believed that the thieves were following people from the airport. Well, some of them definitely followed us to dinner because they were able to take their time and go through all of our stuff carefully and quietly.
IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE RECENT VICTIMS IN BONAIRE OR KNOW SOMEBODY WHO IS PLEASE MESSAGE ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. I did get email addresses for a couple of people, but I would like to get as many as possible. I am already getting the feeling that very little is being done. I think we will need to keep them motivated.
