“I have a gun. Give me $40,” the would-be Long Island bank robber’s note said.

But his intended victim, a female teller at the HSBC branch in West Hempstead, disarmed him with just four words:

“Are you for real?”

Taken aback, the robber “nodded his head yes, but she basically just didn’t react. He took his note and left,” said Nassau County Police Detective Sgt. Gary Schriffen.

The request for such a specific, small sum was unusual, Schriffen said. “We don’t usually have people asking for specific amounts.”

The weak-willed bad guy was described as being in his early 20s, wearing a dark baseball cap and a blue windbreaker.

Anyone with information about the Thursday robbery attempt is asked to call Crimestoppers at (800) 244-TIPS.

Meanwhile, Schriffen’s robbery squad busted a 48-year-old Bronx man with a history of bank robberies on charges of robbing two banks of more than $10,000.

Anthony Saciolo, 38, of 1577 Paulding Ave. in The Bronx, was arrested after he was captured on a bank security video that was publicized. A tipster who recognized Saciolo called police, Schriffen said.

Schriffen said Saciolo robbed a North Fork Bank in Farmingdale, L.I., on Tuesday at gunpoint and also stuck up a Fleet Bank branch in Baldwin, L.I., last month. A pellet gun believed to have been used in the robberies was recovered.

Saciolo is also expected to be charged with a robbery at another Fleet Bank branch, in Suffolk County, Schriffen said.

Sources said Saciolo was arrested in 1990 for a series of five bank jobs in Nassau County - also after he was caught by surveillance cameras and identified. He was sentenced to a 5-to-10-year prison stretch for those crimes.

Saciolo was also briefly embroiled in the case of Long Island Lolita Amy Fisher.

But Saciolo later denied signing an affidavit that branded Joey Buttafuoco a pimp and drug dealer.

LARGO, FL — At first, it seemed like the burglar had caught a lucky break.

The man walked onto the Silver Bar’s patio early Friday and tried the door. It was unlocked. The burglar stepped inside.

He didn’t go to the cash registers, which were empty anyway. Instead, he started pilfering the booze.

He swiped 26 bottles of beer, most of them Michelob Lights. He also collected four bottles of the hard stuff: Stoli Vodka, Absolut Vodka, Capt. Morgan’s coconut rum and 1800 Tequila.

That’s more than one man can carry, so the burglar shed his Dallas Cowboys jacket and started using it as a bag. He stuffed bottles in the arms and pockets and hauled the glass-bulked jacket outside the bar at 13707 58th St. N.

But unbeknown to the burglar, he had tripped a silent alarm. And when a police officer walked up to the bar and put a flashlight in his face just before 6 a.m., the burglar dashed away.

Police searched for about an hour, but the man got away. He did leave something behind: the Dallas Cowboys jacket.

And inside one of the pockets were documents with a man’s name, date of birth and personal information.

Police say the name on those documents is that of Marvin Edington, a 44-year-old transient. One of the documents was an arrest affidavit dated Nov. 7 chronicling how Edington was arrested for trespassing. The other document was a printout that had Edington’s mug shot on it. The mug shot had been taken Oct. 26, when Edington was arrested for having an open container of beer.

Police say it is likely Edington is their burglar. Police lifted fingerprints from the crime scene that they will compare with fingerprints taken when Edington was previously arrested.

Either way, police said, they want to find Edington and talk to him.

“We’re asking for help finding this guy,” police spokesman Mac McMullen said. “We need to talk to him.”

Police said the burglar had dragged more than $100 worth of booze out of the bar before the first officer arrived.

“It appeared he was making trips in and out of the bar with the bottles,” said Officer Randy Chaney, who was at the scene. “He was basically filling up his jacket with as much as he could carry away.

“He didn’t touch the cash registers,” Chaney added. “He apparently had a single mission that evening.”

Anyone with information about the burglary or Edington’s whereabouts can call Largo police at 587-6730.

I work plain clothes enforcing alcoholic beverage laws. I was in a bar trying to find the owner. I was standing at the bar and asked to speak to the owner. I stated in a loud voice so as to be heard over the jukebox & patrons, “I am a Police Officer and need to speak to the owner.” I also had my badge out to identify myself. Approximately five feet away was a man who was obviously intoxicated. After I had stated who I was, the drunk man staggered over to me and asked, “Would you like to buy a joint?”

I was still holding my badge in my hand when he asked this, so I had another Officer hook him up and take him to the jail. Now you know why they call it dope.

KUALA LUMPUR - A security guard caught a teenaged burglar napping in an armchair just before dawn at a medical college in central Malaysia, local newspapers reported on Tuesday.

Police in the city of Ipoh were called after the man, a factory worker, was discovered sound asleep, his loot beside him.

Police official Ahmed Tejuddin Abdul Majeed said the burglar’s haul was about $530 worth of audio-visual equipment.

LONDON - Four suspected thieves who robbed a Chinese food delivery man by hitting him with a bag of prawn crackers were nabbed after police followed a tell-tale trail of spicy sauce, British police said on Tuesday.

Police in the West Midlands said the takeaway delivery driver was jumped on by a group of people who bashed him over the head with the light-weight crackers before stealing his food.

When officers arrived, they noticed a thin path of sauce had leaked from one of the containers. They followed it to a nearby apartment where they arrested three men and a woman.

The driver, who has not been named, was not seriously hurt, police said.

The four arrested were due to appear before magistrates in Walsall charged with robbery. Another man was released without charge.

