911 Call a Diversion Before Jewelry Store Burglary

Wauwatosa police said a 911 report of a home invasion early Saturday was a fictitious diversion to draw as many police officers as possible away from a real burglary committed three minutes later at an East Tosa jewelry store.

Police still responded to the actual break-in within six minutes, but that was enough time for the burglar or burglars to grab fistfuls of gold necklaces and escape.

According to police reports:

At 2:41 a.m. Saturday, all east-end police squads were sent racing toward an address in the 1900 block of Pleasant Street on a call from a man who said someone was breaking in while he and his daughter were in the home. The call came in on a 911-only phone.

Three minutes later, a burglar alarm sounded from Gold Emporium, 7024 W. North Ave., about 16 blocks to the northeast.

Officers at the Pleasant Street location woke a resident who said no call had been made by him or anyone in his family, and no one in the family owned a 911-only phone.

In the meantime, a dispatch went out sending more officers toward the jewelry store, with the first arriving at 2:50 a.m. He found that someone had smashed the storefront window with bricks and made off with an unknown amount of merchandise.

Officers reported finding shattered glass inside and out and three concrete bricks among the debris inside the store. There were also the shards of a plastic basket, leading them to believe the burglar had carried the bricks to the store in it and heaved the whole thing against the window.

Inside, the tops of two of three glass jewelry display cases were also shattered. The owner, who was also alerted by the alarm, arrived and said he couldn’t say yet exactly how many pieces had been stolen but he was definitely missing a number of gold chains.

An officer noted in his report the presumed diversionary call. Checking the call log, he detailed the calls and responses thus:

• 2:41 a.m., 911 call, home invasion on Pleasant Street
• 2:44 a.m., burglar alarm tripped at Gold Emporium
• 2:46 a.m., squads dispatched to Gold Emporium
• 2:50 a.m., first squad arrives at Gold Emporium

If the diversion was a success, stretching response time to six minutes, police may nevertheless have a suspect. Another officer reported having stopped a man for a field interrogation earlier in the night when he saw him loitering in front of Gold Emporium.

The man claimed he just happened to be standing there while trying to contact his ex-wife in a nearby apartment building. Lacking any evidence or reason to arrest him, the officer let him go, but he got a positive identification from him as a 30-year-old Milwaukee man.

That subject has one criminal conviction on his adult record. He pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon in 2009.

Police are continuing the investigation.