Chicago businesses are on high alert as a string of strong-arm robberies hit the city's 16th and 17th Districts. The Chicago Police Department has issued a warning urging local businesses to take caution after a series of aggressive thefts. Perpetrators, unmasked and brazen, have stormed into retailers, forcibly snatching cigarettes and hard-earned cash before vanishing into the urban abyss on foot—a telling sign of desperate times.
The incidents, logged by the police department, span across several neighborhoods, including a theft on the 3500 block of N. Pulaski at the brink of the evening rush on February 13 and another late into the night's embrace on the 3500 block of N. Cicero on February 15, not to halt there, the assailants struck under the cloak of darkness on the 6500 block of W. Belmont shortly after midnight on February 16 and most recently preyed upon the 5000 block of W. Lawrence the evening of February 19, according to Chicago Police Department's report.
Descriptions of the culprits were provided by the police and serve as a crucial piece for the puzzle's solution—the first thief, a white male estimated to be in his early to mid-twenties, standing between 5'5" and 5'8", weighing somewhere between 160 and 180 pounds; his accomplice, a similarly aged African American male, towers close to 6 feet and tips the scales between 210 and 230 pounds.
Local shop owners and employees are holding their breath, flanked by fear and frustration, as these heists continue to plague their places of work, the community's nerve frayed by each subsequent incident; it remains unclear whether these attacks are the doings of a determined duo or if other opportunistic thieves have taken note and followed suit, mimicking their methods in a string of disruptive crime.
