Thieves strike U Radisson, local church

Thieves made off with a 42-inch plasma television and three computers from the Radisson Hotel on Washington Avenue early Saturday night, each from areas available only to residents and employees, according to a police report.
The television was stolen from the hotel’s exercise room, and the computers from the public office area. It is not known if an employee is responsible, Radisson general manager Matt Monchamp said.
“We’ll leave it up to the police to decide,” he said.
Surveillance cameras captured footage of the suspects getting into a car with the electronics and driving away. However, the license plate could not be discerned and the suspects were not recognized, University of Minnesota police Lt. Troy Buhta said.
Once footage is sent to University police, images of suspects are passed around to officers, who may have dealt with them before, Buhta said.
Also, the images may be sent to a metro-wide database in attempts to match the image with a known criminal.
“It’s going to be pretty hard to track down a vehicle with no plate,” Buhta said, “as well as the people if we’ve never dealt with them before.”
Fingerprints were recovered from a knife found in the exercise room trash bin, which was used to break the television off the wall, the police report stated. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension could take as long as a year to process the prints, Buhta said.
“The BCA is very busy,” he said. “Also, prints from violent crimes take precedent over property crimes.”
The public office at the hotel remained closed as of Tuesday.

University church robbed

High school members of Southeast Christian Church raised $400 in a garage sale for their yearly summer mission trip a few weeks ago. On Saturday, Southwest Minister Brett Miller discovered that the money was missing.
The church on 15th Avenue Southeast had their safe, which contained money and numerous legal documents, stolen from a locked room, according to the police report. The safe was discovered by a Ramsey County Sheriff in Vadnais Heights , but the contents were not there, Miller said.
Despite the theft, and a few break-ins to cars earlier this summer, Miller said he feels the neighborhood is a safe place.
“We’re sad about it and it’s another indication of the vulnerability of churches in the city,” Miller said. “They make nice targets some time.”
The high school students went on their mission trip, despite the stolen funds.
“We feel bad for the person that took [the safe],” Miller said. “It’s a big burden for a little bit of money. We’ll find a way to cover the trip some other way.”