Northeast residents might be seeing a new wrinkle on an old scam, Capt. Frank Palumbo said earlier this month.
Two men recently approached a Lower Northeast resident, telling him there was a dead animal in his yard and that they needed to get onto the property to find out if his water was tainted.
This isolated case, Palumbo told members of the 2nd Police District Advisory Council, was like other ploys in which con artists pretend they are utility workers who urgently need to get into victims’ houses to check water or gas pipes.
Those phony PGW or PWD workers really urgently want to burglarize their victims’ homes, police have warned for years.
At the Oct. 14 PDAC meeting in the Philadelphia Protestant Home, two 2nd District cops were honored for quickly arresting a street robbery suspect, and two others were similarly lauded for finding and arresting two men wanted in a murder case.
Ian Lichterman and Michael Rooney were named July Officers of the Month. Padraic Feeney and Kevin McGrorty were the August honorees.
According to Community Relations Officer Dianne Murphy, Rooney and Lichterman were on patrol July 28 at about 11 p.m. when they responded to a call about a robbery. The victim told the officers he was robbed on the 1400 block of Magee by a man who brought an object to his back and told him not to move. The robber went through the man’s pockets, relieving him of his phone and $50. When the victim tried to flee, another man punched him in the mouth. The men were accompanied by a woman, whom the two officers were able to track down along with one of the men. The victim identified both of them, Murphy said.
McGrorty and Feeney, Murphy said, developed information that led to the arrests of two men wanted in connection with a homicide case.
There will be no 2nd PDAC session in November. The next meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Dec. 9 at the Philadelphia Protestant Home, 6500 Tabor Ave. ••
