The following are selected reports from the Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct. They represent the officers’ accounts of the events described.
Copper theft
Sometime over the weekend of May 15 through May 18, someone broke into a building in the 400 block of Third Avenue West and stole an estimated $600 worth of copper piping from the walls and ceilings. The building is currently being prepared for demolition and is boarded up.
The complainant who called 911 reported to police that, as he approached the building the following Monday, he saw a couple walking a dog leaving the premises. He wasn’t certain if they were the copper thieves or if they were merely squatting in the building.
The caller also gave police two old cellphones he’d found left behind in one of the rooms.
Easy target
Another vacant building was burglarized over the weekend of May 15 through May 18, this time in the 4000 block of Dexter Avenue North. The burglar stole a large, wheeled toolbox full of tools.
Construction workers told police they believed the burglar entered by climbing through an unlocked window.
The construction workers had reported a burglary earlier that week, as well. Sometime overnight, between 6 p.m. on May 14 and 8 a.m. on May 15, someone climbed in through a window and kicked a hole in the drywall to access a storage space, from which they stole a bunch of tools.
The construction workers on site told police these were just two of many burglaries that have happened over the last couple months.
Police encouraged the workers to start locking the windows.
Stolen bike
At 9 p.m. on May 14, two police officers responded to a reported burglary that happened the previous evening at a home in the 1200 block of 10th Avenue West.
The homeowner told police he noticed his bike was missing from his garage at 8 a.m. that morning. When he parked his car in the garage at 10 p.m. the previous evening, the bike was there. He said the garage door was closed; however, another door to the garage was unlocked.
Because there were no signs of forced entry, police believe that someone entered the garage through the unlocked door.
Gone in a flash
A homeowner called 911 at 5:03 p.m. on May 12 to report that someone had stolen his $13,000 racing bike from his garage in the 100 block of Lee Street.
He said he is in the process of moving. He’d been in the house for a few minutes and left the garage open, and when he returned, the bike was gone. He said he didn’t see anyone around when he came out, and there were no suspicious people around while he’d been outside before.
Responding police searched the neighborhood and didn’t find any signs of the bike. They put out a radio broadcast warning all area officers to keep a lookout for the bike, but they didn’t find it.
Storage break-in
The manager of a building in the 600 block of Prospect Street called 911 to report that storage units in the building’s laundry room had been broken into.
He noticed the burglary on May 11 but wasn’t sure when it had actually occurred.
She said a couple of residents had reported items missing from their storage units.
Stolen pills
Managers of an assisted living home on Fourth Avenue North reported approximately $600 worth of prescription drugs had been stolen from a resident’s room. The thefts had occurred gradually over a period between March 13 through May 13. The resident had run out of her prescribed tablets much earlier than she should have.
Managers of the building did an audit of the electronic log of the building’s door system and found the resident’s room had been accessed multiple times while she was out at lunch or dinner.
Managers suspect two people who could have committed the theft.