Police Reports: Woman Is a Ghoul to Goodwill

When you want to get a head start on your Halloween costume shopping, what do you do? Chances are, unlike this subject, you don't go to Goodwill to steal them.

It's just sad to begin with that a Goodwill Industries store, of all places, has to hire someone to spend all day on the lookout for thieves. But it does, thanks to people like this woman whose tricks were no treat. At 8 p.m. Thursday, a 32-year-old Milwaukee woman was arrested for theft after she tried to steal a number of Halloween costume pieces from the Wauwatosa Goodwill store at 12121 W. Feerick St. The Goodwill loss-prevention officer said he saw the woman enter the store and head straight for the Halloween section. As he watched, she stuffed merchandise into her purse, then walked around the store for a few minutes before heading out the door. The store officer stopped her outside and recovered a woman’s full costume, two Halloween…

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Police Reports: A Case of Arrested Development

Hooligans old enough to be finishing college were out in the wee hours opening a hydrant and running around like truant tykes.

We lead off with the kind of report you sort of expect from kids maybe 15 or 16 years old, at which you might just cluck your tongue and perhaps smile at your own memories. But when "kids" get to be 21 and 22, we really find this sort of nonsense stupid. At 3:01 a.m. Wednesday, police arrested three young men, 18, 21 and 22 years old, and a 17-year-old boy, all from Wauwatosa, for resisting arrest after a caller reported that they had opened a fire hydrant at Maple Terrace and North 72nd Street and then run off toward Hart Park. A Wauwatosa police officer answering the call pulled into the Hart Park parking lot and spotted the four emerging from the woods along the Menomonee River. He distinctly heard one of them say, “I hope they have …

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Police Reports: Drunken Vigilante Tries to Clean Up Tosa

Among recent crime incidents, an intoxicated Wauwatosa man attempts to run a woman out of town because he thinks she's a prostitute.

At 8:47 p.m. last Friday, a 47-year-old Wauwatosa man was arrested for disorderly conduct after he, in a high state of intoxication, verbally assaulted a Milwaukee woman who he mistook for a prostitute. The woman told officers she and her boyfriend were at the bus stop at West State and North 70th streets when an unknown man who was clearly drunk began to yell at her. She and her boyfriend then left to walk to the next stop east, at 68th Street, but her boyfriend decided to go to the Pick ‘n Save while she continued. At the bus stop, she said, she was suddenly grabbed her the shoulder and spun around, and she found herself confronting the drunken stranger again, who shouted “Whore!” at her over and over. The woman ran into the middle of …

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Police Reports: Mayfair Bans Mean Little to These Two Girls

A pair of 17-year-olds amass lengthy files of bans from the mall, but just keep coming back and racking up more fines for trespassing and theft.

At 8:35 p.m. Wednesday, two 17-year-old Milwaukee girls were again arrested for criminal trespass at Mayfair Mall, and one of them also for retail theft after she was seen trying to steal several pairs of jeans from the Buckle store. She returned the jeans when confronted by a store security officer but refused to be detained. Police found her and her companion, who was not suspected of theft, and learned that both had been banned from the mall multiple times. One girl had five Mayfair bans already in effect, plus three prior arrests for trespassing there in violation of the bans, two arrests for receiving stolen property and one for retail theft. The other girl had two prior arrests for trespassing in violation of her several and …

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Bucky

3:12 pm on Saturday, June 9, 2012

I agree with you 100% Joseph ! If you could carry your gun in the mall you could shoot all the kids for trying to steal a pair of jeans. You go spend all that money on that weapon and you can't find anyone to kill ... life's a bitch hey Joseph.   more ›

Police Reports: Spate of Garage, Shed Burglaries Hit East Tosa Mid-Week

Two incidents a block apart involved forced entry by kicking in service doors of detached garages.

