San Jose restaurant broken into 3 times in about 3 weeks
SAN JOSE — The owners of a San Jose restaurant are dealing with their third break-in in about three weeks.
Owner of Funny Farm Restaurant, Monica Levi, said their security system failed and she no longer feels safe.
"I can't even believe it," said Levi about another break-in. "I have no comprehension of this continuing to happen over and over again. I'm tired of it."
Levi's Saturday started at 4:30 in the morning. She got an alert that one of her camera's motion sensors detected movement inside the restaurant.
It's the 7th break-in since they moved to the location at the corner of Yerba Buena and San Felipe Roads.
In the security video, a man can be seen burst in to the back office. He disables the camera and then goes for the built-in safe.
"He brought power tools to cut into the safe as you can see on the side there, and now the safe is rendered useless. But there was nothing in the safe of value anyway," said Levi. "So it's just more damage that we have to figure out how to cover."
The man also got away with some bottles of wine, but most of the financial hit comes from the physical damage to the restaurant.
A donation box was set up by the cash register in hopes of covering the costs of all the damage.
"This could definitely be the one that does us in," said Levi. "I only try to keep going for the staff and for our community."
She said her staff is like family and many of them depend on this job, like bartender Daniel Brown.
"This is how I pay my bills and feed my dogs," said Brown.
But even he said he feels worse for Levi and her partner, Ron.
"I feel more bad for the owners. The unknown is very sad and depressing," said Brown.
Levi said while the camera motion sensor went off, the ADT alarms didn't sound.
"Our security alarm is working, other than when we're getting broken into is extremely suspicious, and we're not getting any answers from ADT at all," she said.
Levi is also concerned that there isn't enough police presence in the area. She's not sure how much longer she'll be able to stay in business.
"I honestly don't know what the future holds," she said. "I know that I will not go down without a fight. If I do go down, everyone will know why. It's because they did not give us more patrols, they did not give us more security. That this is not safe."
Levi did call police and they have opened an investigation.
