Old
Town businesses hurt by crime
BY LISA MACKIE
On the weekend of November
15 and 16, three separate criminal incidents alarmed business
owners in the Old Town Takoma Park business district.
Saturday, just before closing, the cash register was stolen
from S&A Beads. At about 2 a.m. that same night, someone
broke the glass door of antiques store Moonshadow and smashed
all the glass display cases. And on the following Sunday,
the owner of Now & Then found a man going through the
personal belongings of the staff, apparently looking for cash.
While authorities say none of the occurrences appear to be
related, some business managers and owners think it is the
beginning of an annual increase in crime around the winter
holidays.
Zoe Stern of S&A Beads was helping a customer at the
end of a busy Saturday when his behavior started to make her
nervous. She says he asked a few questions as though he were
a regular customer, but started fiddling on the other side
of the counter where she couldn’t see, then he pulled
wire cutters from his clothing and cut the cash register’s
electrical cord, causing a loud bang.
"We didn’t know what happened–we thought he
shot a gun," says Stern.
"It always seems to be around Christmas," she added,
saying that she thinks "he scoped out the stores"
to determine which would be his target.
While police spokesperson Carol Bannerman says that the case
is still open, there is hope that a suspect will be brought
in because the thief parked his car illegally in the alley
next to the store, and a passing citizen recorded the license
number.
Bannerman also reported that a suspect has been charged with
the break-in at Moonshadow.
"We picked up a 16-year-old suspect who currently lives
in Derwood, Maryland," she said. He is being charged
with second degree burglary and malicious destruction of property,
among other charges.
When Karen Leeman, the owner of Moonshadow, arrived at the
store on the night of the break in, she found that "all
the cases were busted. It looked like total devastation."
Leeman counts herself lucky, even though cleanup of the damage
took a week.
"It was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. No
one got hurt. I love my things, but they’re only things."
She thinks it was "willful destruction," because
the burglar didn’t find any money. She says he didn’t
take any valuable merchandise, stealing mostly pens. She has
had an alarm installed to deter any further burglary attempts.
In the incident at Now & Then, a man was found in the
small kitchen in the rear of the store, during one of the
busiest times of the week. Jude Garrett, the owner, tried
to detain him while an employee called the police.
Allessandra Silver says that "customers were freaking
out" when he was found. He said he was using the bathroom.
He managed to get away and the police did not catch up with
him. They later found that $30 and a pack of cigarettes were
missing
Silver says that she and the other Now & Then employees
knew about the previous night’s theft at S&A Beads,
and were thinking about it that day. They are being much more
cautious about locking doors and making valuables inaccessible.
"Crime starts going up around Christmas–we have
to be a lot more aware," she says.
Police spokesperson Bannerman says that the worst month for
burglaries is August, not November or December. She says that
65 percent of burglaries (a break-in with the intent to commit
theft) are residential. The statistics for theft are not as
easy to determine, as it is such a broad category.
Stern would like to see more evening police presence in the
business district at this time of year.
"We’re vulnerable," she says. "We need
them to be up here. If they had been here, [the thief] wouldn’t
have come in."
NOTE: All the checks written on Saturday,
November 15, at S&A Beads were in the cash register. If
you made a check purchase there that day, please contact the
store.
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