Case Date:

8/5/2020

Bloomington Sanitation Department, At 3 AM of Wednesday, August 8, 2020 on the morning of trash pickup day at 1412 S. Winfield Rd., 47401, my wife was up watching a recorded news program when a crash was heard from the bottom of our driveway where the cans awaited pickup. The bang was followed by a loud dragging sound. She walked to the bottom of the drive and found the landscaping can in the recycling can were gone. She woke me and we searched for the cans until we found them three doors south on the Boulevard of the Southwest corner of the Moores Pike roundabout. At first I thought at 3 AM, it must've been a drunk. However, the more I thought about it, the more unlikely I thought it would be that a drunk would be able to retain the cans for 50 yards. Retaining the cans brings me to the question which I thought worth sharing with the city. I cannot think of any way to carry the cans that far without damaging one's vehicle other than the way the city does it – hooking a lifter up under the bar built-into the can. If a prankster is trying to develop a "trick-or-treat… Throw your garbage in the streets" system, the potential chaos it could create for the city sanitation system seems to me to be huge and I would recommend that the city proactively try to answer the following questions. 1.) Have any of the lifting mechanisms used by the city trucks ever disappeared? 2.) Since this system is presumably used throughout the country, can such a lifter be bought online? 3.) Are there any YouTube videos about how to make a lifter that someone could have been testing on Winfield Road? 4.) Has the company from which the city purchased the cans and lifters had experience with cans being fiddled with when they are sitting ducks beside the road the night before garbage pickup? If so, what did these other municipalities do about it? I got my cans and my trash back in time to leave it out for pickup, but the next victim might not be so lucky. Thanks for your attention, Eric Mjolsnes