Police say that two men accused of peddling drugs to Belton students made it easy for detectives who wanted a phone number to set up an undercover purchase.

They allegedly handed out business cards.

“Dunn Deal Enterprises,” the cards said. One version showed a drawing of a fist gripping a wad of cash. Another version showed what police said appeared to be a marijuana leaf. Both cards gave the same phone number.

“The brazenness of it is very disturbing,” Cass County Prosecutor Chris Koster said. “The law enforcement community is not getting the message out. People think they can get away with this kind of activity.”

Collus Kendrick Watson, 26, and Raymond Jacob Bentley, 18, both of Belton, were arraigned Tuesday in Cass County on felony charges of distributing drugs near a school.

The two men, who face a minimum of 10 years in prison if convicted, remained in the Cass County Jail on Tuesday. Bond was set at $100,000.

According to court documents:

Belton police had been investigating reports of drug sales — and the circulating business cards in Belton High School and Yeokum Middle School — when a seventh-grade student at Yeokum was caught with marijuana Nov. 14.

The student told investigators that he had purchased the drugs from the man refrenced on the business cards, and that the deal was made at an address that police said was within 2,000 feet of the high school.

The next day, detectives called the phone number and set up an undercover drug purchase across the street from the high school. Police say that Bentley sold marijuana to the undercover officer.

Bentley allegedly told police that he sold marijuana for a man police identified as Watson. Police say Bentley admitted he had sold drugs for Watson more than 20 times, usually to students he knew at Belton High.

Bentley was a former Belton High student but had not attended Belton schools for two years, school officials said.

“We work to keep our schools safe and drug-free, but we’re not so naive to think we don’t have any problems,” Belton School District Superintendent Ken Southwick said.

“These things aren’t isolated to the Belton School District….Drugs are in our state, they’re in our communities.”

Koster said he was particularly concerned by the age of some of the students who either had been approached about drug deals or had seen the business cards.

“A lot of people argue that narcotics distribution is a victimless crime,” Koster said. “But we had children 11, 12, 14 and 17 years old subjected to these events.”

Story courtesty Joe Robertson and The Kansas City Star

By MEG JONES

of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff

A Minnesota man thwarted while shoplifting merchandise from a St. Croix Falls Wal-Mart would not be denied, according to police.

He stole his haul a second time, police say - from the St. Croix Falls police station.

“You’d think a police department would be sacred grounds for a burglar, but not in this case,” St. Croix Falls Police Chief Paul Lindholm said Monday.

James J. Casarez, 36, of Willernie, Minn., is charged with one count of felony burglary to the police station in addition to misdemeanor retail theft and resisting an officer stemming from the shoplifting incident. Extradition proceedings are under way to bring him back to Wisconsin.

While some crimes are more difficult to solve than others, Lindholm said this case didn’t require much detective work.

Casarez was arrested by St. Croix Falls police on accusations of shoplifting an expensive toy car, more than $100 in over-the-counter medication, lithium batteries, a pellet pistol and a flip phone at Wal-Mart on June 24. He was booked into the jail and released the next day.

When Lindholm arrived at work at 6:30 a.m. on June 26, he noticed that someone had shattered a large window at the police station with a landscaping rock.

“We were very shocked. I kind of know how a victim of a crime feels when I walked in and saw the mess,” said Lindholm, who has been chief of St. Croix Falls, 70 miles northwest of Eau Claire, for 12 years.

The burglar ignored computer equipment, ammunition, radios and other valuable items, taking only a 3-by-4-foot cardboard box containing the items that Casarez had been accused of shoplifting from Wal-Mart.

“In fact, as he came through the window he stepped on a brand new assault rifle in a box,” Lindholm said. It was “a $700 assault rifle he could have taken out the door with him.”

Lindholm alerted law enforcement authorities in three Minnesota counties in the area of Casarez’s home. A convicted felon, Casarez was sitting in the Washington County, Minn., jail when authorities learned of the Wisconsin incidents.

About two weeks later, a Washington County, Minn., detective saw in Casarez’s front yard a toy all-terrain vehicle, big enough for a small child to ride and the same kind stolen from the St. Croix Falls Wal-Mart and police station. When Lindholm went to the jail to interview Casarez, who was in custody on charges of burglarizing a sporting cards store, he denied taking the items from the police station.

“He claims someone else had stolen it for his small child,” Lindholm said.

A few days later, an informant told Lindholm that Casarez had taken the shoplifted items from the police station, according to the criminal complaint.

Why would someone break into a police department and steal stolen stuff? Lindholm suspects that if it was indeed Casarez who broke into the station, Casarez wanted to get $1,000 in cash that was confiscated from his wallet when he was arrested outside Wal-Mart. Lindholm also noted that some of the items Casarez is accused of shoplifting are used to make methamphetamine.

Wal-Mart authorities noticed Casarez acting suspiciously inside the store and tried to stop him when he paid much less than the listed price for the battery-powered toddler’s ATV, which retails for almost $200.

“He had taken a UPC label off a $70 item and put it over that. So he had actually paid $70 for this $200 item,” Lindholm said.

When a police officer caught up to Casarez after a short foot chase outside Wal-Mart, he noticed the toy box had been slit open.

Inside, in addition to the toy, were a pellet pistol, a flip phone and “probably over $100 worth of Actifed and Sudafed, which is an ingredient for methamphetamines. Also some lithium batteries, which is also a piece of the pie when you’re cooking crystal meth,” Lindholm said.

Story courtesty the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.