BonnerSprings.com

Owners of businesses along the Kansas Highway 32 corridor in Bonner Springs and Edwardsville say they’ve been hit repeatedly by the same gang of burglars. Now they’re organizing to do something about it.

Tuesday night, about 20 of the businessmen met with Chief John Haley and Lt. Rick Schubert of the Bonner Springs Police Department, and Paul Soptick, chairman of the Kansas City, Kan.-based Neighborhood Crime Prevention Patrol, at Custom Limousine Inc., 11531 Kaw Drive.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss forming a business crime-watch group, along the lines of neighborhood watch groups that form in residential areas.

The last straw for Tom Edmondson, owner of Custom Limousine, and de facto leader of the meeting, was the attempted theft of his pickup truck from his business on Sunday. The thieves’ luck ran short when a Bonner Springs police officer noticed the truck driving along the railroad tracks and turning onto a commercial drive, and gave chase. The driver took a right on K-32 then stopped and the two men fled on foot south toward the railroad tracks.

“That’s the closest we’ve come to catching them,” Edmondson said.

Edmondson said the modus operandi of the thieves — cutting through the fences in the rear of the businesses — and their appearances in surveillance camera images indicate it’s the same men in each incident.

The combined losses for the businesses are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Edmondson said he and his fellow businessmen have calculated.

Haley advised business owners to not take matters into their own hands by following and investigating suspicious people found near their businesses.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Haley said, because when the business owner catches or confronts the suspect, it could be a dangerous situation for which police officers are trained.

After the meeting, some business owners shared their stories with the Chieftain of their losses.

John Lindsey, owner of Lindsey Masonry, said a 26-foot enclosed trailer was stolen from his warehouse near 118th Street and K-32.

Graham Kostynuk, owner of Alumicorp, 11616 Kaw Drive, said he’d had hand tools, shop tools and office equipment worth an estimated $30,000 taken from his business.

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