Wilmette police charge 2 in bicycle thefts — one for the second time

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Kenneth Robertson

Updated: February 20, 2012 8:20AM

The second time was not a charm for one Chicago man whom Wilmette police arrested Wednesday, along with an accomplice, for allegedly stealing bicycles from Wilmette and Evanston Metra station bike racks.

Wilmette detectives arrested the man, Kenneth Robertson, 32, of 3636 N. Whipple Ave. in Chicago, on Wednesday after following him from Wilmette to Evanston, and then to a storage locker on Chicago’s North Side. Police found almost a dozen other stolen high-end bicycles in the locker, according to a police statement.

It was the second time Wilmette police have arrested Robertson on bike-theft charges. The last time was in June 2011, under almost identical circumstances.

Police also arrested Anthony Catena, 40, of 3023 N. Christiana Ave. in Chicago, at the locker facility, police said Thursday in a news release.

Robertson and Catena each face one felony theft charge in connection with the Jan. 11 incidents in Wilmette and Evanston, in which the two allegedly used a cordless grinder to cut the bikes’ locks.

Both are scheduled to appear Jan. 19 in Cook County 2nd District Circuit Court in Skokie. They also may face further charges as more victims are identified.

Catena was held in lieu of a $50,000 bond, but Robertson, whom Wilmette police arrested last June 24 and charged with felony theft and possession of burglary tools in a similar incident, was held in lieu of a $75,000 bond. His earlier bond also was revoked, police said.

The Jan. 11 arrests followed a rash of bicycle theft from racks at the Wilmette Metra station last month and early this month, Cmdr. Patrick Collins said Thursday. The thefts were marked by the unknown offenders cutting locks off the bicycles to get them.

Department patrol officers and detectives began surveillance of the station, and spotted Robertson and Catena Wednesday as they drove into the Metra lot and began acting suspiciously.

They saw the two remove a bike from the lot, then followed them to another Metra commuter lot, this one in Evanston near Green Bay Road and Central Street in Evanston. There, detectives saw them take a second bicycle. As in Wilmette, the two used a cordless grinder to complete the theft, police said.

Once they’d taken the second bike, the two drove to a storage facility on the North Side of Chicago; detectives followed them there and arrested them without incident.

When police checked the men’s storage locker, they found 10 high-end bicycles, frames and bike components, in addition to the two that Robertson and Catena had just unloaded. Police are trying to identify the owners of that equipment.

“Robertson and Catena admitted that the bicycles recovered from the storage locker were stolen, and that they were ‘probably’ taken from commuter lots near the CTA and Metra train stops,” according to the release.

The circumstances echo those in which Robertson was arrested in June.

In that case, too, he was arrested at a Chicago storage locker on the North Side of the city. And, as was the case Wednesday, he was arrested following surveillance in which Wilmette detectives spotted Robertson and another man in a Wilmette commuter parking lot, and followed the two into Glencoe and then Winnetka, where they allegedly used a grinder to cut locks from two bikes before taking them to the storage locker.