In Black Friday, a man and two women entered a luxury consignment store in Melrose Avenue.They began to put pairs of shoes in their bags and left with the an alarms anti -theft at full volume.
In an interview, the subject commented that one of the alleged thieves, a young mother of two children, steals and reverts merchandise to pay her rent.
"This is how people pay the rent of their home or loans for the car," he explained."Go to the mall, steal clothes, that's how people can get money".
A series of high profile crimes in exclusive parts of Los Angeles, the so -called express robbery and home monitoring, have received generalized attention in recent months.Police have sent agents to commercial centers and corridors such as Rodeo Drive and Melrose Avenue.The right -wing media have taken advantage of theft as proof that the crime in California is out of control.
However, despite all the focus they have received, shameless crimes represent only a fraction of robberies and assaults in the city, which in general have not experienced a significant increase.
Throughout the city, home robberies fell by 8% and assaults increased 5% for 2020.Much more serious is the dramatic increase in homicides: 389 in 2021, an increase of 12% since 2020 and 51% since 2019.
But armed assaults and home monitoring thefts have managed to capture the city's attention in a way that the growing homicide rate could not, which stirred political discourse on crime, surveillance and how the judicial systemPunishes law offenders.
However, in large part, the people accused of committing crimes are absent from the conversation.The culprits have appeared in pixelated surveillance images such as blurred and masked figures.Police news bulletins only offer vague descriptions of suspects: a race, an age, a height.
The Times identified several people arrested on suspicion of committing armed robberies, home assaults and equally shameless robberies, in which people have simply taken merchandise from the shelves in sight.Through interviews with the police and some of the suspects, as well as a review of the judicial and trial period, the Times discovered that a wide range of individuals, from a group of Romani women from Orange County to the groups to the groupsof renowned gang members of southern Los Angeles, have been involved in crimes.
In the interviews, the suspects offered different reasons for theft: some earn a living by resorting what they steal.Others stay with what they get.
"I mean, it is the pandemic, so some people are simply battling," said Daniel De Hughes, who was arrested on suspicion of stealTools in an express robbery in Beverly Hills."They don't have things and want things".
Dehughes, 19, insisted that he was innocent, but refused to give more details.Household staff for young people where they live in the West Adams neighborhood in Los Angeles told him not to talk about his case, he said.
"As people pay their rent"
Sitting in the garage of his mother's house in southern Los Angeles, the man arrested during the theft of Melrose insisted that he had no intention of subtracting anything when he and two women entered the Black Friday.
The 21 -year -old, who spoke with the condition that his name was not published because he was worried about his safety if people thought it was a “blow”, he mentioned that he had planned to buy a couple of tennis in the store.But once inside, he added, the women began to put pairs of shoes, including Yeezy Shoes, in their Louis Vuitton and McM false bags.He explained that he saw them leave the establishment with about six pairs of footwear and heard the alarms at full volume.
“I tell my friends:‘ Don't walk towards my car.Go to the other side, ”he recalled.“But they still opened my door and entered my car.I can't put a gun on the head and tell them to leave ".
He left with women and shoes in his Nissan Altima.He drove for Melrose Avenue when he made visual contact with a policeman who was driving in the opposite direction.The officer turned the patrol and stopped him, apparently because his windows were polarized.
As he was in a trial period for a sentence for minor robbery, the officer was allowed to register his car.After he found the shoes, he and the two women were arrested under assault suspicion.Police explained that they had stolen merchandise for a value of 1.100 dollars.
One of the women, a 21 -year -old girl with two young children, steals and reverts the merchandise to pay the rent of her home, he explained.It is relatively easy to resell stolen goods through social networks, he said.You can take only a few minutes to move an element;commonly, products are sold almost at the total price.
Some commit robberies to pay for rent or loans for the car, he stressed, while others dochet simply because they want luxury items that cannot pay.
In his previous case, he mentioned, he was stealing CVS free sales medicines and was reluctant.It was easy and fast money.He declared himself guilty of theft Minor in 2019 and was sentenced to three years of the trial period.
Recently he got a job in a Walmart, he explained, and is determined to keep it.
"I take this and I'm leaving"
On November 28, five women entered a Lululemon store in Ventura Boulevard in Studio City and brought merchandise for a value of 14.$ 256, according to the police.
The branch, which has been attacked by thieves at least four times from Thanksgiving, had equipped its safety labels with GPS tracking devices, said detective Noah Stone, who investigates robberies and assaults in the North Hollywood divisionof the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Using GPS trackers, the police arrested suspects in Anaheim.Romani women living in Anaheim and Fullerton traveled in two cars that were full of merchandise, a part of Lululemon, the rest of other retailers, said Stone.Detectives are trying to determine if the other articles were stolen and, if so, where.
The women did not respond to the messages that left them in their apartments in Orange County.
Retailers in North Hollywood and their surroundings have not experienced so much coordinated express robberies and thieves that simply "get things out of the shelves," Stone explained.He sees perpetrators as emboldened, imperturbable for the possible consequences."The days when someone hid behind a shelf and kept things in his backpack, it's not as much as that," he emphasized.“It's rather:‘ I don't care.I keep this and I'm leaving ’”.
Two days before Romani women allegedly arrived at the Lululemon store in Studio City, it was raided by two men and two ladies who stole merchandise for a value of 31.$ 720, Stone said.
