Officers recover stolen bird

Ben Godar

When Connie Barnett’s cockatoo, Patrick, was stolen recently, she

feared she’d never see the crested parrot again. But police were able

to connect some seemingly unrelated dots and reunite the two.

Barnett keeps the bird, which she has raised from an egg, on a

patio behind her hair salon on Burbank Boulevard. She noticed Patrick

was missing June 16, and searched the neighborhood before reporting

him stolen the next day.

The Burbank resident told police that two men had entered her

patio and checked out Patrick the day before he was stolen, and that

she had seen the men hanging around a house in the 1400 block of Rose

Street.

It was at that residence on May 30 that police began a car chase

with a woman that a Burbank girl alleged kidnapped and beat her. The

woman was eventually arrested in Hollywood after crashing into

several cars during the pursuit. The runaway girl told police that

residents of a house in Sun Valley beat her and then drove her back

to Burbank. She later retracted her story, and police made no further

arrests.

But Sgt. William Berry said the incident made them aware of a

connection between the home in Sun Valley and the house on Rose, and

that connection led to the recovery of the cockatoo.

When police searched the home on Telfair Avenue in Sun Valley on

June 18, they not only found Patrick, who Barnett estimated was worth

between $3,000 and $5,000, but recovered a stolen car and stolen

electronics.

Jon Ferguson, 30, Freddy Alcocer, 40, and Anthony Oliver, 30, all

of Sun Valley, were arrested at the house on suspicion of possessing

stolen property, Berry said.

Barnett said she was amazed when police called to say they had

found Patrick.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “I didn’t want to get

over-excited.”

Police asked Barnett how she could verify that the bird was

Patrick, but when she arrived at the home in Sun Valley, the parrot

flew right to her saying “I love you, I love you,” Berry said.

Barnett said she could not thank police enough for reuniting her

with the bird.

“He’s my only companion. He’s my baby,” she said. “It made me very

happy.”

Finding the bird, Berry said, was simply the result of good police

work by officers who know what’s going on in their community.

“Our officers strive to get to know the people who tend to do bad

things in Burbank and get to know the people that they know,” he

said.