Three types of burglaries trending: Distraction, knock-knock, and high-end burglary
LAPD has alerted the community of the rising statistics of burglaries and, in particular, the three types of burglaries that are trending in our hillsides. LAPD is actively creating a task force that will be a bureau response (more resources) and will span into the Valley Bureau and into the South Bureau.
1. The “distraction" burglary series: A crime that is occurring all over the city, including Glendale, Culver City and Santa Monica. Someone will come to the front door pretending to be construction worker, public works crew or utilities worker. They might be wearing an orange vest and they will ask enter your property to check you meter and residence. While you’re escorting the person in, another person will come in and, either through an open garage or house, take items that are easy accessed by the front door or in the garage. Be mindful of people coming to the door. Do not allow anyone in unless they show you identification or they have a legitimate reason to come onto your property. Keep everything locked and secured—garage door closed at all times. A few reports came across where garage doors were open and someone came up and grabbed a bike or accessible property that is in the garage..
2. The “knock-knock” burglary series: Suspects will approach the resident’s door — sometimes with a bag and say they’re from Uber Eats, Door Dash, or a delivery service. They want to establish whether or not anyone is home. Once they establish that no one is home — or they think that no one is home — their partners will get out of the car and together go to the rear of the house, break a rear window or sliding door — or sometimes they kicked open the front door. In at least two instances, the victims were actually home but they didn’t answer the door because they either didn’t hear or they didn’t answer because they were not expecting anyone. LAPD suggests that if you have a video doorbell (such as Ring), answer the doorbell on your smartphone whether you are at home or not. In other words, pretend you are home even if you are not home. In one case, victims confronted the suspects and the suspects turned around and ran out of the house. These types of suspects are not looking for confrontation because, their intent is not to assault the homeowners. However, we have to be aware that in any circumstance just as we “corner" an animal or a suspect, they can act in unpredictable ways. Make your residence appear it is being occupied.
We are encouraged to be aware of what is happening in our street and our neighborhood. Be on the lookout for suspicious behavior of the people in your neighborhood: Ducking into bushes, acting suspiciously or oddly — is someone making deliveries with the same bag to multiple houses? That would be suspicious and that should be called in to the non-emergency number (877-ASK LAPD), or if you have your neighbor’s numbers, you can reach out to them and advise someone has been going around to different houses as a “red flag.”
3. The “high-end" burglary series: These burglaries are predominantly in the hillsides and the type that concerns LAPD the most. LAPD is seeing South LA gang members from various gangs that have been coordinating efforts by essentially doing surveillance on larger estates and other high-end residences. When they do decide on a location — again they’re looking for empty homes — where the occupants have gone out to dinner or on vacation. They will take multiple vehicles — sometimes two to four vehicles at a time. The reason why they’re doing this is to split up. So, they have a tactic where they will leave drivers in one or two of the vehicles and when police respond, they will distract the police, or security, by taking off at a high rate of speed or they will flash their high beams to gather the attention of the responding officers or security. It’s actually very well thought out and in some cases they have actually successfully distracted officers who had arrested them for burglary but their compatriates were able to escape out the back or off on another street.
In some cases those people have been armed with guns. There is video where these people were on surveillance video where they were walking on the exterior of the house holding a gun. LAPD has arrested people with guns and have made multiple arrests with the different types of burglaries.
LAPD is currently creating a burglary task force that will be Bureau-side but will span into the Valley Bureau and into the South Bureau. Furthermore, LAPD has partnered with Beverly Hills Police Department, Culver City Police Department and Santa Monica Police Department. This cooperation has resulted in the discovery of patterns and a number of arrests — burglaries were up 6% but arrests are up 100%.
LAPD is looking at a lot of issues in terms of the task force in getting those outside agencies, the FBI, District Attorney, the US Attorney involved — so they have very ambitious plans to arrest these people — but also try to prosecute them at a higher level than a straight burglary.
Important note from BAA: Straight burglary is a property crime that the District Attorney (George Gascon) is not holding people necessarily to the same standard that they were previously!