Cassandra Baker

5:05 a.m., December 16. 95th block of Greenwood Ave N

Police responded to reports that a burglar alarm had been tripped at the Salvation Army near Greenwood Ave early on the morning of December 16. They arrived at the scene to find fresh pry marks on an alley door and a window open wide enough to allow someone to enter the building. While waiting for backup, officers saw a man exit through the door with pry marks and flee down an alley. They ordered him to stop and lay down, and he complied without incident. Officers handcuffed the suspect, who claimed that he had never entered the building but rather had been sleeping under a bush. However, based on the location the suspect described, officers would have seen him while inspecting the area.

The suspect was arrested and searched, at which point officers found several screwdrivers in his possession, as well as a bag of Salvation Army pins. Further searching of the area outside the building revealed a trumpet case with a trumpet inside and a box containing plastic action figures and trumpet parts.

When the pastor of the Salvation Army arrived at the scene, he confirmed that these items belonged inside the building. A search of the inside of the building revealed that numerous doors had been forced open and several rooms had been ransacked.

A witness at a nearby property told police that he had seen a man matching the suspect’s description ride up to the building on a bicycle between 1:45 and 2:00 that morning and head toward the alley.

3:23 a.m., December 15. 52nd block of Russell Ave NW

A man called police to report a burglary that had occurred at his apartment building on December 13. The building’s laundry room has storage cages made of chicken wire with wooden frames, and a suspect had used bolt cutters to cut the locks on most of these cages and steal residents’ property. Most people stored items such as laundry soap in their cages, but the victim had stored $2000 worth of camping gear and $200 worth of promotional materials for the beer company he works for. The building has no security system. No fingerprints were found at the scene.

8:49 p.m., December 14. 92nd block of Greenwood Ave N

Police responded to reports of a burglary in which the suspect took a strange assortment of items on the morning of December 14. The victim told police that the suspect pried open a door to his property, entered the storage room, and stole an antique cookie jar and a key to the laundry room of a neighboring building. The storage room was ransacked, but nothing else appeared to be missing.

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