Tipton man jailed for early hours raids on three pubs
A man who who stole £28,500 cash from three pubs during early-morning raids within three months was today behind bars.
Glenn Cleaver always struck in the early hours of Mondays when the amount of cash held on the premises was at its highest before weekend takings could be banked, a judge heard.
The pubs were all locked up with nobody living on the premises overnight when the raids – staged to feed his drug and alcohol habit – took place, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told yesterday.
Cleaver, aged 46, scoured the pubs for the keys to the safe which was either emptied or carried away by him and at least one other man who has not been traced, explained prosecutor Mr Ian Speed.
The defendant first targeted The Queslett in Queslett Road East, Great Barr, escaping with £10,500 cash on July 30 last year. Next came The Dog on Hagley Road West in Warley where the haul was £10,000 on September 17 and seven days later the safe holding £8,000 was stolen from the Man In The Moon at Kings Norton in Birmingham.
The burglar alarms were disabled on each occasion and the phone line was also cut at one of the premises. But the raiders were captured by CCTV cameras without masks. Cleaver was recognised from the footage and arrested on November 5, the court heard.
He was already the subject of a 12-month sentence suspended for two years in May 2011 for going equipped for burglary after being found out at night with a torch and balaclava.
Mr Simon Rippon, defending, said Cleaver was still haunted by incidents from a troubled childhood and had been addicted to both drugs and alcohol for a long time although he had quit both since his arrest.
Cleaver from Laburnum Road, Tipton admitted the commercial burglary of the three pubs and was sent to prison for a total of three years and four months by Judge John Wait.
