Four burglars wearing balaclavas were arrested after security staff monitoring CCTV cameras saw them on the site of an Ipswich town centre car park where building work was being carried out, a court has heard.
The police were alerted and quickly arrived at the car park at the rear of Crown Pools in the early hours of the morning with police dogs, Ipswich Crown Court heard.
The burglars, who had been trying to break into cabins on the building site, ran off and one was found in a garden in nearby Fonnereau Road and one suffered a bad cut to his knee after falling over, said Michael Crimp, prosecuting.
He said a number of cabins, containers and the site office had been broken into and items including hand tools, power tools, heavy site tools and laptop computers had been “bagged up” ready to be taken away.
The court heard that the value of the goods, which were all recovered, was around £10,000.
Mr Crimp said £2,117 damage was caused to tools which had been left out in the rain by the burglars and damage to locks cost £273 to repair.
Following their arrest the men claimed they had come to Ipswich to look for cheap cars to buy and sell and had come across the building site.
Before the court were Ionut Butnaru, 29, of Bushey, Hertfordshire; Valeriu Fabian, 34, of Andover and Dinu Grigore, 36, and Sorin Sterpu,40, both of Borehamwood.
They all admitted burglary on November 30 last year and were each jailed for 14 months.
Judge Martyn Levett ordered that a car used by the men to travel to Ipswich should be forfeited.
Sentencing the men Judge Levett described the break-in as “verging on the professional”.
“Not one of you come from Ipswich. You travelled by car as a group, you were equipped for burglary and there was a degree of planning which just might be described as verging on the professional.
“It wasn’t committed on impulse and in view of the location some planning was involved,” added the judge.
He said the men were all disguised with balaclavas and were wearing rubber gloves to conceal fingerprints.
They also had a torch with them to look into containers and cabins.
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