A small area of East Tosa was targeted Wednesday by a burglar or burglars apparently looking for older, detached garages. A resident of the 2700 block of North 74th Street reported that between 7:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., someone kicked in the side door of his detached garage, breaking the wooden door frame. Nothing was taken because the homeowner had locked down everything of value with steel cables. At 12:20 p.m., a resident of the 2700 block of North 73rd Street reported that he had just seen a man enter a neighbor’s detached garage through the service door, which appeared to him to have been unlocked, and leave with a push lawn mower. The owner assured police the door had been locked, and it was found to have been kicked in, ripping the …

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Police Reports: Woman Encounters Cross-Dressing Interloper in Office

She unlocks early in the morning to find stranger lying on the floor behind her desk.

A woman who had only been on her new job for a week got a shock when she unlocked her office in the morning and found a strange man inside. At 7:12 a.m. Wednesday, a Greenfield woman who works at the Milwaukee County Research Park building at 10437 Innovation Drive reported that when she entered her office, she found a man lying in the narrow space between her desk and the wall. She yelled and ran out of the office to find help, then saw the man leave her office and walk toward an exit. She told police the man appeared to be wearing a full-length black dress, leading her to believe he was a cross-dresser. She said that the office door had been locked when she arrived and nothing was disturbed. Police found no signs of a forced entry, and …

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Police Reports: Counterfeiters Still Hard at Work

Target reports fake $100 just passed by a customer, then turns over six more found out after the fact.

At 5:27 p.m. Friday, police were called to Target, 3900 N. 124th St., on a report that a woman had just passed a counterfeit $100 bill. The woman had left the area by the time officers arrived. The clerk said she thought the bill “didn’t feel right” when she accepted it, but she made change anyway while trying to stall the customer until a manager arrived. The customer rushed out of the store when managers approached. The bill proved to be a bleached and reprinted $5 bill, and Target management also turned over six more counterfeit $100 bills, all of them reprinted $5s, and one fake $10 bill. Those phonies had all been discovered after cash drawers had been turned in, long after the fact. The suspect was described as a black woman with a …

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One Counterfeit Bill Passer Caught, Another Foiled

Woman caught in Franklin after successful quick-change in Tosa; man fails to convert cash in overtime.

What Wauwatosa's chief of detectives recently called a "rampant" tide of passing counterfeit cash turned a bit in favor of the good guys Saturday. A woman was caught in Franklin after changing a fake bill at a Mayfair shop and a man was turned away from a Tosa outlet store without his funny money and the goods he hoped to buy with it. According to police reports: At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Franklin police called the Torrid store in Mayfair Mall to check for a counterfeit $100 bill. Franklin officers had arrested a woman who had passed a fake $100 at the WalMart there, and she had admitted to passing another one around noon at Torrid. Sure enough, the bill was located. It turned out to be a real $5 bill that had been bleached and reprinted as a…

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Counterfeiting 'Rampant' in Area, Police Say

Businesses are advised to take extra steps to scrutinize large bills during rash of forgery.

Police are advising area business owners and managers to tell their staffs to take a harder look when a customer offers a large bill in payment – especially when it's a $100 bill for a purchase of just a few dollars. Counterfeiters are using a method that breaks through the first two lines of defense: the feel of the paper, and a sensing pen used by many businesses that detects a marker in real scrip paper and tells you it is a genuine piece of currency. The trouble lately, said Lt. Dennis Davidson of the Wauwatosa Police Detective Bureau, is that it is real money, but it isn't a real 100. "It's all about the Benjamins," Davidson said. "There are other methods being used, too, but the main problem is the bleached $5 bills altered to look …

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Police Report: Klutzy Crook Entering Cars in Madison Park Area

Also in the same area: A number of cases of counterfeiters trying to pass altered bills at local businesses.

Editor's note: Because of a technical error, this report was not published as scheduled. These incidents occurred from Oct. 17 through 22. _______________________ Residents of Tosa's most northerly neighborhood would be advised not to leave valuables in their cars overnight, as there seems to be a young man on the loose with a strong interest in seeing what’s inside. A resident of the 4500 block of North 101st Street reported Wednesday that some time overnight someone had entered his car and stolen some change – and dropped an iPhone in the driver’s seat in the process. Police checked the phone and found that its service had been canceled in July and there was no information about any previous owner. At 4 a.m. Friday, a man came home from …