Antonio Pingitore was walking his beat in Kenosha after midnight when he saw a light flashing on the police box on the corner of Sheridan Road and what is now 60th Street. It was March 30, 1919, and Pingitore, an Italian immigrant who joined the force five years earlier, had been called in to work to cover for another officer who was sick.

In those pre-police radio days, officers were alerted to calls by flashing lights on police boxes installed on poles around the city. Pingitore used the phone in the box to call the station. On the other end of the line, according to Kenosha News stories of the time, a police captain was giving the alert of a dramatic robbery. Three masked men had broken into an office at the American Brass Co. and used dynamite to blow open the company safe.