District attorney: Election equipment theft appears to be random crime, unrelated to campaign
The recent theft of a laptop and several USB drives from a Philadelphia elections equipment warehouse appears to be a random crime that was not motivated by the 2020 election, District Attorney Larry Krasner has confirmed.
“There were reports of someone trespassing or otherwise getting into a warehouse, and there were initially some concerns that this might be an effort to suppress the vote,” Krasner said at a news conference Wednesday. “The investigative information we have received from the Philadelphia Police Department indicates that is not the case, that what occurred in that situation appears to be more in the nature of an attempted property offense, rather than any effort to suppress the vote.”
Krasner’s comments were the first public confirmation that the preliminary police investigation into the incident at the City Commissioners warehouse in East Falls, where Philadelphia’s voting machines and other equipment are stored, indicates that the perpetrator of the theft did not intend to affect the election, as The Inquirer reported last week, citing police sources.
The City Commissioners rent the warehouse space in a building that also houses a gym, which reported having asked a suspicious man to leave hours before the laptop is believed to have been taken, the police sources said. There were no signs of forced entry, and the intruder may have entered through windows in the gym that were left open on the day of the theft, the sources said.
https://fusion.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-elections-warehouse-burglary-unrelated-to-presidential-campaign-20201008.html
