On November 7, 2000, Officers of the Ste. Genevieve Police Department were interviewing a suspect in several break-ins and two car thefts. The suspect had not been arrested yet, but had failed the CVSA and was starting to break. At first we thought he was going to be smart because he told us he did not want to talk with us anymore and asked to leave. We were still lacking enough PC to arrest him on the charges, but we did have officers at the Prosecutor’s Office applying for a search warrant to search the suspect’s apartment where we had learned from a witness that evidence from one of the break-ins was being hidden.

The suspect did not know we were getting the search warrant, but did request to leave because “His girlfriend was going to be worried.” We told him that his girlfriend was in another room being interviewed, so he asked if he could wait in the lobby for her. We knew he wanted to leave to get back to the apartment, and we were worried if he got back to the apartment he would destroy or remove the evidence.

I had an officer watch him in the lobby. The officer had to come back into the office from the lobby to talk with another officer. Right after the officer left the lobby, the suspect broke into the display case and attempted to steal a one-hitter out of the case. What the suspect did not know, that there was an officer in the police department still watching him and witnessed the whole attempted theft.

Officer took him into custody and took him to jail. This gave us the time needed to sucessfully search the apartment and retrieve the evidence.