Kory Pierson, co-owner of the the business, said cell phone store break-ins are an epidemic in Dayton.
“We’re going to secure even the demo phones, putting them away each night. We’re going to increase lighting, adjust motion sensors and install different mounts for the display phones,” Pierson said.
“Will that stop them?” he said.
Kindy Ghussin, who owns the Heartland Pharmacy that adjoins Verizon and anchors the north end of the shopping center, had security gates installed across his entrances and office windows “immediately after they had the first break-in. It cost me $7,000. I didn’t want to be next,” he said.
“Verizon needs to put up a gate now. It won’t cost them as much because their frontage is smaller. I’m surprised there have been so many robberies here, but no cell phone store anymore can have just a glass door.”
The Shops at 3000 also include a Subway restaurant, Ulrich’s Bakery and Awesome Yogurt.
Kettering Police spokesman Ron Roberts said the crimes “don’t mean the area has suddenly changed. It’s a new business that’s very popular. It has what people want. Some of those people are criminals. When a Wal-Mart or Target store opens in a given area, it’s not unusual to see shoplifting reports spike suddenly.”
Jana Falknor, manager of the Far Hills store, said the thieves hastily removed several display phones, a tablet and a television monitor used to project features of the various phones.
“They aren’t coming in for cash. They took the TV because they could.” The store’s interior surveillance video shows a trio of burglars wearing hats and towels obscuring their faces smashing their way in through the bottom panel of the door to parking lot. “They were here all of 20 seconds.”
Not counting the time spent securing the crime scene, cleaning up and making temporary repairs, thefts and damages totaled about $5,500 she said.
Those who robbed the Kettering store are suspects in a crime that took place 30 minutes earlier at a Sprint phone store at The Greene, a few miles to the east in Beavercreek.
The crimes have reinforced a trend toward cooperation among competitors.
“Another company’s store might call to alert us about certain individuals who were just in their store trying to open a fraudulent account and might be heading our way next,” Falknor said.
Naomi Fogel, who manages the Awesome Yogurt shop on the other side of Verizon, said she believes her staff and customers “are completely safe here.”
She said the Verizon owners “posted the surveillance video of the last break-in on their Facebook page and I’ve posted it on mine. Maybe if enough people see it, someone will recognize them.”
Falknor said phones stolen from Verizon stores can’t be used with a Verizon account elsewhere, but otherwise they can’t be traced. “The thieves can change the software or sell them to someone who will.”
A bill recently reintroduced in U.S. Congress by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) would require carriers to create a shared blacklist with ID numbers of stolen devices, bar them from providing service to a device on the list, prohibit altering a device’s ID number and mandate development of technology that would let customers remotely delete their data from stolen phones.
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