Police lost master keys to six apartment blocks in Oulu
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The keys to a total of 190 rental apartments went missing in connection with a house search conducted by the police in the City of Oulu on Sunday afternoon, as first reported by the provincial newspaper Kaleva.
The bunch of master keys was lost while the police used one of the keys to get into a two-room apartment in Oulu’s Toppila district in order to arrest one person.
The bunch of keys contained the master keys to six apartment buildings in the city’s districts of Toppila, Toppilansaari, and Simssi. Since Sunday, the houses have been guarded round the clock. The locks of all apartments will have to be replaced by new ones. The process will last until Friday of next week.
Guards from a security company will check the identity of every person who goes into the houses. The Oulu Police Department has also increased its patrols in the areas.
"At the time of the incident, there were several persons in the apartment while a number of officers from both the criminal police and the uniformed branch were involved in the house search", reports Inspector Risto Viippola from the Liminka police department. Vilppola is in charge of the investigations. The principle of objectivity obliged the police to transfer the investigations from Oulu to an outside force in Liminka.
The keys are thought to have been left dangling from the lock on the door, when the police got into the crowded apartment, and somebody might have snatched the bunch of keys from the door.
"We have not been able to determine whether the keys were taken from inside the apartment or from the door, or whether they went missing in some other way", said Viippola.
The police got the bunch of keys from the caretaker of Walo-Asunnot Oy, the company in charge of the rental buildings in question.
"Previously our janitor used to open the door for the police, but nowadays the police want to open the doors themselves for security reasons", notes Manager Jussi Hekkala from Walo-Asunnot.
"The assumption is that this was a theft committed by an outsider", reports Police Commissioner Veli-Erkki Wäre from the Oulu Police Department.
Manager Hekkala estimates that the replacement of locks and the guarding of the buildings will cost approximately EUR 150,000.
Commissioner Wäre says that the police have no insurance against incidents like this.
"We will establish whether or not the insurance of the condominium will cover these costs", says Wäre.
Primarily, the person who stole the bunch of keys in the first place is liable to pay all accrued expenses, according to Wäre.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 18.1.2008 - TODAY |
 Police lost master keys to six apartment blocks in Oulu |
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