Los Angeles Police have identified at least 17 street gangs as the perpetrators of more than 200 “follow-home” robberies of the city’s wealthy. Capt. Jonathan Tippet, who spearheads an LAPD “follow-home robbery” task force, says: “In my 34 years in the LAPD, I have never seen this type of criminal behavior in such large groups.”
“We have seen countless individuals traumatized by having a gun pointed at them,” said Tippett. And the gangbangers are none too gentle in relieving the rich of their valuables. “Many others are dealing with the trauma and injuries from being tackled, kicked, beaten, punched and are pistol-whipped to the head.”
At least 17 gangs, most of them based in South Los Angeles, independently staged robberies, sometimes using spotters to target people wearing high-end watches or driving expensive cars, according to Tippet.
As many as five carloads of people have followed home some targets, Tippet said.
Three suspects in armed follow-home robberies were arrested earlier this month, including one man who has been arrested three times already this year.
Thank goodness for L.A.’s “no bail” policy for “non-violent” criminals.
A woman is run down and robbed of her watch by gunmen Downtown. It's one of more than 200 "follow-home" robberies carried out by 17 South L.A. street gangs, the LAPD says. Eyewitness News with the troubling trend frustrating police. Tonight at 11 from ABC7 https://t.co/7mApPOpStw pic.twitter.com/WSxK6wBJNk
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) April 13, 2022
There were 165 such holdups last year and 56 so far this year. Thirteen victims were shot, including two who died.
Through surveillance video and other evidence, police have identified crews rolling three to five cars deep in some of the attacks, Tippet said, with gang members jumping out and blindsiding victims.
“There’s no chance or opportunity for these victims even to comply. They’re just running up to people and attacking them, whether that’s putting a gun in their face or punching them and beating on them,” Tippet said. “Pistol whipping them as well.”
In some cases, police determined that gang members inside high-end venues served as “spotters” for those outside, Tippet said, alerting them when wealthy targets were heading out.
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Apparently, some activists and criminal justice reform advocates worry that the wealthy won’t understand the transfer of wealth that’s underway and will try to get police to crack down on the criminals.
That intense focus has also caused some consternation among activists and criminal justice reform advocates, who worry that wealthy residents with political clout and politicians eager to please them will use the trend — based in part on fraught and sometimes false police assessments of gang involvement — to claw back past policing reforms.
One prominent activist, Hamid Khan, on Tuesday accused the LAPD of “week after week of sensationalism” about crime in the city, suggesting police were blowing crime trends out of proportion to maintain their grip on the city’s budget.
“LAPD has to constantly legitimize itself, constantly has to make itself useful to the community, by raising this specter of people running wild,” Khan said.
I don’t know. The idea that the LAPD isn’t “useful” to the community is ludicrous. And it’s pretty “sensational” when a kid gets shot to death by gangbangers — gangbangers who may have been released without bail for one reason or another.
That’s the problem with “criminal justice reform” — the laws are getting reformed but the criminals are staying the same. Perhaps we should think of reforming the criminals — preferably in a supermax cell block — before we look at reforming the law.
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