The four suspects, who believe that they are part of a criminal network throughout the state, are alleged culprits of a robbery committed only one day before in an Hut Sunglass in Monterey, according to Stone."That tells you how far they are willing to travel," he said.
"Give me everything!"
In the early hours of November 10, Terrence Jenkins, a Bet television expressioner, left a restaurant and led with a friend to his home in Sherman Oaks.
When Jenkins came to his home, he saw four people walking through the entrance with firearms."Salt from the car!" One shouted, according to the records reviewed by the Times.
LAPD detectives investigating series robberies for the first time noticed a tendency at the beginning of 2021.People were identified as objectives in restaurants, bars and expensive nightclubs and docked once they got home.The police called him the robbery of home tracking.
"I imagine that there were some in the past," said Detective Freddy Arroyo, who is assigned to the Division of Robberies and Homicides of LAPD, "but it became so frequent that we really noticed this year".
In November, the LAPD formed a working group, coordinated by the Division of theft and Homicides and complemented with detectives from other units, to investigate the robberies.The catalyst, Arroyo explained, was when two men stole an Israeli family in a coffee on the sidewalk of Melrose Avenue.While that incident in September was not an assault on home, the suspects showed a similar method to select the victims for their watches, jewelry or other expensive items, said Arroyo.
The robbery was one of the four that the couple committed in a period of three hours, part of the events that the detectives called the 'VW series bandits in honor of the Volkswagen Jetta that they used as an exhaust car, according to a revised registration orderFor the Times.
Detectives are investigating 150 home tracking robberies and similar crimes committed this year, Arroyo said.The place where the crimes occurred is revealing: ninety of the 150 were committed in the west office of LAPD, which covers Hollywood, Fairfax and Westside.Thirty -four were reported in the central office, 22 at the Valley Office and four in the South Office.
The Hollywood division, which is part of the West Office, has registered 626 robberies this year, an increase of 42% compared to 2020.Forty have been classified as home tracking assaults.Despite the growth, the Hollywood division has seen much less robberies than other PSPD patrol areas.The 77th street division in southern Los Angeles has registered 942 of this crime this year.Only two are being investigated as home tracking theft.
Most of the suspects of home robber.The detective refused to name specific gangs, but a renowned member of the ‘Bounty Hunter Bloods’ in Watts has been accused of a series of housing robberies, according to a report of the test period reviewed by the Times.
Tyrique Shawndell Wise, 20, is a “known member” of the ‘Bounty Hunters’, a gang based on the housing projects of Nickerson Gardens, wrote an attached officer of the test period in the report in the report.
Wise was first arrested at 13 years of age, as well as declared guilty for carrying a weapon and ammunition when it was minor, the report indicates.He was guilty at age 15 for stealing a car and sent to an installation of California's youth authority in Stockton for 84 months, adds the report.He was discharged on November 17, 2020.
Standing at the door of his house in Watts, Wise's mother, Tyhisha Griggs, said the police have long assumed that her son is a member of a gang.When he was 11 years old, a police officer stopped him as he walked on an all -terrain motorcycle in the neighborhood and asked him if he was a member of the ‘Bounty Hunters’, he said."That has been with him since then".
His son could not help growing in a neighborhood or having relatives associated with the gang, he explained."If there is a family member, it is what it is, but some of us are honest and hardworking people," Griggs emphasized, a school bus driver.
The authorities detail that Wise was part of a group that committed the first of what would be a series of robberies at 11:30 p.m.A Friday in May.A couple had driven home from a restaurant.While waiting for the garage to open, two cars stopped behind them, blocking their exit.At gunpoint, both people delivered a rolex, a Chanel wallet and a Louis Vuitton bag, according to the test period report.
At 3 p.m.The next day, the report points out, Wise and two teammates pointed to a man standing on a bench and shouted: “Give me all your things.Give me everything!".They took a gold necklace valued at 80.000 dollars and 12.000 dollars in cash, according to the report.
Detectives believe that some of the robbery equipment are using sentries, whether employees or customers in restaurants and nightclubs that will give them information about a client that carries a expensive watch or drive a luxury car, said Arroyo.
During the next six months, Wise and the others in their group, whom the police also described in the records of the trial period as gang members, robbed six other people and tried to assault three more, accuse the prosecutors.In total, more than 500 were taken.000 dollars in watches, jewelry, cash and other possessions, a detective indicated to the test period officer who wrote the report.
Arroyo said that he and other researchers do not know how stolen articles are sold.You can search if a suspect has sold something to a pawn house, but "these rolex and high -end watches are not being committed, at least not legally," he said.
Jenkins, the authorities mentioned, was Wise's final objective.When the television expressor saw men approaching his car with weapons, he reversed his entrance path and left, says the test period report.
Wise and his companions chased him, according to the report.Someone in his car shot Jenkins, but neither he nor his friend were achieved, the document points out.
At 2 in the morning, LAPD agents in a patrol tried to stop Wise.It led them to a persecution, driving "erratically" and "high speeds," the report indicates.
Eight hours later, Wise was arrested in a Best Western in Centinela Avenue in Inglewood.The detectives registered their room and a Mercedes-Benz silver 2018 sedan that had been driving, and seized an 18-inch chain necklace and a black XD-9 Springfield gun that had been reported as stolen in San Bernardino, among other items, according toA search warrant report.
Wise declared himself innocent of 17 charges of robbery, attempted robbery, assault, shooting against an busy car, evading the police, having a weapon with youth background and the murder attempt of Jenkins and his friend.
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