EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill.Aug 10 2010 — Cash-strapped East St. Louis public schools lost more than $1 million in a year to burglars despite safeguards that include paying $1.2 million a year for private security, according to a school board member and the district's crime reports.
The Belleville-News Democrat's review of East St. Louis School District 189's crime reports found that the thefts starting July 2009 took place even while the schools had access to state-of-the-art surveillance and alarm systems.
The newspaper said the losses arose from the theft of computers and other electronic equipment as well as damage caused during the break-ins.
In some cases, the newspaper reported, the thieves had an easy time because doors had been left unlocked at night and the burglar alarms weren't properly set. Other times, they used rocks and boards to break in through windows.
Carl Officer, a former East St. Louis mayor who is now on the school board, said the thefts and repair bills caused by burglars have cost more than $1 million since July last year. A board colleague, Kinnis Williams, said he plans to call on district administrators to detail what was stolen.
All the while, St. Clair County State's Attorney Robert Haida says he has not been asked to file charges in any of the thefts, including the pillaging of 52 laptop computers from East St. Louis Senior High School last December.
"We have had no communication at all with the district regarding that case," Haida said.
The number of stolen laptops may be twice that, the newspaper reported, noting that crime reports by the district's security chief -- Marion Hubbard, a former police chief -- list 110 missing computers bought in April 2009 for $142,642.
Officer said that despite board policy discouraging board members from making personal trips to schools, he has scheduled security and safety inspections and will hold meetings with parents and teachers at the district's 22 schools.
"I was told that's not really a board member's place. To hell with that," Officer said, wondering aloud if some of the thefts were carried out by some district employees.
Kim McAfee, a Washington Park police investigator who heads KLM Security, holder of the $1.2 million security contract with the district, said the report of $1 million in losses "doesn't surprise me." He referred additional comment to Hubbard, who directed the newspaper to Superintendent Theresa Saunders.
Saunders did not immediately return messages left Monday by The Associated Press.
The newspaper said reports by East St. Louis police officer Ronald Ike Sr. showed that school workers repeatedly failed to set burglar alarms, sometimes because they did not know how. In one case, the newspaper reported, a Miles Davis Elementary School custodian failed to lock the library's door -- the janitor said he didn't know how to use a key -- and burglars made off with three computers and a printer.
In other break-ins, motion sensors did not work because their batteries were dead. McAfee once found that the motion detectors were turned in the wrong direction, away from windows -- perhaps explaining why burglars of a middle school in March managed to abscond with a digital projector valued at about $1,200.
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