Police: Burglars Cause Thousands Of Dollars In Damage To TPS Building

Burglars broke into a Tulsa Public Schools building Sunday and left behind thousands of dollars in damage and a disgusting mess.

Sandburg Elementary is a closed building, shut down in consolidation, but still used by the district for storage.

The closed buildings are not abandoned; in fact they're very carefully monitored for trouble.

Tulsa Police crowded around Sandburg Elementary Monday, but only because they were there for some training. Over the weekend, however, police were on a real call at Sandburg, and four people were arrested for burglary.

Assistant Chief of Campus Police, Dwight Jackson, said at first it looked like a common break in picked up by motion detectors.

"When we have trips we respond, but when we got there we found the broken glass, but the trips had stopped,” he said.

Someone had thrown concrete through a window to get in but apparently left right away. Officers didn't see anyone inside so they boarded up the window and left.

9/28/2014 Related Story: Four Arrested For Breaking In, Vandalizing Tulsa Elementary School

Several hours later TPS security picked up more motion inside and this time it didn't stop. They were able to follow the motion around the building even though it was dark inside.

"And then they pull up the screen and they can see the movement, actually the motion detectors going off, people are moving," Jackson said.

This time a TPD K9 came in and quickly found four suspects, three grown men and an underage girl. All were arrested inside the building on a burglary charge, but the damage tells more of the story.

Police said inside the restrooms someone defecated on the floor and smeared the feces on the walls. Then the vandals went from room to room kicking holes in the sheetrock between classrooms.

The damage is easily in the thousands of dollars.

Jackson said most TPS buildings have more sophisticated monitoring than Sandburg, but even there the slightest motion is picked up.

“We get a balloon in there, a rodent run across the floor, whatever, we'll pick that up,” he said.

One feature of the monitoring they didn't use Sunday is that security can talk over the intercom and tell burglars they're caught.

They don't do that if they think the burglars might run off, but it's there if they need it.