Gang "Floods" Area to Burglarize Homes

The following is an update, issued by Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel, on the recent rash of burglaries in the area.

This week, a street gang, the Sin City Boys, who mainly operate on the West side of Chicago , but has affiliations in Berwyn/Cicero, had actively sent out their juvenile members to commit residential burglaries and home invasions during the daytime hours in the West Suburban area. On Monday and Tuesday, the gang leadership sent out as many as 30 juveniles to commit crimes in Riverside , Brookfield , Forest Park , River Forest , Western Springs, and Downers Grove .

The WEDGE (gang & drug) unit received intelligence on this activity and teamed up with MCAT to begin surveillance and get saturated patrols out early Monday morning in the above mentioned communities. Monday morning and early afternoon, our Detective Sergeant, Dave Krull, heard a radio broadcast of a burglary in progress. Det. Krull responded in plain clothes and saw two of the three subjects hiding behind a garage in Lyons . Krull, along with fellow MCAT members, took up foot pursuit and after several minutes took all 3 juvenile gang members into custody in Lyons . These three suspects had parked a stolen motor vehicle (found containing other stolen property from burglaries) about a block from the burglary scene; a vehicle that had been reported stolen over the weekend in Lyons .

While processing those juveniles in Lyons , another call went out for LaGrange Park , North Riverside, and River Forest . Sgt. Krull was deployed as part of MCAT into the area. He and the other three MCAT members spotted the vehicle that had been reported by one of the victims as being involved in the burglary in Berwyn . On (Madison Avenue in Forest Park , they initiated a traffic stop with assistance from Forest Park . In that vehicle, three adult male Sin City Boys gang members were arrested and 7 handguns were discovered along with proceeds from burglaries. Those suspects were taken into custody and brought to Berwyn (where the call originated). During investigation, Berwyn detectives were able to receive consent to search and obtained a search warrant for 2 residences in Berwyn (where gang members were living or storing property). Officers executed the warrants and recovered 1.8 million dollars street value narcotics, mainly cocaine, and recovered 10 more weapons, among them a MAC10 pistol machine gun. In addition, two of the three Sin City Boys are believed to be involved in an unsolved homicide in Berwyn and those individuals are still being investigated as of today. We brought in the DEA and the FBI on this large scale case.

The Riverside burglary was on the 3600 block of Harlem and rare coins stolen. There are coins that are still unidentified in the property room at Berwyn PD. Riverside will likely be indicting the arrested gang members on that burglary, but currently we are awaiting results from some physical and DNA evidence (blood) as their MO was to break windows to get obtain entry into the residences.

I would like you to know that some outstanding work was done by Detective Sgt. Krull and by Sgt. Frank Pontrelli (who performed the evidence work in the case). Krull has worked non-stop, not only as the Riverside Detective, but also on the MCAT task force. Krull was directly involved in the arrest of all 6 suspects, and in Lyons , in the apprehension of suspects.

Due to this occurrence, I redirected patrol operations and fully staffed day shift to the extent possible. I put administrative personnel in uniform out on the street to saturate our village with marked patrol units and I believe it was a success. Detective Krull found that when speaking with the suspects in Lyons , they had come to Riverside first and happened to see a Riverside Police squad on routine patrol on Olmsted Road and they decided to go elsewhere, which was when they headed for Lyons . They also said that they knew many of the Riverside homes had alarms and they did not want to deal with those.

In closing, this is the first time in my 25 year career that I have ever heard of gang members admitting flooding a specific area with a number of their members to commit burglaries, in attempt to simply overload departments and confuse police agencies by their activity generating so many calls and reports coming in to department simultaneously.

I think this speaks volumes about the task forces we are involved in; MCAT, NIPAS and WESTAF. The time, expense and manpower we put in on these teams is well worth it, when you consider the assistance and information that we get from other agencies in return when this type of crime occurs.
If you have any questions, please call me.

Thomas Weitzel
Chief of Police
Riverside Police Department
31 Riverside Road
Riverside , IL 60546
708-447-2127
tweitzel@riverside.il.us