Crime & Safety

Boy Arrested for Setting Fires on Washington Playset

After sneaking out of a sleepover, four boys are found past midnight loitering on Washington Elementary grounds, and one of them turns out to be a firebug.

One of four juvenile boys found after midnight Saturday morning on the Washington Elementary School playground admitted setting two fires on play equipment and was arrested for damaging property.

At 12:36 a.m., a Wauwatosa patrol officer spotted the boys from 68th Street and pulled over without them having seen him. He was able to walk up quite close to them and saw that one of them, wearing a backpack, was trying to climb the side of the building.

He announced himself and said that when he did, the other three looked like they were going to run, so he yelled "Stop! Police!" – and they did.

The boys admitted they were staying at the home of one of them and said they'd snuck out of the house. They were told they were violating curfew as well as loitering after hours on school grounds.

The boy with the backpack said he was practicing a sport called "parkour," which involves climbing and doing stunts on structures. When asked what he had in his backpack, he said, "I'm not going to lie, there is alcohol in my backpack. But the rubbing kind, not the drinking kind."

When the officer asked what he was doing with rubbing alcohol, the boy admitted he and his friends poured it on "a few things" and lit them on fire.

The officer had them show him what they'd done, and they led him to two pieces of plastic playground equipment, one a climbing tube and one a tube slide.

The climbing tube had a hole melted in it and about a foot-long tongue of hardened plastic hanging beneath. The slide, the officer said, suffered only a tiny hole on top and no real damage to the slide surface, just some scorch marks.

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The officer also asked all the boys if they had anything else that perhaps he ought to know about, and two of them said they had knives in their pockets "for self-defense." He advised them they were illegally carrying concealed weapons, being juveniles.

After the officer questioned each separately, it became apparent that most blame – for bringing the alcohol and actually lighting the fires – belonged with the boy with the backpack.

The other three were issued stern warnings but not cited, while he was arrested. But the officer, contacting all the parents, got them to agree to split the cost of reimbursing the Wauwatosa School District for the damage to its property.

At booking, the boy deemed responsible declined to make a statement, saying he wanted a lawyer. He was cited with a $303 fine, given a mandatory court date at 6 p.m. on Aug. 14, and delivered home to his parents.

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Editor's note: Under new guidelines established because of a federal circuit court ruling under the Drivers Privacy Protection Act, the Wauwatosa Police Department is no longer releasing the names, ages, addresses or other personal information of suspects, victims or witnesses to Wauwatosa Patch or any other media.

The police incident report also does not say whether the juveniles involved in this incident were students at Washington Elementary School or for that matter of any Wauwatosa public school.

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