Police in an unmarked car observed a man walking slowly down the alley in the 600 block between Circle Avenue and Hannah on March 28 around 9 a.m. The man was allegedly looking between gangways and parking aprons. The cops followed the man into the next block north and observed him enter a parking area where a silver Dodge Durango was parked. A woman in the house opened the window and told police that she’d seen the man allegedly open the front unlocked passenger door of the Durango and lean into the vehicle. She then said he stepped back and closed the door. The woman and her daughter told police that the man was unknown to them. The cops arrested the man, who was found to have the following items on his person: Eight Trojan condoms, a black Motorola Verizon cell phone, a Blackberry cell phone and LG Bluetooth earpiece, a red Kodak camera and a Sony Cybershot digital camera. A name check revealed that the man had been arrested in Oak Park on Feb. 25 for burglary. He was charged with attempted burglary of an automobile.
Phone snatching on CTA
Police chased two alleged cellphone thieves into a seafood shack bathroom and retrieved a black iPhone that had been stolen from a CTA passenger on the Blue Line around 4 p.m. on March 29. A man told police he was talking on his cellphone while traveling on the west-bound train which stopped at Harlem Avenue. He said a man approached him, allegedly grabbed the phone and ran from the train. The phone owner gave chase and briefly fought the alleged thief, causing injuries to his neck and a bloody finger. He told police that he finally released the phone and said, “just take it,” to the thief, who ran out of the train station and southbound on Harlem. He said he was not aware of a second man. A witness told police she saw two men run into Joe’s Seafood Shack at 1143 Garfield, Oak Park. When police followed, they found one man in the bathroom and another waiting outside. Both sweating profusely, according to reports. Police recovered the victim’s iPhone in one man’s pocket and the phone case in the bathroom garbage. One man was charged with robbery.
Garage burglary
A man told police that someone entered his garage in the 1100 block of Circle Avenue via an open overhead door some day between March 2 and 13 and stole one lawnmower and three electronic teaching microscopes. Loss was valued at $1,000.
These items were obtained from the records of the Forest Park Police Department, March 25 Ð April 1, 2012, and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Unless otherwise indicated, anyone named in the report has only been charged with a crime.
