Several men suspected of burglarizing homes across the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys were under surveillance by undercover officers Tuesday when they allegedly broke-in to a home in Woodland Hills, then led police on a high-speed chase through South LA before crashing and trying to escape on foot.
The suspected thieves – believed to be members of one of several burglary ‘crews’ under investigation by local law enforcement – were being watched by detectives with the LA Impact task force, who work in plainclothes and unmarked cars to try to catch crimes in-progress.
The break-in happened in a Woodland Hills neighborhood near Taft High School just south of Ventura Boulevard. Video from NewsChopper4 showed a glass door or window facing the backyard of the gated home had been smashed.
The detectives tailed the group away from the area and called LAPD uniformed officers in to make a traffic stop.
The driver of one car being used by the thieves – a black Tesla sedan – sped away and was chased into South Los Angeles, where the car crashed into a parked car and stopped near Wall and 98th streets around 11 a.m.
Two men ran from the wrecked Tesla and at least one of them was detained by officers.
A law enforcement source said two more men got out of the car before the chase began, and a related search was being done at a location in Lynwood.
The LA Impact team was brought in following a series of well-publicized home burglaries in Encino and Sherman Oaks, including the July murders of American Idol music supervisor Robin Kaye and her husband Thomas Deluca during a break-in.
Three days after bodies of Kaye and Deluca were discovered a homeowner in Encino shot and wounded a person who’d broken-in to his home around 5:30 a.m. and was reportedly armed with a crowbar. The prowler turned out to be a 14-year-old who was arrested after his mother called paramedics to report he’d been shot.
Law enforcement officials have said they believe a small number of burglary teams, or crews, have been responsible for many of the recent break-ins, sometimes using remote cameras to stake-out potential targets and WiFi jammers and other tools to blind cameras and defeat security systems.
The group being watched Tuesday was suspected of carrying out recent residential burglaries in the West Valley, Arcadia, Glendale, and other communities, the sources said.
Summaries of LAPD crime data show Citywide the number of burglaries has declined by about 3% this year, and they declined by more than 8% in the West Valley area in July, at the same time when many residents became alarmed at the apparent frequency of break-ins.
The LAPD no longer provides public access to the crime data behind the published summaries, so it’s difficult to know whether the burglaries being reported occurred in homes or businesses.
LA Impact is an inter-agency task force comprised of detectives and officers from a variety of LA County, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including the LAPD, led by a special agent from the California Department of Justice.
The same unit was tasked with surveilling and investigating several other burglary crews that were operating in the San Fernando Valley last summer, resulting in numerous arrests.