Smash-and-grab thieves prompt mall patrols in L.A.
LOS ANGELES — A group of thieves smashed windows at a department store at a luxury mall in Los Angeles, triggering a police pursuit just days after high-end stores throughout the San Francisco Bay Area were targeted.
The latest incident in a national trend of smash-and-grab crimes targeted a Nordstrom store at The Grove retail and entertainment complex. It came as the country’s largest consumer electronics chain said an increase in organized theft was taking a toll on its bottom line.
Workers covered a large broken window at the Nordstrom with black plywood Tuesday morning as security guards and shoppers alike came in and out of the store. Michel Moore, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said the agency would beef up its visible patrols around high-end stores citywide beginning Tuesday night and into the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend.
Crimes like these “have a profoundly greater impact on the sense of safety and security than simply the dollar loss of the merchandise,” Moore said.
The thieves struck around 10:40 p.m. Monday, using a sledgehammer and an ebike to break the window’s glass, Moore said. About 20 people were involved in the smashand-grab theft, stealing about $5,000 worth of merchandise and leaving roughly $15,000 in damage to the store when they fled.
Officers pursued an SUV involved in the crime, and the chase ended with three people — including a juvenile — arrested. Officers found Nordstrom merchandise in the SUV, as well as items that appeared to be stolen during a CVS burglary earlier in the day.
The Grove incident followed a weekend of similar brazen thefts in the San Francisco Bay Area and Beverly Hills.
The electronics chain Best Buy on Tuesday cited organized theft as one of the reasons for a decline in gross profit margin in the third quarter.
“This is a real issue that hurts and scares real people,” Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told analysts during a conference call Tuesday.
Barry told reporters during a separate call that the company is seeing organized theft increase across the country, but particularly in San Francisco. She said the company is hiring security guards and working with its vendors on creative ways to stage products.
Yet loss-prevention agents and security guards are generally trained not to engage with thieves, said mall and retail security expert David Levenberg. They are not trained or equipped to pursue or subdue suspects, and the likelihood of violence is too great; instead they are supposed to “observe and report.”