![\"17pkg-jh-center-city-burglaries-transfer-frame-167.jpg](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/17pkg-jh-center-city-burglaries-transfer-frame-167.jpg#.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nIt’s 7:06 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 26, in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Video obtained by CBS News Philadelphia shows a man eating an apple and lobbing something through the plate-glass window of a business near 2nd and Market streets, smashing it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police say 66-year-old Derek Wilks broke into several small businesses in Center City and Old City and took more than $5,000.<\/p>\n
CBS News Philadelphia<\/p>\n
Police say the thief took the cash register, which they say had $1,500 inside. By this point, investigators say the thief has burglarized six Center City and Old City small businesses in a week, including Sonny’s Famous Steaks.<\/p>\n
“When they got here at 9 o’clock, my boys called and said someone had busted the glass,” said Chrissy, a manager at the store. \u00a0“So their first instinct was to go to the basement and check and make sure everything was OK. They did get the register, and they didn’t take the tablets, thank God, but they did take the register.”<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Police Captain Jason Smith said officers detected a pattern.<\/p>\n
Over 10 days, investigators say a total of nine small businesses were burglarized overnight. Officers then started working earlier shifts, and police say on Oct. 29, they caught 66-year-old Derek Wilks breaking into a business.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Mr. Wilks was using a iron-cast gas cap and he was throwing that through plate glass windows of establishments,” Smith said. “And in all these instances, he was going for the cash register.”<\/p>\n
Detectives say Wilks has a distinctive walk given recent hip surgery. They’ve since charged him with all nine burglaries. Smith said given his arrest history, they believe he’s responsible for more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He has 34 prior arrests,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
“Out of those 34, 29 are commercial burglary,” he added. “He’s been at it for a very long time.”<\/p>\n
Police say they believe Wilks took more than $5,000 out of the pockets of small businesses \u2014 those businesses glad to hear of the arrest.<\/p>\n
“The detective called us and let us know, which is great, great work Philly PD,” Chrissy said.<\/p>\n
“Can’t destroy Philly businesses. We need Philly business,” said Mike, a patron at Sonny’s.<\/p>\n
“You do the crime, gotta do the time,” he added.<\/p>\n
According to records, there’s been a 50 to 60% increase in commercial burglaries in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
But police say they’ve seen an 86% increase in arrests and cases being closed with commercial burglary within the last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CBS News Philadelphia reached out to Wilks’s attorney, and we’ve yet to hear back.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s 7:06 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 26, in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood.\u00a0 Video obtained by CBS News Philadelphia…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":361112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,35786,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-361111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-burglary","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115505907273131902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}