Did you know the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) has a Residential Burglary/Robbery Task Force (RBRTF), which investigates the ever increasing residential burglary trends?
A unit out of Major Crimes Bureau (MCB), RBRTF works closely with station detectives on impacting this crime trend. The task force services all LASD stations as well as smaller law enforcement agencies throughout Los Angeles County. Since the task force was formed, RBRTF is responsible for over 600 felony burglary arrests. These felony arrests are primarily residential burglaries and burglaries associated with extremely high-dollar amounts.
As residential burglaries have become a trend, middle and upper middle class neighborhoods, near freeways, are often targeted. Although, working class neighborhoods, throughout Los Angeles County, are also victimized.
With the holidays fast approaching, and on any other given day, the LASD would like to remind the various communities we serve to remain vigilant and help us protect your homes and that of your neighbors, by following these burglary prevention tips:
- Homeowners should make an attempt to give the impression someone is home at all times, which would include leaving a car in driveway, leaving lights on in and around the home at night.
- Noise inside the house (leave TV or radio on) to give the impression someone is home.
- Commercial security services that have become popular, inexpensive and easy to use, including but not limited to video recording devices.
- Use pets such a dog for property protection and deterrence.
- Most importantly, making contact with neighbors and looking out for one another’s homes.
- We don’t want our residents to be paranoid; however, they should appropriately suspicious of unusual vehicles or persons slowly traversing through their neighborhood.
- We encourage residents to ALWAYS and IMMEDIATELY contact law enforcement when they believe they are seeing something suspicious in the neighborhood.
Law enforcement recognizes the value of social media, but information should not just be posted on social media without also sharing with such information with local law enforcement agencies.
The above information was provided to The Signal via a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department news release.
