Stars’ homes burglarized in ‘flocking’ trend

LOSANGELES — The gang members start their days in the impoverished neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, but their real work begins in some of the city’s wealthiest enclaves.

Each day, the gang hand-picks teams of burglars, who ditch their usual attire for button-down shirts and hop into shiny luxury sedans to blend in as they search for prime targets — temporarily unoccupied homes containing stashes of jewelry and other valuables.

Celebrities including Nicki Minaj and Alanis Morissette are among the suspected recent victims of a crime trend known as “flocking,” so named because gang members flock like birds to areas where residential burglaries provide the biggest payoff.

They knock on the front door and, if no one answers, break in. The burglars often do not know whose home they are targeting, making it inevitable in Los Angeles that they sometimes hit houses of the nation’s best-known actors, singers and other entertainment figures, police said.

Since January, other victims have included two Los Angeles athletes — Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig and the Lakers’ Nick Young — along with actress Emmy Rossum, who reported $150,000 in jewelry taken last week from a safe in her home.

Morissette had about $2 million in jewelry and valuables stolen from her Brentwood mansion. Young lost about $500,000 in jewelry and other items during a burglary at his Tarzana home, police said.

So far, no arrests have been made in any of the celebrity cases.

Although some of the recent break-ins have shared similarities, authorities do not believe stars are being specifically targeted. Investigators do think that most of the burglaries are being committed by members of the same street gang, the Rollin’ 30s Harlem Crips.

Their day follows a regular routine. Gang leaders meet in the morning on their home turf and select crews of four or five people from a pool of about 100 gang members — male and female — who will do the burglaries that day, Los Angeles Police Detective William Dunn said.

Authorities will not discuss security measures at any of the houses that were hit, so it’s unclear if those homes had alarms or fences. But police said many people do not turn on their alarms and buy cheap safes that can be cracked by determined burglars.