By Claire Bryan
Source San Antonio Express-News
A man dressed as a police officer conned his way into a home in western Bexar County on Friday evening, robbed the occupants and later was in custody, according to the Bexar County Sheriff's Office.
A handgun holstered on his hip, Salvatore Alfieri, 38, approached a home on Sheep Hair Street around 6 p.m. wearing a police vest, a blue shirt and a blue ski mask and convinced the young woman who came to the door that he needed to be let inside to search for "contraband," Sheriff Javier Salazar said Sunday.
When she let him in, the intruder took her and her teenage boy's cell phones so they couldn't make any calls, then stole several thousand dollars in cash and some personal items, including a gun, before leaving, Salazar said. The woman called the sheriff's office, still not completely sure that he wasn't an officer.
"What led us to him was that he was using a vehicle that he had rented through an app call Turo," Salazar said. "He rented a car from an individual and by the look of it he used it just for this, so he didn't have to use his own vehicle. But we were able to track him down fairly easily."
Investigators couldn't locate Alfieri on Saturday but posted his identity to social media in hopes the community might recognize him.
The idea worked.
Late Sunday morning, a caller alerted San Antonio police that Alfieri was on a South Side street corner. He got into a ride-sharing car that officers stopped shortly after, the sheriff's office said.
Alfieri will likely be charged with unlawful restraint, impersonating a public servant, burglary and interfering with 9-1-1 calls, among other offenses, the sheriff's office said.
He had not been booked by late Sunday afternoon.
"What really rang the bells with me was that he was just so confident," the sheriff said. "When he drove up, it wasn't like he was looking for an address. He drove in and straight into the driveway, got out and walked up to the front door, really with some purpose. ... He was very confident in his demeanor. Which led me to believe this is probably not the first time he has done this."
Salazar said pseudo cop cases are pretty typical among drug dealers.
"They'll do this to each other quite frequently, and it is an unreported crime," Salazar said.
"We don't believe the victims in this case are drug dealers" but Alfieri appeared to know enough about the household to target it specifically, Salazar said.
"We do have information that Alfieri had recently come into some money problems and he was looking for an easy score. So he hit this house that did have a large sum of cash," Salazar said. "Thankfully, nobody was hurt in this case. However, we wanted to let the public know before the next one happens."
Anyone who claims to be a law enforcement officer who is not in a properly marked law enforcement vehicle should be asked to show identification, he said, and residents can demand that they show a warrant before entering a home.
"It was a scary situation," Salazar said. "I would certainly hate him to do this to another unsuspecting person that may be convinced enough by his little disguise to let him in."
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