FLORIDA COMPUTERS STOLEN Lake Wales News > News > Local > Thief takes a handful:

Thief takes a handful

By KATHY LEIGH BERKOWITZ
Staff Writer

Published:

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:10 AM EDT

At 9 a.m. Saturday, Chris Smith opened the Lake Wales Computer Center at 125 E. Central Ave. for “business as usual.” What he didn’t discover until later that day was that somewhere between the close of business Friday and his Saturday arrival, the store had an uninvited guest.

Stunned at the pile of broken glass in the floor, with a “no parking sign” in the middle of the room, Smith notified the Lake Wales Police Department that the back window of the store had been broken, and six gray Sony laptop computers were missing.

Smith is the computer tech for the business, which is owned by Dewayne Johnson.

Like many downtown business owners, Johnson has video surveillance inside his establishment.

It appeared that the crook reached through the back window, through bars that were six inches apart, to swipe the laptops.

“We’re pretty well prepared,” Johnson said, “but who would have thought that they would pull such a stunt?”

His business has been located on Central Avenue for only six months, and prior to that, was on Park Avenue for three years.

He’s never had a problem before now.

Meanwhile, police continue to investigate the incident.

A cement block was outside beneath the broken window.

Capt. Troy Schulze, LWPD public information officer, said “truthfully, electronics are a hot item right now ... with the state of the economy right now, window shopping has taken on a whole new meaning.”

Schulze said criminals “window shop” much the way honest people do, only while an honest person will say “I’ll save up for that,” a dishonest person will say “hmmm ... his business closes at 6 p.m.”

He noted that most “smash and grab” window thefts take less than 20 seconds.

And of those cases without video surveillance, only about a fourth of them are ever solved.

“Video surveillance is huge,” he said, adding that the chances of catching the suspects increases greatly when they are caught on camera.

Businesses also should put away anything of high value, he noted, or else place it far enough in the store so as not to attract attention.

But in the case of the Lake Wales Computer Center, the computers stolen were not in plain sight – at least not from the front of the store.

“You would think with burglar bars and security surveillance that all would be well,” Schulze said, adding that detectives are checking the downtown police cameras to see if they picked up any images of the thief.