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(Oakland Museum of California \/ Oakland Police Department)<\/p>\n
Items stolen from the Oakland museum included Native American baskets, jewelry, laptops, daguerreotype photographs and intricately carved ivory tusks. <\/p>\n
The Oakland Police Department is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation\u2019s Art Crime Team to investigate the heist and retrieve the missing items.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was devastating. It feels like a real violation. It feels like somebody entering your home,\u201d said museum Chief Executive Lori Fogarty. <\/p>\n
Fogarty said staff were not working at the off-site storage facility the day of the burglary and discovered it the following morning, Oct. 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur job is to preserve and take care of and steward the cultural, artistic and natural heritage of California,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it feels like not just a loss to me and to the collection staff, we also feel like it\u2019s a loss to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Oakland Museum of California features more than 110,000 square feet of gallery space and 2 million objects dedicated to telling the story of the Golden State.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Oakland Museum of California \/ Oakland Police Department)<\/p>\n
Retired Los Angeles Police Capt. John Romero, who led the department\u2019s commercial crimes unit, said that if the break-in was completed without setting off alarms or alerting security, it\u2019s possible that the person or people behind it had some internal knowledge, he said. The fact that the heist took place at an off-site storage unit also suggests that the suspect or suspects had access to privileged information, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s a nondescript, all-brick building that\u2019s very difficult for anybody to figure out [what it is] from the outside, it is almost always an employee, a former employee, a contractor or a vendor who sees it, and talks about it and gets approached to bring something out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time that items belonging to the museum have been stolen. In 2014, Andre Taray Franklin, a 46-year-old parolee, was sentenced to four years in prison<\/a> for stealing and reselling a 19th century gold jewelry box from the museum. He was also a suspect in a 2012 break-in at the museum in which gold nuggets and Gold Rush-era pistols were taken but was not charged in that incident.<\/p>\n \u201cLightning has struck twice in my career,\u201d said Fogarty, referencing the break-ins connected to Franklin and the recent heist.<\/p>\n \u201cHe [Franklin] was caught, identified and convicted … and we retrieved the most important and valuable works,\u201d she continued. \u201cSo I am going to believe deeply that these items are going to find their way back to the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that the break-in took place two weeks ago, there is a good chance that many of the items have been sold, Romero said. Cultural-artifact thieves typically try to offload their loot before word gets out that the items are stolen.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people are interested in fast cash, not the full appraisal value,\u201d he said. \u201cThey need to get rid of it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Romero anticipates detectives will be looking closely at platforms such as Craigslist and Ebay, as well as groups that collect antiques or historic items, as they attempt to locate the Oakland museum\u2019s stolen goods and identify those responsible. <\/p>\n Well-known stolen cultural items are difficult to resell due to the odds of running into undercover agents and buyers\u2019 reluctance to purchase an item that may later be seized by authorities, Romero said.<\/p>\n Targeting a high number of lesser-known artifacts may make it easier to resell the loot, he said. <\/p>\n Romero said this month\u2019s break-in represents one of the largest museum heists he\u2019s heard of in California in terms of the number of items taken. <\/p>\n Former famous museum heists include a 2012 raid on the California Mining & Minerals Museum in Mariposa where thieves took an estimated $2 million worth of gold and gems<\/a>, as well as a 1978 break-in at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco where four paintings, including a Rembrant<\/a>, were pilfered. <\/p>\n