On May 5 at Thorntons gas station, police said they noticed a car with tinted windows and a man leaning into the rear passenger door shuffling money. Another car then stopped behind him and honked several times, according to the police report. Police watched the man exchange money for a small plastic bag. Because of this interaction, and this area’s high rate of illegal narcotics and cannabis sales, police said, they pulled the car over. In the car, they found cannabis, suspected codeine, and more than $10,000 that officers reported as possibly laundered. The front-seat passenger was given a citation for not wearing a seatbelt. The driver was arrested for driving with a suspended or revoked license, operating an uninsured vehicle, possession of cannabis in a car outside of its approved container and possession of a controlled substance. He was also charged with a count of endangering the life or health of a child and failure to secure a child in an appropriate restraint system, because his daughter was in the car’s backseat. 

Stolen catalytic converter 

A man reported to police that he parked his 2003 Cadillac sedan between 7 and 8 p.m. May 1 at the village’s lot in the 7300 block of Roosevelt Road. When he returned to his car the following morning, he told officers that his exhaust sounded louder, and he discovered that his catalytic converter had been stolen. Police are checking with nearby businesses to see if the theft was caught on camera, according to police reports.  

Boy runs away after arguing with mother about cannabis 

In the early hours of May 10, a woman visited the police department to report her son missing from their Forest Park residence, according to police reports. The woman told officers that her son left home May 9 around 4 p.m. after she addressed him about smoking cannabis and the two started arguing. While at the station, the mother called her son twice and, though he briefly picked up, he wouldn’t provide his location. The boy was entered into the police’s system as a missing juvenile.    

Residential burglaries  

  • Police were dispatched to Circle Avenue May 3 to address a report of a residential burglary. The homeowner told police he got home just before 11 p.m., parked in the garage and noticed his house’s lights were on. Upon entering his home, he said every room had been ransacked. No offenders were located inside the house and nothing appeared to be missing, though several valuable items were moved, according to the police report. The man said he doesn’t have any possible suspects for the ransacking. Officers reported that the burglars appeared to enter the home through an unlocked bathroom window.  
  • A man stole a bicycle from a garage on Elgin Avenue May 9 after entering through the side door of the detached garage, according to the police report. The homeowner yelled at the man that she would call the police before he rode the bike down the alleyway behind her house. Police found the man, arrested him for burglary and returned the woman’s bike.  
  • The morning of May 10, a man came into the police station to report that someone stole his bike overnight from an unlocked porch on his building’s second floor, leaving behind another bike outside his residence. The man reported he doesn’t want to sign complaints if police find his bike, valued at about $200, but wants his bike returned.  

These items were obtained from Forest Park Police Department reports dated May 3 through May 10 and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Anyone named in these reports has only been charged with a crime and cases have not yet been adjudicated. We report the race of a suspect only when a serious crime has been committed, the suspect is still at large, and police have provided us with a detailed physical description of the suspect as they seek the public’s help in making an arrest.