Robbery Report Leaves Police Shaking Their Heads

Make no mistake, a robbery, if and when it occurred, is no laughing matter. But police were flummoxed Friday when called to a crime scene that was impossible  to decipher because the victims were too drunk to recall clearly any of the details.

At 3:26 a.m. Friday, four police squads were dispatched to an apartment in the 2500 block of North 124th Street on a report of a strong-arm robbery, only to find when they arrived that the incident had ended about an hour earlier and there was no hope of tracking down any perpetrators.

A man from Slinger met officers at the door and told them that he and his friend, whose apartment it was, had been beaten and robbed by four people they had met at a bar and who had come over to party with them and other guests, all together numbering around a dozen or more.

The host, he said, was in bed suffering from being beaten up. Officers found blood smeared on the door and small amounts splattered on the living room and kitchen floors. Other than that, the place was neat and orderly, they said. There were several liquor bottles on the kitchen cabinet and a few drinking glasses there and in the living room – noted as odd for a place where supposedly upward of a dozen people had been partying.

It also struck officers that there was a lot of valuable and easily portable property still in place.

Both the men were highly intoxicated and gave mumbled and conflictlng responses to officers’ questions. The Slinger man said his wallet had been stolen, but it was found on the premises, sans any cash. But he couldn't remember how much cash he might have had.

He also said intitially that his wallet must have been picked up from where he left it in the living room, but later said he had been robbed at gunpoint.

The Wauwatosa host, who was taken to Froedtert Hospital, couldn't remember a thing.

Wauwatosa police kept the case open but in their reports suggested that little was to be learned from further investigation, based on the statements of the supposed victims, who could not even describe their alleged assailants.