DAMN A/C BANDITS! Twice this sweltering summer, someone ripped out the copper tubing from the air conditioning units here at the Loaf offices, rendering the units useless and our offices steamy. This is a popular crime this time of year, as the copper can easily be sold for a tidy profit. There were two reports of the same thing in early August at businesses not far from Loaf headquarters. The first was at Bahasa Night Club at 2408 W. Kennedy Blvd, where two A/C units were broken into, their copper pipes removed at a loss of "between $8,000 – $10,000." The second, at a construction site at 2905 W. Kennedy Blvd., had three A/Cs stripped, with the cops giving no estimates of the value of the damage. (Or having any leads or suspects for that matter.) Misery does love company.
FOLLOW THE GUN: Police got a call from a Tampa man who reported that a drug dealer of interest to the cops had stolen a .357 Magnum from his parked car and was now trying to sell it back to him through a middleman. The officers investigating the drug dealer quickly called the victim back, only to find the man had broken down and bought his gun back. This didn't bother the cops, as they quickly arrested the drug dealer (who confessed to stealing the gun) and the middleman (who confessed to buying the gun from the drug dealer and trying to sell it back to the victim). If convicted, this will be felony number 21 for the drug dealer. If it's not a record, it's got to be close.
SLAVE TO THE MUSIC: The suspect in this next case really loves the tunes. Witnesses reported watching the man try unsuccessfully to break into a parked car at North Boulevard and MLK with a coat hanger. The man finally gave up on the Mommie Dearest method and left the scene, only to return a short while later with a much more suitable tool: a hammer. The man smashed a window, grabbed 26 CDs from the front seat and booked it out of there. The witnesses gave police enough information to catch up to the suspect, who, per the report, "had just delivered the CDs to a neighbor and asked [him] to hold onto [them]." The man was taken into custody and the CDs were returned to their rightful owner.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 4, 2007.