Police make arrests in burglaries, armed robbery

Police spent hours Wednesday tracking burglary suspects, an effort that paid off when they caught two men breaking in a door at a Milwaukee home, just outside Wauwatosa, and trying to carry out a television.

“Our guys had been on them and we literally caught them red-handed,” said Officer Luke Vetter, Wauwatosa police union president.

The Wauwatosa Police Department has saturated the East Tosa area between 60th Street to Wauwatosa Avenue and Center Street to North Avenue to catch, or at least scare off, the criminals that had been breaking into homes since early December.

In these roughly 15 incidents, burglars broke into empty homes and took televisions, electronics, jewelry and more.

There have also been violent home invasions by a man claiming to work for a tree service that aren’t connected to these arrests.

Police recovered a large amount of property belonging to numerous victims. The burglars had been stockpiling the items in their home, Vetter said.

The same men may have been involved in dozens of burglaries that have occurred in the same time period in Milwaukee and the North Shore.

Later that evening, police also apprehended four suspects after an armed robbery that occurred at the Speedway gas station on 68th and North Avenue in East Tosa.

“We had some great citizen involvement on that one,” Vetter said. “We were already in the area, then we got a call from a man who said, ‘Three guys just ran through our yard and jumped the fence,’ which let us hone into an area.”

The police dog was brought in to help track the suspects, who were armed with loaded weapons. The chase ended in the Center Street Park area.