MINNESOTA ARRESTS MADE IN COMPUTER THEFT CASE AT SCHOOL St. Paul Pioneer Press | 01/06/2007 | 2 arrested in junior high break-in:

2 arrested in junior high break-in
$40,000 in damage and stolen equipment

BY DAVE ORRICK
Pioneer Press

At least two juveniles were arrested Friday and more were possibly being sought in last week's ransacking of St. Francis Junior High School, police said. Dozens of computers were stolen.

School officials estimate that damage from the Dec. 27 break-in reached $40,000, not including cleanup and repair costs.

"They ransacked desk drawers; they smashed things and just made a mess," said Principal Dale Johnson. "They actually took the computers apart and took out memory cards. They knew what to take."

Ceiling tiles were damaged, as were overhead projectors and a window. Fire alarms also were ripped out. Stolen were 27 laptops, seven desktop computers and a digital camera, according to Johnson and police.

The effect: The school's 1,400 students, in grades six to eight, had essentially no computer center when they returned to classes this week.

Johnson said police recovered about 90 percent of the stolen equipment but not all of it is functional.

The northern Anoka County school is equipped with burglar alarms, and police were called to the building by an early-morning alarm that day. But the officers who responded didn't see anything out of the ordinary, so they left, Johnson said.

"They probably had hours," Johnson said of the intruders.

Neither St. Francis police nor Anoka County sheriff's deputies could be reached for comment Friday evening about the initial police response.

One of the two youths arrested was a former student, but neither was currently enrolled in the school. Officials said they were possibly seeking others who may have helped. Because they were arrested as juveniles, officials did not release their names.

Johnson, though, credits investigators from the agencies with finding the suspects quickly, but he couldn't deny what would have happened if the original St. Francis police officers had realized something was amiss.

"They would have caught them red-handed," he said Friday. "There was a response (to the alarm). I can't fault the police too much because we get a lot of false alarms. Something falls over and trips it. Stuff like that. They came and they looked and didn't see any unlocked doors, and they went away."

Johnson said the vandalism and thefts haven't had a significant impact on classes, thanks, in part, to teachers and staff working extra hours to repair damaged laptops teachers use to evaluate students and e-mail parents.