CHICAGO – A Chicago man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for robbing a Verizon store in Bucktown while he was on parole for robbing a T-Mobile location.
Jeffery Brooks, 25, pleaded guilty to two counts of armed robbery: one for robbing Verizon and the other for robbing and pistol-whipping a woman in Rogers Park. Judge Shelley Sutker-Dermer imposed two 18-year prison sentences to be served concurrently.
Brooks entered the Verizon at 1652 North Milwaukee around 10 a.m. on October 18, 2023. After briefly looking through the merchandise, he displayed a BB gun that resembled a Glock pistol and instructed an employee to escort him to the phone storage area. Brooks took fourteen iPhones and fled the scene.
Brooks instructed an employee to take him to the telephone inventory area. The worker complied and Brooks put 14 iPhones in a bag and fled the scene, officials said.
However, one of the phone booths contained a GPS tracker, and police soon realized the phone was traveling south on the Red Line. They intercepted the train at Garfield and stopped Brooks at the exit because he looked like the robber, according to his CPD arrest report.
As officers spoke with him, dispatchers radioed another description and released him, according to the report.
Within seconds, police at CPD’s technology center announced that the tracker was moving again, heading east on Garfield Boulevard. The officers at the CTA station looked east toward Garfield and saw Brooks running away. They found him hiding behind a group of dumpsters with a bag containing 14 iPhones, an empty box and a “realistic replica of a Glock pistol,” according to the arrest report.
Coincidentally, he was wearing a hoodie with the words “BAD HABITS” on it.
The hoodie message seems appropriate, considering Brooks was on parole for a nearly identical 2020 robbery.
In that case, Brooks took exactly fourteen iPhones, including one that was a GPS tracker. The CPD technology center began tracking the device, and patrol officers followed the signal and found Brooks in the backseat of an Uber with a bag full of iPhones, a GPS tracker between his feet and a realistic Glock 17-style BB gun, according to to court records.
He was sentenced to six years for that robbery, but the state released him after he had served just over two years.
The state will reduce his new 18-year sentence to nine years if he behaves in prison. Its current release date is set for October 12, 2032.
