News Trucks Burglarized in Jersey Corridor
At least three
newsgathering trucks have been burglarized within a 20-mile stretch
of New Jersey over the last two months.
By Deborah D. McAdams
At
least three newsgathering trucks have been burglarized within a 20-mile
stretch of New Jersey over the last two months. More may have been hit
in the same area between Elizabeth and Rutherford, N.J.
Trucks
belonging to WABC-TV, Sure Shot and SkyWire Uplink were hit--the last
one most recently.
Jay
Silvio is the sole proprietor of SkyWire in Glen Allen, Va. He is a
one-truck operator. His 12-year-old BAF was broken into at the Four
Points Sheraton in Elizabeth. “I’ve never been broken into before. That
truck has stayed overnight, unguarded, in really stupid areas of the
country,” Silvio said. “We’ve been in areas where there was looting.
I was down in the hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas, and nobody touched
the truck.”
Silvio
said he reached the hotel around 10 p.m., Feb. 3. “The valet said, ‘look,
you’ve got to pull around back,’ which is normal. I parked right underneath
the light, locked the truck and got my roll-off stuff.”
His
Manhattan call wasn’t until mid-afternoon the following day, so Silvio
didn’t leave the hotel until around noon. “I walked around the corner
and first thing I saw was my crew door ajar,” he said. “The lock mechanism
was gone… ripped from the truck.”
It
was then that Jay Silvio leaned into the bushes and vomited. “I’ve been
through two wives and two girlfriends,” he said. “This truck and I get
along.”
He
took digital photos while waiting an hour for the Elizabeth Police Department
to respond. The thieves broke into the cab as well as the work area
of the truck. Silvio’s two-way radios and his XM receiver were left
intact.
His
attaché, containing satellite transponder information, was taken. “They
also grabbed my traveling humidor,” he said. SkyWireEncoder.jpg Silvio
said the inside of the truck was “trashed,” but only two Tandberg Television
encoders, one of two receivers and a variable phase combiner was taken.
“I
had colored video monitors sitting on the floor of the truck. I had
portable DVD players, tool bags, IFBs and camera equipment,” none of
which was touched, Silvio said.
Instead,
the encoders were carefully removed with a screwdriver, which was left
on the console. They ripped out the transmitter and the VPC. “Nobody
saw anything,” Silvio said. He estimated the damages at $150,000, “probably
more.”
Silvio
said he was working with the Elizabeth, N.J. Police Department in the
investigation, though the department was unable to confirm. Five reporter
queries to the department yielded little information.
Three
calls to the office of Chief Ronald Simon were neither answered nor
routed to voicemail. A fourth was dropped in a transfer; the fifth was
passed off to a secretary named “Betty,” who, after a 20-minute hold,
said she would track down the information and call back with it. No
further communications arrived by press time.
Denny
Kunce, president of Sure Shot in Youngstown, Ohio, said one of his SNG
trucks got hit Dec. 3 at a Holiday Inn in Newark. “They just ripped
[it] apart,” he said. “They took my analog upconverters.”
Unlike
Silvio, who interpreted some deliberation on the part of the thieves
who hit his truck, Kunce said the Sure Shot culprits “didn’t know what
they were doing. They tried to rip out the amplifiers. Those weigh 150
pounds. They weren’t going to get very far with those.” “I wouldn’t
read any more into it--that somebody actually knows what this gear is.Whoever
it is has found somebody to buy this stuff,” he said.
There
were no cameras on the Sure Shot truck, because it happened to be one
of the units the company uses primarily for backhaul, but a PVW2800
tape deck was also taken. “What are they going to do with it?” Kunce
said. “It’s not even a digital machine.”
The
only thing taken from the cab--the driver’s clothes. Kunce said these
types of break-ins are rare. “I’ve been in business 25 years, and this
is maybe the second time this has ever happened,” he said. An executive
at WABC-TV, the ABC affiliate in New York, said one of that station’s
news vans was “burglarized overnight in a parking lot at our New Jersey
bureau,” in Rutherford last month. He did not indicate what was stolen,
though a network source said no encoders were taken.
Other
similar burglaries may have taken place in the same area of the last
six months, according to a source not associated with any of the companies
hit.
This
individual, who correctly identified the SkyWire, Sure Shot and WABC
burglaries, also named three other firms that had similar break-ins.
One said the report was untrue; a second said he had “no knowledge of
that,” and the third declined to talk.
The
same source said the FBI was investigating the break-ins based on the
nature of the equipment and information stolen. Sean Quinn, media coordinator
for the Newark Division of the FBI was unable to confirm such an investigation,
though he had sent out inquiries. “It could be a state, local or Philly
case,” said Quinn, who hadn’t provided further information by press
time.
In
the meantime, Jay Silvio is waiting for his old friend to be repaired.
“I know it sounds crazy, by my first concern was for my clients. I’ve
been making phone calls and making sure that the jobs that I have on
the books in the coming weeks are covered,” he said. “I’ve probably
lost about $40,000 worth of business, and for a small guy like me, that’s
a big chunk.”
Silvio
said he’d probably have to send his truck to Illinois to have the radio
frequency specs retuned. “I’m operating in the blind as far as timeline,”
he said.
Reprinted
from www.televisionbroadcast.com
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