iSteal, Improper Sauna Behavior and Where Not to Leave a Cell Phone

Here are some details of the past week in crime and crime fighting.

Cell Phone With Your Meal?: On March 9, officers from the responded to a call about a possible grand theft. According to the police report, the victim had his phone stolen a month ago.

The cell phone owner was at the  at East 14th Street and Lillian Avenue with his children. His 4-year-old son loves playing with his father's cell phone, so the man forked it over. Several minutes later, as the family walked toward the car, the father asked his son where the phone was, and the son said it was inside, according to the police report.

The father went inside, didn't find the phone and asked workers if they had seen anything, police said. One of the workers said that a man had taken the phone away from the 4-year-old, according to police.

When officers asked the victim why a report wasn't filed sooner, he said he was busy and didn't think officers would respond to take his report.

What Not to Do in the Sauna: Officers responded to an incident at the on East 14th Street on March 13 about 10:45 p.m.

At issue was a woman who was inside the co-ed sauna with a man in his 30s with, according to her, no one else inside.The man kept staring at her and slowly inching his way closer to her, the woman said, and then got up, opened the door and looked to see if anyone was coming. The woman started to leave, but as she approached the door, the man grabbed her with both hands above the waist, she told police. She screamed for help and managed to get outside.

When officers arrived, the woman was distraught and barely able to talk. A security guard had placed the suspect under a citizen's arrest and detained him in the locker room. Police said the suspect claimed that about 10 people had been in the sauna.

The man was arrested by officers on suspicion of battery.

Storage Pillaging: On March 9, at 11:43 am, officers responded to a call at the public storage facility on the 14200 block of Washington Avenue.

Operators of the storage facility had notified a woman by mail that it appeared the lock on her storage unit had been tampered with. When the woman came to check her unit, she found the lock was not hers, police said. Officers snipped the lock and found that the contents of the unit had been moved around. The woman  wasn't immediately sure if anything had been taken.

Officers discovered two other units with questionable locks. The operators of the facility said they had noticed possible tampering with these units but were unable to contact the owners.

iSteal: Some people will go to great lengths to acquire the latest Apple products. San Leandro police officers had a pow-pow with a senior security specialist for FedEx on March 10 about a four-month string of thefts involving Apple products.

FedEx records showed that on five  occasions, a box containing an iTouch, iPad, iPod or other Apple product entered a distribution facility en route to a Plesanton store. The boxes were never sent on to Pleasanton.

The company's internal investigator suspected an individual who became line supervisor at the distribution center about the time that the Apple products started to disappear, police said.

There were no other leads on the disappeared items until someone in Livermore plugged an iPod that was among the missing items into a computer, police said. Apple tracks its products via Internet communications and serial numbers, so the connection triggered an alert. The person who had the iPod named his source, the man suspected earlier by FedEx investigators, according to police. The man was questioned by the investigators.

Officers documented the stolen items but made no arrests.