![]() He pleaded guilty to petty theft in 2019 and was sentenced to three years of probation. In his prior case, he said, he was stealing over-the-counter medication from CVS and reselling it. Some commit theft to pay their rent or car loans, he said, while others steal simply because they want luxury goods that they cannot afford. It can take just minutes to move an item often, the goods are sold at close to full price. It is relatively easy to resell stolen goods through social media, he said. One of the women, a 21-year-old with two young children, steals and resells the merchandise to pay her rent, he said. The police said they had stolen $1,100 worth of merchandise. After the officer found the shoes, he and the two women were arrested on suspicion of burglary. Since he was on probation for a petty theft conviction, the officer was allowed to search his car. The officer turned the cruiser around and pulled him over - ostensibly because his windows were tinted. He was headed down Melrose Avenue when he made eye contact with a police officer driving in the opposite direction. He drove off with the women - and the shoes - in his Nissan Altima. I can’t put a gun to their head and tell them to get out of my car.” “But they still opened my door and got in my car. “I’m telling my friends, ‘Don’t walk to my car. He said he watched them walk out of the store with about six pairs of shoes and heard the alarms blaring. But once inside, he said, the women started shoving pairs of shoes, including Yeezy sneakers, into their fake Louis Vuitton and MCM handbags. The 21-year-old, who spoke on the condition that his name not be published because he was concerned for his safety if people thought he was a “snitch,” said he had planned on buying a pair of sneakers at the store. Sitting on the porch of his mother’s home in South Los Angeles, the man arrested in the theft on Melrose insisted he had no intention of stealing anything when he and two women walked into the consignment shop on Black Friday. Staff at the youth home where he lives in L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood told him not to talk about his case, he said. ![]() “They don’t have things, and they want things.”ĭeHughes, 19, insisted he was innocent but declined to elaborate. “I mean, it’s the pandemic, so some people are just struggling,” said Daniel DeHughes, who was arrested on suspicion of stealing sledgehammers and crowbars from a Home Depot that police believed he and his friends were planning to use in a smash-and-grab in Beverly Hills. Others keep what they swipe for themselves. In interviews, the suspects offered differing reasons for the theft: Some scratch out a living reselling what they steal. ![]() Through interviews with police and some of the suspects and a review of court and probation records, The Times found that a wide range of people - from a group of Romani women from Orange County to crews of reputed gang members from South Los Angeles - have been implicated in the crimes. The Times identified several people arrested on suspicion of committing smash-and-grabs, follow-home robberies and similarly brazen heists in which people have simply grabbed merchandise off shelves in full view. Police news bulletins offer only vague descriptions of suspects - a race, an age, a height. Culprits have appeared in pixelated surveillance footage as blurry, masked figures. Largely absent from the conversation, however, are the people accused of committing the crimes. California Smash-and-grab robbery rings organize on social media, Bonta saysĬalifornia’s attorney general says smash-and-grab rings are giving directions to the people hitting businesses and guiding them on the most valuable goods to take. ![]()
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