Burglar Alarm

It was just before noon and Herb Appelson was sitting at his kitchen table, still wearing his pajamas and reminiscing about Carol Neulander. The phone rang. Slowly, the man who had carpooled with Neulander, the man who had lived down the street from her, rose and answered the call. No more than five seconds passed before the Rowan College art teacher shook his head and uttered a short "no" into the phone. "Can you believe it?" he said. "The nerve to do this today.

A Willingboro police officer was reported "up on his feet" yesterday after being shot in the leg the previous night, police said. Patrolman Richard Rodgers, a 14-year veteran, was investigating a burglar alarm at a Burlington County check-cashing office shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday when he was shot by an unknown gunman, Willingboro Police Lt. George Kline said. Rodgers radioed dispatchers at 11:17 p.m. after noticing an open back door at the United Check Cashing branch office in the Casel Shopping Center on Route 130 near Beverly-Rancocas Road, Kline said.

RE THE OP-ED by Patty-Pat Kozloswki ("The day my religion took a hit," Oct. 10): When did a "baseball bat behind a door" become a Port Richmond burglar alarm? I live in Port Richmond and have an alarm system that notifies the police of any problems. Pat's comment is offensive and one of many that people use to bad-mouth or verbally attack this section of Philadelphia. I am certain that most people in this neighborhood do not have baseball bats as burglar alarms. She makes it sound like we are a group of vigilantes or thugs ready to pounce on a person in a heartbeat.

Police are looking for a burglar who made a drive-in out of the front door of the Bell Atlantic Mobile phone center here, and made off with five portable telephones. Responding to a burglar alarm at the 1301 Bristol Pike store at 4:05 a.m. on Tuesday, police found a gaping hole in the front entrance. It did not take officers long to surmise what had happened. "The guy just drove in and helped himself," said Sgt. George Berry, a police spokesman. "I guess he felt the fastest way in and out was to create his own drive-in.

There was something unnaturally bright about the glow emanating from behind a door at the Haddon Township home of Jeffrey Bush, thought police officers investigating a burglar alarm there Saturday morning. Was it a burglar armed with a spotlight? A poltergeist? Township Police Officers Scott Bishop and Kirk Earney opened the door to find mischief of a more garden variety. This wrongdoing, they said, wasn't that of an intruder, but was Jeffrey Bush's. Inside the finished basement, they found lamps trained on about 100 carefully cultivated marijuana plants, the fruit of an elaborate greenhouse that included chemicals, temperature control, fans running to the outside and an irrigation system.

Three robbers' rough handling of some employees at Pilgrim Life Insurance Co. in Folcroft, Delaware County, set off a silent burglar alarm Thursday, but not in time for police to capture the gunmen who terrorized 22 employees and escaped with an estimated $10,000. Folcroft police and county detectives yesterday continued to investigate the armed robbery, in which the men escaped with the cash and some jewelry from an office at the entrance of the Folcroft Industrial Park on Henderson Boulevard.

No one is immune from crime in Philadelphia. Not even in Chestnut Hill. Not even City Solicitor Nelson Diaz. Diaz recently returned from a trip out of town to learn that he had become a crime statistic over the weekend. According to authorities, police responding to a burglar alarm in the 200 block of secluded Sunrise Lane shortly after 6 p.m. Dec. 13 found evidence that someone had broken into the home of the city's top lawyer. Someone had pried open the kitchen door, ripped and disabled an alarm mounted on a second-story wall, and ransacked one of the bedrooms.

Nearly $50,000 worth of office equipment was reported stolen Friday morning from South Jersey Office Equipment Co. at the Gateway Shopping Center in West Deptford, police said. Val Orsimarsi, owner of the business and chairman of the Washington Township Municipal Utilities Authority, reported the burglary at 7:19 a.m. Friday. Police initially said the burglary had taken place late Thursday or early Friday but now believe it happened between 5:30 and 7 a.m. Friday. Detective Sgt. Ed White said authorities have no suspects in the burglary but believe the crime was committed by more than one person because of the number of items stolen.

Two Delaware County men have been charged with burglary and receiving stolen property in the burglary of a Newtown home Saturday morning. Acting on tip from Upper Providence Township police, at 5:42 a.m. Newtown police arrested George Darcy, 45, of 830 W. Springfield Rd., Marple, after he was reportedly seen sitting in a car outside the burglarized house in the first block of Llangollen Lane in Newtown. At 9 a.m. Newtown police arrested Walter ReDavid, 36, also of 830 W. Springfield Road, in front of Darcy's apartment.

At 46, Angel Ortiz admits he may have lost a step or two. "I can't run like I used to," the husky city councilman confessed yesterday, after letting a burglary suspect outdistance him during a chase through North Philadelphia. Police officers had better luck. They collared one of the two suspects whom Ortiz had spotted breaking into a neighbor's home. As Ortiz recounted the adventure, he and his wife were in their home on Parrish Street near 20th, waiting to have a burglar alarm installed because they had suffered one break-in and an attempted break-in.

