Texas cities see recent spike in ‘jugging’ thefts

Law enforcement, prosecutors working to strengthen penalties for crime that has been linked to Houston

The Houston business owner left a bank earlier this month with a stash of crisp bills in a money bag he put in his Toyota Camry.

His plan was to take the $12,000 to the safe at his Montrose salon. But he popped into a Midtown restaurant on the way to pick up some spring rolls for his wife. While he was inside, thieves smashed out his car’s window, opened the trunk and grabbed the money bag. They knew it was there. These criminals are pros at stalking victims from banks and businesses. Houston police say perpetrators call the crime “jugging” — the nickname for a bank bag — and have linked Houston crooks to incidents in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and neighboring states.

The method itself isn’t new but has become more commonplace in recent years, triggering more attention from law enforcement. Houston police noticed a major increase in juggings in 2012, said Christian Dorton, an officer assigned to the Houston Police Department’s Northeast Division Tactical Unit. HPD investigators have made 200 jugging-related arrests since 2013, he said, compared with just a handful the year before.

As investigators began probing juggings, they determined a small group of people were behind an inordinate number of the crimes across the city and began focusing on them.

“You target the persons doing the crimes,” Dorton said. “That’s where you’re going to see results.”

That was particularly important, he said, after they realized juggers were often involved in other, more dangerous crime.

A security specialist for

a national bank chain with 200 Houston branches said in 2012 he started receiving complaints from managers whose customers had been preyed upon.

The crime, police said, has been seen as lowrisk and high-reward. While the majority of the thefts weren’t high-dollar amounts, some hauls were huge: Last year one jugger stole $50,000 from Ed Reed, a former safety for the Houston Texans. Authorities say others have managed to steal upwards of $100,000 in one go.

“These incidents started becoming very commonplace, certainly weekly, if not on daily basis,” the security specialist said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to comment on the record. “I don’t think people would imagine people keeping that much money in their vehicle. That was concerning — the amount of cash involved — and the regularity that it was happening.”

Unless suspects are caught in the act, the crimes are very difficult to solve. Even when prosecuted, juggers traditionally received little jail time, because they would be charged with burglary of a motor vehicle, usually prosecuted as a misdemeanor. However, since noticing the spike, police and prosecutors have started seeking tougher penalties against suspects.

Of the countless crimes committed in Houston every year, burglaries from vehicles are numbingly routine. Authorities here recorded 29,493 such crimes across the city in 2014.

As recently as Thursday, officers arrested two men who followed a man from a Montrose bank, then tried to steal money out of his vehicle at a Walmart parking lot.

Low sentences

But even as police began arresting more jugging suspects, they grappled with the dilemma of the low sentences they often received.

“There’s a continuum a prosecutor would assess things on,” explained Bill Exley, a Harris County assistant district attorney. “You’d put cases like BMVs in the category of a minor, nonperson crime.”

Prosecutors started taking a different approach after police explained the crime to them more fully, he said. In several cases, prosecutors won sentences that were 18, 20, 25, and 40 years long.

“The idea one might be covertly followed by people for a long distance and time is more alarming than ‘I just went into a restaurant and someone stole something out of my car,’ ” Exley said.

Now, prosecutors are using suspects’ criminal histories, probation violations, or other legal enhancements to pursue harsher sentences. As juggings have risen, prosecutors and police say they are also hoping to change state laws to include harsher charges such as “predatory theft,” which would help deter the crime.

“Now juggers know we’re more sophisticated, and know the game and know what they’re doing — and we know how to prove it,” Exley said. “Juggers are realizing if they go to trial, they’re likely going to get hammered.”

As pressure has cranked up on juggers locally, police traced Houston thieves to crimes in nearby jurisdictions, then to places as far away as New Orleans and Memphis.

Police in Austin noticed a slew of about 50 juggings there last year, said Austin Police Detective Jared Manning.

“We’re seeing a lot more cases where people leaving financial institutions and cars getting broken into as soon as they stopped,” he said.

Eight incidents

This year, authorities have recorded eight incidents. Manning said the drop could be because of awareness campaigns launched to warn city residents, or suspects getting arrested.

“All the suspects, most are coming from Houston — renting cars in other people’s names and driving all over the state,” he said.

In Mesquite, a Dallas suburb of 130,000, authorities noticed a spree of juggings in November and January, said Mesquite Police Sgt. Philip Clay.

“When we started getting hit, police were not attuned

to it,” he said. “Typically, they just brushed it off. ... How stupid could someone be leaving a bank bag in a car?”

In the Houston incident earlier this month with the salon owner, police got lucky. Two passers-by witnessed the crime.

“It looked like someone was trying to get in when they’d locked themselves out of the car,” said Michael Martin, a 65-year-old attorney who had been eating lunch with a co-worker. “It seemed stupid to try to do that with a long screwdriver.”

As the two watched, he smashed out the window, then popped the trunk.

After glancing inside the trunk, he grabbed a money bag the driver had hidden there, then sped away in a nearby car. The brazen daylight break-in had taken just seconds.

Police have charged Lavert Hart and Lacarlton Johnson, who they said sat outside a nearby bank waiting for their target, then followed him from the bank to a Midtown Vietnamese restaurant.

Dorton and his fellow investigators identified the suspects that same day and retrieved all but a few hundred dollars.

Johnson, who is being held on $24,000 bail, has been arrested in connection

with two other thefts from cars dating to 2010. Because of the amount of money the suspects are accused of stealing, they face charges of felony theft.

Hart, who has not yet been arrested, has been charged seven other times since 2011 — three of them burglaries from motor vehicles and one robbery.

“When we started getting hit, police were not attuned to it. Typically, they just brushed it off ... How stupid could someone be leaving a bank bag in a car?”

Mesquite Police Sgt. Philip Clay

‘Just the culture’

The victim, who asked not to be identified because he is fearful of retribution, said he had wanted to swap out several thousand dollars in old bills for fresh, bigger denominations and was planning to return the money to the safe at his salon.

“It’s not unusual for Asians to accumulate cash in the house,” the man said, explaining that his wife, who came to the U.S. only a few years ago from Vietnam, was leery of banks. “It’s just the culture.”

The realization he had been targeted leaving a bank had left him unsettled.

“I was scared. It’s the kind of thing I don’t normally worry about. I normally only have 5 to 10 dollars in my pocket. ... I couldn’t believe it happened to me.”