Business & Tech
This Mayfair Arrest Is In the Bag, Out of the Bag
Probationer has a bundle of strange booty in his bindle that doesn't belong to him, but despite elegant police investigative work, he draws only a municipal citation.
What started as nothing more than an unattended bag left on a couch in Mayfair Mall turned into quite an investigative coup for the Wauwatosa police, leading them to believe they had a basis for four serious criminal charges.
In the end, an assistant district attorney quashed that plan, and a habitual thief walked with a municipal citation.
At 4:22 p.m. May 3, police were called to the upper level of Mayfair near Spencer's Gifts when a black duffel bag was found unattended on a sofa. Officers opened the bag and quickly found a driver's license receipt with a name.
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The Mayfair security chief was on hand, and he paged that name to return for his bag.
But in the meantime, Tosa police officers were digging further in the duffel, and the next thing they found was a 6mm BB gun. That led the mall security chief to declare that the owner, when or if he returned, would be banned from the mall.
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Next, Tosa officers dug a Nook tablet out of the duffel. They turned it on and with a few clicks discovered that it was a demonstrator model belonging to Barnes and Noble bookstore.
That's not your Nook, dummy
About that time, the owner returned for his bag, which he said he'd deposited there because he has scoliosis. Asked to explain some of the contents, he said the BB gun was his cousin's and the Nook was his brother's – a Christmas present, he said.
A records check showed the man had a long history of arrests and convictions on various criminal counts, including three state criminal convictions for retail theft and/or receiving stolen property just since last June. He also had a municipal retail thef citation from Greendale in September 2011. He was, by the way, on probation.
An arrest was called for, and that called for a search of his person – which turned up a "dummy" Samsung Galaxy phone belonging to Verizon Wireless, used only for display purposes. The officer reporting noted that he strongly suspected it was stolen because – nobody sells dummy phones.
A Tosa police officer tried to call the man's probation agent. No answer. He tried the local general number for probation services. No answer. He tried the regional office. No answer.
Mayfair security announced a five-year ban, and the Tosa officers hauled the suspect to the station for booking.
There, an officer finally hooked up with an after-hours probation agent who reserved a bed for the suspect at the Milwaukee County Criminal Justice Facility, aka, the jail.
Right store, wrong mall
Continuing the investigation, an officer learned that the Nook reader had in fact not been stolen from the Mayfair Mall Barnes and Noble store. He didn't stop there. The serial number led him to the Barnes and Noble at Southridge Mall – which confirmed the reader had been stolen on March 3, two months before.
The store hadn't filed a police report, though, so there was no investigation to follow up on there.
Verizon Wireless confirmed that the dummy phone was definitely one of theirs, but there was no record of it by serial number because, well, it was a dummy.
The suspect made a statement to police, as before, that the BB gun and the Nook reader were the property of various relatives of his that he just happened to have in his bag.
He also said the dummy phone belonged to his brother and had been around the house since about last June. Upon questioning, he acknowledged that there really was no reason anyone would possess a dummy phone. The arresting officer noted that the suspect "didn't seem to understand that that would lead someone to believe that having a dummy phone would likely be stolen property."
Copy to recipient's current address
With all this evidence in hand, Wauwatosa police sought charges of:
- Possession of a facsimile weapon
- Habitual criminality
- Receiving or possessing stolen property, and
- Violation of probation
On May 5, the District Attorney's Office declined to pursue charges, stating that it would be difficult to prove the suspect knew the Nook and display phone were stolen.
Apprised of that, Wauwatosa police issued a non-traffic municipal citation for possession of stolen property, with bail set at $555, and forwarded that to Wauwatosa Municipal Court. They also mailed it to the defendant – one copy to his home address and one copy to his then-current address at the County Jail.
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