NEW JERSEY COMPUTERS STOLEN http://www.northjersey.com/news/124837089_Services_disrupted.html


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Paterson nonprofit group temporarily shuts to recover from back-to-back burglaries [raw video]

FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2011    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY JULY 1, 2011, 9:56 AM

BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN

STAFF WRITER

THE RECORD

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PATERSON — The social service non-profit Well of Hope was forced to temporarily shut its doors Tuesday after back-to-back break-ins by rooftop burglars who smashed a window, broke through a door and stole four laptop computers.

TYSON TRISH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Jerome King, executive director of Well of Hope in Paterson, carrying bars to reinforce windows accessed in two break-ins this week. The non-profit, which had four laptops stolen, will reopen Tuesday.

"It's extremely frustrating," said Jerome King, Well of Hope's founder and executive director, who stayed overnight in the three-story building that houses the program near Broadway and Straight Street until additional window bars and security cameras were installed. "We told people why we're closed this week and they're pretty outraged."

The non-profit — which runs a needle-exchange program and provides clients with a drop-in center where they can do laundry or make phone calls — plans to reopen on Tuesday. But this week, only a handful of clients got help, compared with the 70 to 100 who use the agency most weekdays.

The repairs will cost about $3,000 that is not in the agency's budget, King said. After a deductible, insurance will only pay to replace two of the laptops at about $500 each, he said.

King also is concerned that some of the laptops contained confidential medical information, although the agency did try to obscure the clients' names in the records.

Surveillance cameras caught the burglar in the act, King said. His face was concealed but some of the frames on the video showed a distinctive tattoo on his arm.

"We think it was Spider-Man, although we don't think he would have done that," quipped Diane Tolsma, a nurse whose office still had shattered glass on the carpet on Wednesday, left so crime scene detectives could document the break-in.

To get in through that window, the intruder had to scale the fairly steep pitch of the roof of The New Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church next door and jump down and across a narrow alley.

Whoever it was, the burglar was quick, King said. Based on the time of the alarm and the arrival of the first officer, he said the burglar was in and out within about three minutes.

It's not clear whether the break-ins, one on Sunday night and another on Monday night, were the work of the same burglar or more than one person, King said. But he's resigned to the possibility that the thief could have been a client who was familiar with the layout of the building.

What especially hurts, King said, is that the week before the break-ins, the agency's 13-member staff had staged a client appreciation week that featured movies and games of bingo with winners getting gift cards from Walgreens.

If it was a client, that makes the break-ins even harder to take, King said.

"We love our work," he said. "When somebody does something like this, they hurt all of that. They hurt the whole community."

E-mail: ensslin@northjersey.com