Burglary in Bronk; fire in Flexner

Burglary in Bronk; fire in Flexner

Alert employees help contain damage from two separate incidents in November

by TALLEY HENNING BROWN

Two incidents on campus last month demonstrated the importance of campus participation in notifying Security personnel to potential problems. A burglary in Detlev W. Bronk Laboratory on Tuesday, November 17 and a fire in Flexner Hall on Monday, November 30 were both halted in progress after individuals in the proximity alerted Security.

A report drawn up by James Rogers, director of security, and Michael Murphy, operations manager, details a burglary at about 2:50 p.m., November 17. Video surveillance verifies that a young man who has no ties to the university community and who gave a false name tried to enter campus at the 67th Street gate, telling the guard on duty he was looking for a student who worked in Bronk Laboratory. The guard sent him to the visitors’ entrance at 66th Street. As the video revealed, the man waited several minutes outside the gate until the combination of a delivery truck in the driveway and a phone call from the security booth tied up the attention of the guard on duty, and then he walked quietly in the employee entrance on the north side of the gate, opposite the guard booth. Minutes later, two phone calls came in to Security from individuals on the fourth and sixth floors of Bronk, reporting a suspicious character wandering the hallways and rooms.

Stationing themselves at several points of egress in and around Bronk, a Security team including Mr. Rogers, Mr. Murphy and Sergeants Linden Baynes and Carl Elbers quickly discovered the man in question coming out of the sixth-floor men’s room, carrying a scientific journal whose mailing label was addressed to head of laboratory Ralph M. Steinman. Escorting him back to the main Security Office in Nurses Residence, Mr. Rogers and Mr. Murphy carefully questioned the man, whom they positively identified by a name other than the name he had originally given. “We were careful and respectful, as we always try to be, and exhausted every possibility that he was here legitimately. But the more questions we asked, the more his story fell apart,” says Mr. Rogers. An officer from the New York Police Department’s 19th Precinct arrived in answer to a call from Mr. Rogers, who went with him back to Bronk to survey the two rooms where the suspect had been spotted. Upon discovering that a cell phone that had gone missing from Bronk was in the suspect’s possession, he was arrested and escorted off campus by the police officer.

“The way this incident played out is proof positive that the mindset of ‘If you see something, say something’ works,” says Mr. Murphy. “And we encourage people to call the minute they see something.”

“It’s great that we have a beautiful environment here, and we want to keep our relations with the Rockefeller community as friendly and convenient as possible, and it’s this kind of participation, where two people called us as soon as their suspicions were aroused, that helps us keep it that way,” says Mr. Rogers.

At about 9:50 a.m. on November 30, construction work in the Collaborative Research Center sent errant sparks into Flexner Hall, igniting the ceiling in room 335, a laboratory used by Pels Family Professor Tarun Kapoor. The guard at the Founder’s Hall security desk, Clement Gomes, saw the strobe flash of the fire alarm from the building from the video surveillance feed and James Schaefer, manager of the Plant Operations Maintenance Shop, confirmed that the alarm was legitimate.

The building was evacuated and an unknown person pulled one of the building’s fire alarms on the way out. Although the fire department responded with several trucks, the blaze was extinguished by Mr. Schaefer, using a fire extinguisher, before it could spread. Frank Schaefer and Anthony Santorro of the Laboratory Safety and Environmental Health Office cleared the rooms above and below the fire of all chemical substances, at the request of FDNY personnel, and microscopy equipment from room 335 and the room directly below it was protected to prevent damage.

No one was hurt in the fire, and personnel from Turner Construction and Custodial completed the cleanup of the affected rooms by the end of the same day.