Paul Bass Photo
Lieblich: Whalley needs help.
Security footage of burglar seeking to open cash drawer.
Police said they have a suspect in a string of commercial burglaries and are buttressing patrols to help business owners like Benny Lieblich avoid needing to pay to replace any more broken windows.
The latest wave of burglaries took place Sunday night into Monday morning.
It began with someone breaking a front window at Edge of the Woods market on Whalley Avenue around 8:30 p.m. The burglar rummaged through the office after discovering the open cash register drawers were empty. He made off with a shrink-wrap gun and phone price scanner. Police arrived soon after. Detectives gathered evidence; an officer remained at the property for hours after.
The ultimately effective cash drawer smasher.
Next, at 3:12 a.m., a man appeared two doors away on Whalley outside Ladle & Loaf, the Middle Eastern fusion restaurant and take-out restaurant Benny and Ephrat Lieblich opened two and a half years ago.
The man tried three times without success to break a front window with a rock. A chunk of concrete found by a pole worked better. Once inside, the man found the cash drawer under the front desk right away. Cracking it open proved trickier: He spent 12 minutes bending butter knives, stomping with his feet, and other methods before finally smashing it open with a metal vegetable smashing tool. He made off with $700 in cash, but not before leaving behind trickles of blood from cutting himself at the cash drawer. The store’s video cameras captured the crime from four different angles; watch highlights in the above video. Police later sent a blood sample for DNA evidence.
Similar window-smash burglaries took place at The Place 2 Be restaurant at Park and Elm around 4 a.m., then at Papa John’s pizza back on Whalley near Sperry.
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Broken windows policing: Top Whalley cop Lt. Ryan Przybylski.
Police believe the same man committed most or all of the break-ins, according to top Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) District cop Lt. Ryan Przybylski. He said detectives have gathered “good physical evidence” and identified a suspect, expecting to make an arrest soon.
In the meantime, Przybylski said, he has fielded a special team of officers on the night shift to focus on potential burglaries and respond quickly to any alarms.
Plywood at pockmarked storefronts at pizza spot (above), watering hole (below).
As of Thursday, plywood remained on the windows of three of the burglarized businesses.
Lieblich at Ladle and Loaf.
Benny Lieblich, on the other hand, had his smashed glass replaced the same day as the break-in. If “all day people drive by and see a store with a smashed window, that’s bad for business,” he said during an interview inside the popular spot.
“The window cost me a thousand” on top of the lost $700 in cash and destroyed cutlery, he said. That “really hurt.”
Tired after a long day of work Sunday, Lieblich said, he had forgotten to activate the alarm, which allowed the intruder to take his time to get at the money.
The episode was the latest frustration in what Lieblich described as a “big struggle” to launch and run a business and stay safe in the crime and blight-plagued Whalley commercial corridor.
Twice he has been assaulted since opening, he said. He was among the neighbors who worked with former Beaver Hills Alder Shafiq Abdussabur to press for the liquor store next door to Ladle and Loaf to take responsibility for crime and blight on its premises; the campaign led to the store losing its license and closing. Abdussabur also helped neighbors convince the city to tear down a blighted empty storefront at the old Newt’s Cafe.
“It’s been a very, very rough two years” combatting the commercial corridor’s challenges on top of launching a business amid a pandemic, Lieblich said. He argued that the city should do more to help the district; he also questioned “what we’re getting” for the extra mandatory fees businesses pay to the Whalley Avenue Special Services District.
Abdussabur, a retired cop who’s seeking the Democratic mayoral nomination, argued that the conditions on Whalley stem in part from New Haven’s 100-odd unfilled police positions.
“The community has done everything it can do,” he said, calling Lieblich “a good example of a New Haven resident who lives in the same neighborhood as his business. All he wants is to get something for the taxes he pays.”
Like other police forces across the country, the NHPD has experienced an exodus of officers either retiring or resigning over the past three years. The department has aggressively recruited new cops; 80 of the 335 current officers joined the ranks since the start of the pandemic.
City and special service district officials, meanwhile, have invited Whalley merchants later this month to discuss plans for upgrading the district. A district leafletter hand-delivered a notice Wednesday afternoon to Lieblich during his conversation with the Independent.
For all the tsuris, the Lieblichs have actually proved a success story on Whalley. They’re planning an expansion: Creation of a kosher grocery featuring imported Middle Eastern and kosher meat and dairy products. Assuming the Lieblichs obtain city approvals, their Market 520 (named after the numerical equivalents of Hebrew letters for “kosher”) will open in space at the back of Ladle & Loaf, fronting Winthrop Avenue.
“Whalley,” Lieblich predicted, “is primed” for a better day. If it gets the support it needs.