A former Philadelphia police officer who forfeited his 27-year career and pension after being found guilty of stealing $825 from a Northeast tavern was sentenced Thursday to five years on probation and fined $5,000. Kenneth Crockett, 57, said nothing before Common Pleas Court Judge Earl W. Trent sentenced him in the 2010 theft from Pat's Cafe at Castor Avenue and Arrott Street in the Northwood section. Trent also ordered Crockett to reimburse the tavern's owner, Patrick Holloran.

A Philadelphia police officer who forfeited his 27-year career and pension when he was convicted of stealing $825 from a Northeast tavern was sentenced today to five years probation and fined $5,000. Kenneth Crockett, 57, said nothing before Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Earl W. Trent sentenced him in the 2010 theft from Pat's Cafe in the city's Northwood section. Trent ordered Crockett to reimburse the stolen cash to the tavern's owner, Patrick Holloran. Crockett and two other officers responded to a burglar alarm at a neighboring business at about 4 a.m. on July 27, 2010 when they saw that the basement door at Pat's Cafe was unlocked.

RE THE OP-ED by Patty-Pat Kozloswki ("The day my religion took a hit," Oct. 10): When did a "baseball bat behind a door" become a Port Richmond burglar alarm? I live in Port Richmond and have an alarm system that notifies the police of any problems. Pat's comment is offensive and one of many that people use to bad-mouth or verbally attack this section of Philadelphia. I am certain that most people in this neighborhood do not have baseball bats as burglar alarms. She makes it sound like we are a group of vigilantes or thugs ready to pounce on a person in a heartbeat.

Moorestown's missing Nipper statue was welcomed home by cheering employees of the Lutheran Home yesterday, just hours after the big brown dog in Egyptian getup turned up in a Pennsauken woods. Tupper - Tut's Pup had only a few scratches on his right ear, muzzle and flank after he was stolen last week from the home's front lawn. Tupper is one of thirty 5-foot-tall, 75-pound fiberglass Nipper sculptures adorning the streets of Moorestown in a wildly popular public art project.

A Willingboro police officer was reported "up on his feet" yesterday after being shot in the leg the previous night, police said. Patrolman Richard Rodgers, a 14-year veteran, was investigating a burglar alarm at a Burlington County check-cashing office shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday when he was shot by an unknown gunman, Willingboro Police Lt. George Kline said. Rodgers radioed dispatchers at 11:17 p.m. after noticing an open back door at the United Check Cashing branch office in the Casel Shopping Center on Route 130 near Beverly-Rancocas Road, Kline said.

No one is immune from crime in Philadelphia. Not even in Chestnut Hill. Not even City Solicitor Nelson Diaz. Diaz recently returned from a trip out of town to learn that he had become a crime statistic over the weekend. According to authorities, police responding to a burglar alarm in the 200 block of secluded Sunrise Lane shortly after 6 p.m. Dec. 13 found evidence that someone had broken into the home of the city's top lawyer. Someone had pried open the kitchen door, ripped and disabled an alarm mounted on a second-story wall, and ransacked one of the bedrooms.

Michael Frayn's Alarms and Excursions is calculated to convert even the most committed geeks into devout Luddites. The Luddites, both literally and figuratively, attacked the new machinery developed for manufacturing at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Frayn's theme is the tyranny modern technology inflicts on the hapless consumer that leaves so many of us lost in cyberspace - or screaming at an intricately coded burglar alarm that won't let us into our own house. Frayn came to Alarms and Excursions after writing Copenhagen, his cerebral and provocative consideration of one fascinating chapter at the opening of the atomic age. Is it such a long way from Armageddon to humanity threatened by hostile smoke alarms, timers and answering machines?

The three Old City Xando Coffee Bar workers brewed up more than coffee this summer, cops say. They cooked up a scheme to fake a burglary and steal about $11,000 on Aug. 7. The plot looked better on paper than it did in execution. Two of the three workers eventually swallowed their pride and confessed to Detective Sgt. Michael J. Chitwood Jr. and Detective James Corbett. Yesterday, after a preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge Craig M. Washington, Justin Hutchmacher, 20, of Locust Street near 44th; Thomas Ross, 25, of Pine Street near 42nd; and Trisha Whitman, 19, of Wharton Street near 5th, were ordered to stand trial on theft and receiving stolen property charges.

The Township Committee last night banged out 11 ordinances in 25 minutes that run the gamut from regulating security alarms to dropping a requirement that home offices using telephone lines pay fees and get Planning Board approval. Homeowners who sound more than six false intruder alarms a year will be slapped with a $100 fine under an ordinance adopted unanimously. The fine would grow to $200 for each of the ninth, 10th and 11th false alarms, and to $300 for each of the 12th, 13th and 14th false alarms in a year.

Unless otherwise attributed, the following reports are based on statements of local police. Abington Two 16-year-old boys from Willow Grove were charged with beating up two 15-year-old boys in the parking lot of Willow Grove Park mall at 9:34 p.m. April 4. One of the boys, who lives on Prospect Avenue, was charged with aggravated assault. One of the victims suffered a concussion, and he and the other victim were taken to Abington Memorial Hospital for treatment. Police said one of the victims had called one of the accused and asked to meet at the mall.