HUDSON HEIGHTS — A pair of men was arrested for stealing hundreds of dollars from a laundry room vending machine amid a series of similar break-ins Uptown, police said.
Jenderson Jerez, 25, was charged with burglary and criminal mischief after fingerprint evidence linked him and a 16-year-old accomplice to an April 7 burglary at a buuilding on Pinehurst Avenue near West 181st Street, police said.
The two men broke into the laundry room and stole $1,700 from the machine, which residents use to put money on their laundry cards, police said.
Surveillance video of the burglary showed three men inside the basement laundry room shortly before 2 a.m., according to the criminal complaint. Jerez spent about 40 minutes trying to break into the machine, even attempting to pry it off the wall with his hands at one point, the complaint added.
Around 8 a.m. the same morning, the building's custodian discovered the machine split open with all of the money gone, authorities said.
After taking fingerprints at the scene, detectives were able to match them to prints that were already in the system, police said.
jerez was previously convicted and served time for burglary, according to the state Department of Corrections.
The record of the 16-year-old, whose name is being withheld because of his age, was not available because of his juvenile status.
Neither of the perpetrators' lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment.
There was no information available on a third suspect seen in the surveillance footage.
The 34th Precinct recently experienced approxiamtely 16 similar incidents, in which groups of two to four suspects have stolen money from laundry card machines in residential buildings, police said. In some cases the suspects pried the card machines from the wall, while in others they broke into them.
Two teens were arrested in March after a resident witnessed them attempting to pry the laundry card machine off the wall of her Hillside Avenue building.
Police are still investigating whether or not the four suspects who have been arrested were involved in any of the other incidents, they said.
A police source in the 34th Precinct said the arrests have had an impact on the crime pattern.
“They have slowed down,” the source said. “We’ve probably taken one more [burglary] since this arrest, but the four arrests we’ve made have helped tremendously.”
The burglary pattern has contributed to a recent increase in crime in the 34th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Chris Morello told residents at a recent precinct meeting.
“We do have a spike in crime at this time,” Morello said of the most recent 28-day period, which ended April 26. “We were up 22 percent, with 86 felonies versus 71 for same time last year.”
Burglaries were up 60 percent for the year, with 16 this year versus 10 for the same time period in 2014, NYPD stats show.
