A thief or thieves shattered the glass front door of an AT&T store at 160 Montague St. in Brooklyn Heights early Thursday morning before waltzing out with expensive display models of Apple products.
Store manager Luis Cruz was awakened at 4 a.m. by his store’s alarm company, he told the Brooklyn Eagle. He rushed to the store and discovered that four iPhones and three Apple Watches had been stolen.
Cruz said that other items in the store, including iPads, remained untouched. He added that he did not have video of the incident, but believed the police would have the ability to obtain footage.
While organized shoplifting rings have been wreaking havoc in Brooklyn Heights, Cruz said his store has not recently been targeted. “It’s a standard break-in,” he said.
Other shops and delis in Brooklyn Heights have experienced large groups of youth “wilding” and stealing items this summer, but store employee Oscar Jara said that was not the case for the AT&T store. “Three, four years ago they used to come in, in groups of three or four kids,” he said. “But not recently.”
Cell phones are a frequent target of theft in New York City — and in all major U.S. cities — because of their high resale value, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
Depending on the amount of memory and the mobile plan, new iPhones can range from roughly $500 to almost $1600. The latest Apple Watches (which must be paired via Bluetooth with an iPhone for many functions) cost from $200 to $750, depending on specifications.
The 84th Precinct’s Deputy Inspector Adeel Rana, at the precinct’s Community Council meeting on June 18, said burglaries were up in the area this summer. “We were doing great and then we started going into the negative direction,” he told attendees.
According to the NYPD’s Compstat crime statistics portal, burglary in the 84th Precinct is up 78 percent year-to-date.
