WASHINGTON COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM SCHOOLS Burglars hit Puyallup schools over holidays TheNewsTribune.com Tacoma, WA Burglars hit Puyallup schools over holidays
TARA MANTHEY, The News TribunePublished: January 4th, 2006 04:22 PM

Police are looking for three people who stole up to $100,000 in computer and high-tech equipment from four Puyallup schools over the holiday weekend.

Security tapes show three individuals taking computers, monitors and laptops from Emerald Ridge High School, Stahl Junior High School and Rogers High School on Sunday night. They returned to Puyallup High School on Monday night and took more computers and video equipment including projectors and editing machines, police said.

The suspects appear to be in their late teens or early 20s, said Ed Troyer, spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.

There was no sign of forced entry to exterior or interior doors, alarms weren’t tripped and it appeared that the suspects knew where expensive equipment was located, Troyer said.
“We’re not saying that it’s an inside job,” Troyer said, “but there’s a chance that somebody got a hold of someone’s keys.”

School officials are changing locks on several buildings in the district, said Dick Cvitanich, Puyallup School District’s assistant superintendent of K-12 instruction.

Officials also are looking into what kind of information may have been on the computers stolen from administrative offices. Confidential student information is normally saved to a central server, Cvitanich said, but the district hasn’t determined if any sensitive information was saved to the hard drives of the stolen computers.

The district is a member of a risk-management pool that will likely cover the damages, he said. The deductible is $10,000 and will come from the district’s general fund, he said.

Tacoma-Pierce County Crime Stoppers is offering up to $1,000 for information leading to arrests and charges filed in the case. Callers remain anonymous.

Reach Crime Stoppers at 253-591-5959.


Tara Manthey, The News Tribune