Capt. Brian Hennessy (Photo: QueensPost)
Feb. 27, 2014 By Christian Murray
Sunnyside continues to be a hotspot for burglars, with the latest incidents occurring on the south side of Queens Blvd.
Captain Brian Hennessy, commanding officer of Police Precinct 108, said at the monthly precinct meeting Tuesday night that in the past two weeks four burglaries have occurred between 41st and 43rd Streets on the south side of the boulevard.
He said the burglary pattern has shifted in the past two weeks—from the north side of Queens Blvd to the south. The north side, however, has taken a beating in recent months (click for story)—with those apartments located between 48th to 53rd Streets (Skillman to 43rd Avenues) being hit the hardest in the past month or two.
The police still don’t have many leads on these cases and Hennessy said that the precinct needs the public’s help. “We are not getting the 911 calls we need…where someone calls in and says ‘Hey, there is this suspicious guy who doesn’t belong here’…or ‘I see this guy in my courtyard,” Hennessy said.
Hennessy said that the precinct has been assigning extra cars, plain clothes teams and other units to the trouble spots in what he referred to as “flooding the zone.”
There have been 21 burglaries in the precinct (covering Sunnyside/Woodside & Long Island City) in the past 28 days—up from 10 during the same 28-day period in 2013. Excluding burglaries, the overall number of serious crimes declined over that period.
Most of the burglaries were in three distinct precinct zones, Hennessy said. He said that there were the two Sunnyside zones and one near Elmhurst, between 69th and 71st Streets (btw. Roosevelt and 43rd Avenues).
In separate news, the police reported incidents at two Sunnyside bar/restaurants in the past month.
The precinct closed down Arzteca, located at 47-16 Greenpoint Avenue, last week for being open after 4:30 am. Hennessy said that the restaurant/pub had been issued with seven summonses—for being open after hours–over the past four or five months.
The restaurant is going through the courts to re-open.
Meanwhile, the operator of Baru Restaurant, located at 47-15 Barnett Avenue, was arrested for reckless endangerment. The establishment, which was acting as an after-hours club, had shut the doors on its customers to appear closed.
Hennessy said that locking the doors is a serious public hazard. In case of an emergency no one can get out of the building.
