Back in May a burglary occurred resulting in a safe being broken into, and the theft of numerous antiques, art, and many other things. A report was made with the local police.

While at the scene of this burglary, a local homeless woman wondered in and provided me with a description of those she had seen along with two first names. I provided her information along with those names to the officer who responded to the call, but he told me that none of those names meant anything to him, and that he felt she had given us fake names and information. Later I encountered a code enforcement officer. I asked her if the homeless woman or names she provided meant anything to her. She knew all of them, said they were all "regulars", and were well known by law enforcement.

Fast forward to last week. I see a Facebook post in a group I belong to warning people not to do business with a guy here in my area. He had sent his guy money, but the guy never sent the items. The items were in the same category of those involved in the burglary, so I asked the poster if he had received photos of the other items the guy was selling.

I received copies of emails and text messages between the two, and guess what? I found the burglar. And not only did I find the burglar, but he and his girlfriend were those named by the homeless woman.

The victim and I have been attempting to get the attention of the reporting department, but we can't get anybody on the phone and messages remain unanswered.

I called the FBI yesterday morning as this crossed state lines and involves the internet. They have the most useless automated phone system, but was finally able to speak with somebody who's not an agent, but takes information and passes it along. We'll see if I get a call back from them.

I called the police agency where the facebook poster mailed his money and where we believe the items are located. They say they can't do anything without the reporting agency contacting them directly.

So here it sits. Case all wrapped up with a big red bow attached. All somebody has to do is get a warrant, go put somebody in handcuffs, and recover whatever is left. Of course the longer we wait, the less there will be to recover since the thief is obviously selling it.

Anybody want to place bets on how this plays out?

Tell the victim to take the info and physically go to the police department that took the report and refuse to leave until they talk to somebody. No, they shouldn't have to do that, but it's probably the only way anything is going to get done.

Call your local investigative reporter and talk with them. They’d probably love going to talk with LEO as to why nobody is doing anything. The threat of bad publicity ought to get someone to move. The reporter will probably wait to air the story just so they can show the arrest to make their station look like the hero too.

I had a similar frustrating experience years ago, until I found some leverage to get authorities to be more motivated.
Without knowing all the particulars here, I'd say you need to find someone with influence that has been victimized by these people that can help you make the connections.
I would also contact someone higher up in the police department or FBI that you can demonstrate that you can help make it easy, make them look good. Don't keep trying to get a low level person to push for you.
Maybe search for the email contact for a supervisor and send them this story in writing so they can't deny what you've provided to them.
Remember, they like to be made to look good, so help them do that.

Sidebar.... can you provide any details on how the safe was broken into? They use crowbars, a torch, cutting tools? Just curious how they did it and how much time it took.

“We are not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you.”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

There used to be a cop here KevinCW, he lived in your area I think, might try to look up his info and contact him directly.

Here's still hoping for a successful outcome. I'm glad you cracked the case.

quote:

Tell the victim to take the info and physically go to the police department

Victim is in his mid-late 80's, can't walk, and has his moments of clarity and utter confusion.

quote:

how the safe was broken into?

Pure brute force. Likely a sledgehammer for most of it, and maybe an hour.

quote:

There used to be a cop here

I know Kevin. He's on the Missouri side, burglary occurred on the Illinois side. Address here in Missouri is in a completely different county than any of us.

thanks for taking your time to follow up, the system can be discouraging as seen from your post.

Thank you for helping the gentleman out. I hope it works out for him.

Police won't respond to a citizen ?
Call the Mayor.

Local news media might be your friend in this instance.

quote:

Originally posted by BB61:
Call your local investigative reporter and talk with them. They’d probably love going to talk with LEO as to why nobody is doing anything. The threat of bad publicity ought to get someone to move. The reporter will probably wait to air the story just so they can show the arrest to make their station look like the hero too.

That sounds like a good plan!

I hope you have good luck. As a LEO I would love to have a case handed to me like this!!

Most of the time people have no clue what was taken and their info and statements(if you get one)looks like a meth using uneducated one winged chicken wrote it out.

I so hope this works out for you!
Similar situation happened to my elderly father; I’d love to have proof, but more, to get his items back.

quote:

Originally posted by MaSigchist:
Police won't respond to a citizen ?
Call the Mayor.

Call the mayor and tell their secretary that your next call, right after this call ends, is to the local investigative news outlet.

Good job on following up a1abdj!

Different situation but the city we previously resided in created the problem of four houses having yards and driveways underwater due to their screwing up a road reconstruction project and poor maintenance of the gravel road that fronted our properties.

All of us for months had been complaining to the city until the day we had a large,and fast rainfall. My daughter called, I left work and called the city offices trying to get ahold of the city manager as the DPW head was useless. His Secretary kept saying “He’s in a meeting” to which I finally said “Well you can tell him he has exactly one half hour to get out here. Because in thirty one minutes I’m calling WWJ Radio. I’m acquainted with so and so, (forgot his name, it’s been years and he kind of owed me a favor) and the city manager can explain on the radio why the city won’t fix their f***ups!

Yep, within a half hour the city manager was on-site reaming out the DPW Chief. It’s all fun and games until they get called out for incompetence.

Has anyone had a positive experience reporting a crime?

I have never successfully gotten any law enforcement agency to act, including the FBI - even with complete prosecution packages put together by the security team of large corporation.

My suspicion is, they are mostly useless.

Elected sheriffs might be better/probably are. (The only agency I ever got a real response from, but they didn’t know how to use their camera they needed to document something.)

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
Has anyone had a positive experience reporting a crime?

I have never successfully gotten any law enforcement agency to act, including the FBI - even with complete prosecution packages put together by the security team of large corporation.

My suspicion is, they are mostly useless.

Elected sheriffs might be better/probably are. (The only agency I ever got a real response from, but they didn’t know how to use their camera they needed to document something.)

Most thefts are hard to solve, especially when there's no evidence or any idea who the suspect is. In this case, though, it sounds like that's not the case.

I honestly don't get too many theft calls. A lot of them end up being basically just paperwork for insurance because there's no suspect and no evidence to build a case on.

Last year I had a lawnmower get stolen out of a front yard. He had no idea who the suspect might be, but the victim had a pretty solid timeframe and records of the serial #. I did some digging, got some security camera footage from area businesses, identified the suspects as some local druggies who I was familiar with, and recovered the mower that same morning at a place they were known to hang out. I got charges on both of them, too.

I recently had a check fraud get called in by a bank. Checks had been stolen and washed. That one is still pending trial so I can't really talk about it on here, but we got an arrest in that one too.

I'm currently waiting on a response from another financial institution for a subpoena that I filed in a similar case. I have a possible suspect, and if the results of the subpoena provide confirmation, I'll be running that one down as well.

It's not a huge percentage, but we do win some of them if there's enough evidence and you're willing to put in the work.