They say there’s nothing new under the sun, which is true when it comes to a recent rash of stolen cars being used to smash into storefronts in the Los Angeles area. While the brazen middle-of-the-night burglaries have shocked the local media and residents, we’ve seen this sort of thing plenty of times before, including a big wave of it in Chicago.
Thieves drive BMW through showroom windows in a brazen burglary.
Just last week stolen vehicles were driven through the front of stores in North Hollywood and Chatsworth, as captured by surveillance cameras and reported by Fox 11 LA. Just like in similar heists, the car is used to make a gaping hole, then a bunch of people rush in to grab all the goods they can before police can respond.
Of course, crashing through the front of a building, the vehicle used like a battering ram is usually damaged to the point it’s disabled or gets caught in the wreckage. That’s okay because it’s just left inside the store having served its sole purpose in the crime.
After arrive on the scene, police run the VIN on the abandoned vehicle and confirm it’s stolen. With thieves wearing hoodies, masks, and gloves, it’s harder to track them down after they clean out a store.
In these recent incidents, burglars targeted a cannabis shop and a smoke shop, carrying away all the stuff they could carry. However, one of the break-ins was thwarted by a concrete pillar preventing the SUV one suspect was driving from smashing through the storefront. Perhaps those kinds of safety features will become common for businesses in cities before too long?
It might sound ridiculous, but his trend of crashing cars through stores in the middle of the night looks to be expanding. Business owners and law enforcement in cities across the country need to figure out right now what to do about it.
Image via Fox 11 LA
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