No Quiero Stolen Police Property
A convicted burglar allegedly walked into the Trenton, N.J., police headquarters, past an unmanned security post, and entered the unlocked detective bureau, where he stole a radio, a computer monitor and a sergeant's attache case on early on Sunday morning, police say.
Anthony Williams, 41, tried to sell the police radio to customers in line at a nearby Taco Bell drive-through, according to police reports. A customer snatched the radio from Williams and broadcast his location over the main police frequency. This alerted people in communications, and they were able to trace the chatter back to the radio of Sgt. Carmelo Rodriguez. After returning to the station, a check of Rodriguez's desk revealed his attache case was missing as well.
Sgt. Rodriguez vaguely remembered seeing someone in the building earlier in the night, and provided a description of the suspect. Trenton's police tech expert was called in to review surveillance video, which showed Williams attempting to enter the building earlier in the night and being turned away. He is seen later, walking in past the unmanned security post cops call the "bubble."
Meanwhile, Williams allegedly positioned himself near the Taco Bell drive-through and had made several unsuccessful attempts to sell the radio to late-night fast food customers before it was snatched. A police spokesman says Williams had pushed the radio through the window of a car in the drive-through when the driver swiped it, called 911 to report that he had police property and used the radio to broadcast his location. Williams fled, but was stopped nearby. Both the driver who took the radio and Sgt. Rodriguez positively identified Williams, and he was taken into custody. The stolen computer monitor was found hidden near the gas pumps behind police headquarters.
Security is evidently a problem at Trenton's police station. Officers speaking on the condition of anonymity say that though doors are supposed to be kept locked, they are regularly unlocked and frequently propped open. A guard is always supposed to be in the "bubble" and, officers say, the elevator should be shut down during some hours of the night, which apparently it was not.
Williams' record includes convictions for robbery, theft and "burglary--entering a structure." He served time for a parole violation and has at least four aliases, not including "Dumbass".
Source: Trentonian News
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Most Recent Comments
Posted by Sue in Syracuse on February 23, 2010:
The criminal's dumbassery aside, how safe is the neighborhood if the police can't bother to keep their own station secure? I do wonder what this guy is on, or trying to buy to get high - who's likely to buy obviously stolen property at Taco Bell? Amazing!
Posted by Bob in Illinois on February 25, 2010:
I wouldn't call him dumb, it's not dumb to steal from the police it's stupid. The Cops are the dumbasses.
I remember a case when I was a cop these three knuckle-heads robbed a grocery store as it was getting ready to open, this was in 1977-78. It was an early Saturday morning I was at home listening on my scanner. An armored car service was delivering some money, change and paper to the store. There were three employees standing there, the manager had just arrived before the armored car and was opening the door so they could go in. When the armored car arrived the three men walked up to it with only one .38 cal. S&W Revolver and demanded the money. The 'unarmed' guard handed it to them without a fight. As the employees watched the manager went inside and called the station to report the robbery. I should mention that the station-house was only a couple blocks away and can be seen from the front door of the store. As the robbers turned to leave they found they locked their keys in the car so they decided to run away instead. At the time theirs was the only car in that parking lot. As they ran they had to get over a guard rail that bordered the parking lot. The first jumped over it but caught his foot on the curb and fell down dropping the bag of change he had. The bag broke and change was everywhere, he left it and kept running. The other two jumped over the guard rail just fine. While running down the street towards the station-house. The guy that was carrying the two bags of cash fell, dropping one bag, and kept running. During this whole time I'm listening to the call go out over the radio. The dispatcher was calling for all patrols anywhere near there to proceed with caution to the grocery store and that the suspects were last seen heading west down the main street in the direction of a neighborhood. The neighborhood was just a couple of blocks further away from the store than the station-house, on the same street. The third guy tripped at the same spot as the guy with the case, dripping his bag of change, it also broke open and again change was all about. The robbers kept going and at some point in time they got home without being spotted.
During this whole time I tried to call in because I could hear them on the radio trying to figure out where they went. When I got thru I asked them if they realized that the robbers ran right past the station-house. The Desk Sargent said they just figured that out. It still took them over an hour before they realized most of the money had been dropped. In spite of that all the money that was dropped was recovered, not even a penny was missing. Well to make a long story short, remember the car they left behind, it was traced back to the guard's brother. And the .38 they used that was the guards. Two days later when we located their house we arrived just as a pizza delivery guy was just leaving. We just knocked on the door and told the guard we needed to ask him a couple more questions and he let us in. There he was with his wife, his brother, a cousin and another man, the three robbers. They were still wearing the same clothes and the money was in neat little piles on the kitchen table. The only amount missing was of course for the pizza.
Now that's dumb and stupid all rolled into one on both sides.
Posted by Robert in Missouri on March 29, 2010:
To Bob in Illinois: Phew. A perfect example of people who give idiots a bad name.