Lock altered, cash and Scotch pilfered

Apparently they wanted a quick payday … and a drink.

A 30-year-old employee of Mexican-and-mezcal haunt Cocina Chente at 3535 Riverdale Ave. told cops when she opened the place for business sometime in the afternoon of March 31, she noticed someone must have been messing with the front door lock.

Her suspicions were confirmed, according to cops, because $140 cash was stolen from the restaurant’s register, along with a bottle of Buchanan’s Deluxe Scotch whisky, valued by police at $50.

Security cameras showed the alleged burglars — whom police described as two guys, one of them wearing a gray sweatshirt — entering through the front door of the establishment around 3:20 a.m., Saturday, and going straight for the cash register. There they snatched the bottle of booze before taking off.

Detectives are still investigating.

Survey goods stealthily snatched

A 27-year-old man told cops the Ruttura and Sons construction company last saw its Trimble surveying equipment at a work site behind a property on the 230 block of West 246th Street in Fieldston on the afternoon of March 23. 

But the equipment — valued by police at $50,000 — was nowhere to be seen the following Monday

Several workers have access to the site, police said, and there are cameras around the area. Yet it’s unclear whether they fled to or who took the stuff.

Detectives are looking into the grand larceny.

Window smashed, laptop, gone

A 30-year-old man told cops he left his car parked at the southeast corner of West 238th Street and Tibbett Avenue in Kingsbridge, around 3 p.m., March 30. When he returned the following morning, the rear passenger window was shattered and his MacBook Air laptop — valued by police at $1,000 — was missing, along with a $250 leather jacket.

There were security cameras nearby, police said, but no word on whether the footage will help cops track down whoever it was who smashed the glass and took the goods.