CHICAGO — You’ve heard the phrase: “People will steal anything that isn’t nailed down.” As insatiable consumers of Chicago police stories, we can attest to the truth of this sentence.
Exhibit A: William Garner. He is accused of stealing copper fittings from urinals at the University of Chicago and causing significant damage by releasing streams of water from the affected pipes.
University of Chicago police officers arrested the 60-year-old on September 14 and called in Chicago police to assist. According to the CPD report, school police had security footage that showed Garner walking on a closed floor of a school building. The footage allegedly showed Garner walking out of the toilets, followed moments later by a river of water.
When U of C officers stopped Garner, they reportedly found five copper urinal flush valves and a pipe wrench in his bag. According to the report, Garner had just removed three of the fixtures from the school’s 128-year-old Cobb Hall, 5811 South Ellis, and water was still flowing from the urinals.
He allegedly stole the other two fixtures from one of the school’s medical buildings in the 5700 block of Southern Maryland.
In the medical building, water flowed into an elevator shaft, compromising the elevator’s electrical components, the report said.
The school estimated the cost of each urinal fitting at $300 and the cost of elevator repairs at $5,000 to $8,000.
Prosecutors charged Garner with two counts of burglary and two counts of possession of burglary tools. But they didn’t ask a judge to detain him, so Garner was sent home to await trial.
Court records show he was not present in court on September 23, and a warrant has now been issued for his arrest.
This isn’t Garner’s first encounter with the school.
In 2017, he was given a 14-month prison sentence for stealing a bicycle that was locked in a rack on the school’s campus. In 2018, he was sentenced to three years for attempting to burglarize a kitchen in Cobb Hall.
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