No relief

The troubles continued for DeKalb Avenue merchants who have been plagued by burglaries for months, when another store owner reported being struck on the night of Aug. 25.

Between midnight and 7 am, crooks apparently broke into the grocery, between Clermont and Vanderbilt avenues, by using the basement, which is shared with a neighboring residential building.

The burglars stole $600, 2 boxes of cigarettes and six boxes of Tylenol.

Anyone without a headache is considered a suspect.

Backdoor man

An intruder purloined high-tech gadgets, plus some odds and ends, from a Clinton Avenue apartment on Aug. 29 while all of the three roommates were gone.

The trespasser busted open the back door, according to one of the three roommates who live in the unit between Park and Myrtle avenues, who was gone from 11 am to 3 pm. The victims reported losing an iPod, two digital cameras, a pack of Marlboro lights (consider it a favor — they’re bad for you) and $5 in loose change.

Under their noses

Thieves stole a motorcycle on Aug. 14 that had been seized by police and impounded at the 88th Precinct stationhouse on Classon Avenue.

Police parked the 2007 Honda crotch rocket, which belongs to a 22-year-old Brooklyn man, behind the station at the corner of DeKalb Avenue at 11 am. But by Aug. 27, cops noticed that the bike was gone.

Off the money

Two thugs failed to steal a cash register from a Myrtle Avenue deli on Aug. 24, but injured the clerk in their attack.

The duo entered the bodega between Clermont and Vanderbilt at 7:15 pm, and one half of the pair brazenly shoplifted some minor items. The other hooligan threw a television set at the cashier, who had confronted him about his companion’s crime. The TV chucker tried to remove the cash register from the counter, but failed, and fled down Clermont Avenue with his partner.

Welcome home

A Lafayette Avenue burglary abruptly snapped a vacationing woman back into reality on Aug. 24.

The 30-year-old victim told police she was getting a little R&R from Aug. 15 through Aug. 24. Upon returning to her apartment between Carlton Avenue and Adelphi Street, she found her rear window and front door wide open and was missing her television set, some computer equipment and assortment of battery chargers for her gadgets and about $10 in spare change.

Repeat offenders

Police arrested two teenage men who made repeat shoplifting incursions into a national retailer on Flatbush Avenue on Aug. 25.

The 18-year-old suspects began by stealing a bicycle a piece and fled through an emergency exit at 1:20 pm in the chain retailer between Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue. They repeated (and repeated and repeated) the thievery until just after 3 pm, looting diapers, an LCD television, golf gloves, walkie talkies, headphones and other electronics and accessories for the bikes — all stacked up outside the emergency exit.

The pair then left through the main entrance where arresting officers lay in wait.

— Mike McLaughlin

©2008 Community Newspaper Group