Before the Thanksgiving holiday, I checked the Philly Police Blog, which lists the incidences of reported crime in the city’s twenty one police precincts, and was startled to discover that November was a big month in the Riverwards for commercial and residential burglaries. Listed under the heading “Multiple Commercial Burglaries for the 24th and 26th District”, I scrolled to the month of November and found so many listings I could barely count them.
The B-Tan Tanning Salon at 2601 Aramingo Avenue, where I happen to be a member, was hit by a burglar who broke the glass front door to gain entry. Now, B-Tan doesn’t have much in the way of valuable goods, unless you consider exotic and sweet smelling tanning lotions to every bit as valuable as bundles of cash. The PPD’s blog stated that, “the suspect took an undisclosed amount of money then fled the area in an unknown direction.”
B-Tan, unfortunately, is robbed on average of about once a year, and the results are usually the same: The front glass door is smashed to smithereens, leaving piles of shattered glass in the entranceway. The robberies always seem to occur in the middle of the night or towards dawn, when car and pedestrian traffic on Aramingo Avenue is at its lowest ebb.
Prior to studying the police blog, I had assumed that commercial burglaries of this sort were committed by drug addicts looking for quick-fix money and that the robberies were more or less impulsive. I changed my opinion on that score when I viewed a video on the police blog of a suspect breaking into Accent on Animals in the Port Richmond Shopping Center, not far from B-Tan. Most of the time, burglaries in this area involve more than one store, and this time was no exception. It’s possible that the person who robbed B-Tan was the same person who hit Accent on Animals.
A security video from Accent on Animals showed that the suspect arrived in the shopping center parking lot in a light blue Chrysler Town & Country or Dodge Caravan, proving that a) he was not homeless or a street addict carrying a sign, and that b) he was possibly from another neighborhood, such as the Northeast. The video recorded the arrival of the car as being somewhere near 6AM. The suspect, a white male in a full gray sweatsuit with his head covered in a hoodie and half his face covered with a scarf, was shown swinging an axe two times at Accent’s door frame. With a third swing he swung into the glass door itself, shattering the glass in one fell swoop.
Three precise, surgical whacks allowed him to enter the pet store. Once inside he behaved like a contestant in a free 3 minute supermarket shopping spree, frantically emptying out the cash register and then looking around for something valuable to pocket. Since t-bone steak flavored doggie bones or catnip toys held no interest for him, he ducked back out the opening he created with his axe, and then made his made his way to another business: Safe Cleaners at 2435 Aramingo.
Presumably, he followed the same procedure at Safe Cleaners, swinging his axe twice at the door frame and then with one final blow smashing the glass door so that he could gain entry. According to the police blog, the suspect stole nothing from Safe Cleaners, but “fled the area in an unknown direction.”
That ‘unknown direction’ was likely 2475 Aramingo, the Ez-Bargain store, where he once again used the three-swing axe method to gain entry. This time, he walked away with an undisclosed amount of money. But still not being satisfied, he presumably walked to the neighboring Village Laundry at 2455 Aramingo, where he again took his axe and shattered yet another glass door so that he was able to enter and take a checkbook and “approximately $3.00 worth of coins.” Three dollars in coins is hardly a treasure trove. But when you’re desperate, you’re desperate.
Almost down for the count, the suspect then decided to tamper with the Hair Cuttery at 2457 Aramingo, perhaps recalling a former visit there when he needed his neck hair shaved. With his trusty axe, he once again gained entry, but finding no cash on hand in any of drawers or compartments, he did what any desperate, self respecting thief would do: take anything. So he took a $20 bottle of hair conditioner.
If you’re like me, you might be thinking, “Wow, smashing door frames with an axe and shattering glass is a lot of mess and drama for just one bottle of hair conditioner.” Perhaps the stolen overpriced conditioner was for his own hair, tucked away in obscurity inside his hoodie. Perhaps he was opting for a Thanksgiving gift for a girlfriend.
The reigning similarity here is that none of these violated businesses had metal or shatter proof doors. Glass doors, it seems, are a handicap and a liability, especially when you consider the ease with which they can be shattered. Our experienced burglar, after all, delivered his 3-axe whack and gained entry at Accent on Animals in record time– under 30 seconds. Talk about criminal expertise.
Obviously what these small businesses need to do is invest in stronger doors, namely a metal door grate for after business hours. The second business blunder here seems to be keeping cash on the premises after hours. While a business can afford the loss of a bottle of hair conditioner, the suspect would not have bothered with the Hair Cuttery in the first place if he had known there was no cash on the premises. The dollar store, after all, sells fantastic conditioner.
What’s odd here is that someone could go from store to store in a kind of Wild West manner, smashing glass doors and not being heard by a single passerby. Granted, there’s not much sidewalk traffic at that hour, especially in the rear part of the shopping center which faces the desolate stretch of land under I-95. B-Tan, which is not in the shopping center and borders the never ending traffic streams along Aramingo Avenue, would seem to be in the most burglar unfriendly area of the shopping center, but yet the suspect was still able to smash and grab even here.
Police presence in the shopping center and along Aramingo Avenue prior to 2AM is intense, especially near places like Wawa, Dunkin Donuts and Cione Playground. Police presence at this time in fact even tends towards overkill. Perhaps there’s a good reason for this police presence, even if your average burglar is going to avoid well lit businesses with several patrol cars in the parking lot.
As for the axe-wielding suspect who broke so many glass doors along Aramingo, perhaps the best that can be said for him is that one day he will be out of his comfortable, lightweight, large pocketed sweatsuit. I can see him now, scrubbed up and dressed in a tailored suit when he is in court for his trial. •
