Baskin-Robbins Burglary Must Have Been an Inside Job

It's never a good thing when a business is burglarized, but it might be a small relief to others to know when such a crime is almost surely an inside job, and not the work of some roving break-in artist who could strike anywhere.

In this case, it would seem just too much of a coincidence to think that any random actor would happen to hit upon the right moment and know just where to go and what to take in under half a minute.

At 2:58 p.m. Friday, police were called to , 1417 Wauwatosa Ave., on a report of a burglary and robbery of the store’s change safe.

The store manager, on the job for 17 years, said she had opened the store in the morning as usual and did a count of the cash at 10:20 a.m., including the change on hand.

After setting up the cash register drawers, she replaced the change box in its safe, but as usual did not lock it.

She unlocked a back hallway door shared in common with Breadsmith next door, then briefly went into the rest room.

Later in the day, the store owner came in and asked the manager to get some more change from the safe.

The box was missing.

The two reviewed security video and found that in the 27 seconds that the manager was absent in the restroom, a man walked in, went straight to the change safe, grabbed the box and left without touching anything else.

The two suspect a disgruntled former employee who had been fired about a year ago.

A Breadsmith employee remembered hearing the sound of a door closing from the common hallway at about the time of the theft, but he hadn't thought anything of it.

Police had not yet received a copy of the store video at the time of the report, so no description of the suspect was available.

At the request of police, Patch does not disclose amounts taken in business burglaries so as not to reveal how much cash is kept on hand.