UWS Burglars Broke Into 3 Restaurants In 3 Hours, Cops Say

UPPER WEST SIDE, MANHATTAN — Two thieves on the Upper West Side spent three hours early Monday morning breaking into and robbing restaurants along Broadway, police said.

The pair of burglars broke into three restaurants just blocks apart from one another between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., stealing a total of $350 from their cash registers, police said Wednesday.

First, they broke into the locked door at Mexican Festival restaurant near West 102nd Street around 3 a.m. and stole $250 from the register, police said.

Just an hour later, the pair was breaking the door lock on the Popeyes near West 95th Street. The pair left this eatery empty-handed, cops said.

Finally, the burglars went back uptown and broke into Jerusalem, a falafel restaurant near West 104th Street, police said. Here, they took $100 from the register before running away.

Police caught the two burglars, one of whom is wearing a face mask, on camera at the falafel restaurant.

The burglary spree comes as the neighborhood is dealing with a crime spike in the New Year, part of which is due to an increase in robberies and burglaries in its northern precinct.

The 24th Precinct, where the Broadway restaurants all were, has had double the burglaries in the last 28 days than in the same time period last year and more than double the number of robberies, NYPD data shows.

Officers from both the southern 20th Precinct and northern 24th Precinct told the neighborhood community board earlier this month that crime rates in both parts of the Upper West Side have been on the rise in 2020, compared to this time last year.

There was a 40 percent increase in overall crime in the 20th Precinct and a 22 percent increase in the 24th, data shows.

Anyone with information in regard to these incidents is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, or on Twitter @ NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.