Within 50 seconds, a man was in and out of the Queens County Savings Bank on Cross Bay Boulevard and had stolen stacks of community newspapers.
Around 11:23 p.m. on Thursday, July 19, an unidentified man entered the bank’s ATM vestibule at 156th Avenue, loaded feet-high stacks of local newspapers into a cart and left.
The bank handed over security camera footage of the theft to police and The Forum.
Police say the unidentified suspect must have used an ATM card to enter the vestibule so late at night and pro- ceeded to steal the newspapers.
He made of with all the copies of four community newspapers distrib- uted at the location, including The Forum and The Queens Chronicle.
The papers were laid out for free distribution to readers—but under the assumption that residents will only take one or two.
Law enforcement sources explained that complimentary is different than free.
It’s completely legal to take a copy of the newspaper that’s distributed freely but taking them 
all is in fact theft.
The theft caused some backlash with local publishers, who painted the act as a crime against the community.
“Even though weekly newspapers are given out for free, no one should think they have any right to take all copies out of this bank,” said Mark Weidler, publisher of The Chronicle. “It is outright stealing as much as if hetookmoneyfromthebank. This not only hurts the newspapers that deliver to the bank, but our advertisers and readers from getting their local news. I hope this person is found and arrested.”
This was no less damaging to The Forum, as well, explained Patricia Adams, publisher of the newspaper.
“Not only is this stealing from the newspaper, but also it’s stealing from the community. People depend on community newspapers especially with the rising costs of daily alterna- tives,” Adams said.
She estimated several hundred copies of The Forum were stolen. The thief hit the same day the newspapers were distributed.
“This cuts off a lot of our readers from important local news. We intend to devote whatever resources are necessary to make sure it doesn’t happen any more and let people know that we will prosecute them,” she said.
If you have information regarding the identity of whereabouts of the suspect please contact The Forum at 718-845-3221 or forumsouth@gmail. com.
By Jeremiah Dobruck
j.dobruck@theforumnewsgroup.com
