"It was a scene so unusual the cops had to stop and take a picture. In downtown Los Angeles in June, police investigating a string of residential burglaries happened upon their suspects as they tried to make a daring escape. When officers searched a seventh-floor apartment and stepped out onto the apartment balcony, there they found their suspects - huddled and trying to stay out of view on a neighboring balcony."
"In the last few years, groups of foreign nationals have been traveling to the U.S. on tourist visas, then breaking into homes in affluent neighborhoods in what police call "burglary tourism." These crews use rental properties as their bases of operation and use highly sophisicated methods to gain entry into homes, including using jamming devices to interfere with security surveillance equipment that use Wi-Fi signals and surveillance cameras to monitor residents' routines."
Police served a search warrant on a seventh-floor downtown Los Angeles apartment and found four suspects crouched on a neighboring balcony after they attempted to escape. Officers photographed the suspects as they tight-roped across a narrow ledge between balconies. Authorities arrested six people believed tied to a South American theft ring. Investigators recovered jewelry, cash, foreign currency and signs that suspects were making "pink cocaine" in a blender. Crew methods include using rental properties as bases, traveling on tourist visas, and employing sophisticated techniques such as jamming devices to disable Wi-Fi-based surveillance and using cameras to pattern residents' routines. Burbank police withheld the suspects' names.
Read at Los Angeles Times
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]