The Los Angeles Police Chief said this week that the number of reported burglaries in the city increased by 4% in 2024, with more than half of the locations targeted being homes. This contrasts with the spike in reported burglaries of commercial establishments and businesses last year.
“These incidents are happening quickly,” Chief Dominic Choi told the Police Commission on Tuesday, explaining that thieves are evolving their methods to reduce the time they spend on the scene.
“The entire house does not appear to have been ransacked,” he said.
“These high-value thieves know what they’re looking for and are in and out within minutes.”
The biggest increases occurred in areas patrolled by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Wilshire, Rampart and Hollywood precincts, with break-ins up slightly on Wednesday and Friday, according to data compiled from the Early 2024 Crime Report.
The trends reported by the chief could not be verified because the Los Angeles Police Department closed its public access to crime data in March while it reconfigured its systems to align with new national crime reporting standards set by the FBI.
The partial data also showed that most thefts occurred in the evenings.
“There are cases where residents are actually in their homes and we believe this is a more serious hot wandering case,” Choi said.
In one incident Monday in Valley Village, burglars surprised a homeowner and sprayed him with pepper spray, after which the owner shot and killed one of the suspected burglars, according to the department.
Nationwide, property crime, including theft, fell 15% in many other cities in the first quarter of 2024, the FBI reported.
Choi said thieves were intentionally defeating or disabling security systems and cameras by cutting electricity and sometimes using jamming devices to disrupt Wi-Fi signals.
“All a thief needs to do is walk up to the panel and turn off the power, and all your systems go down,” he said.
“Putting a lock on it helps deter that kind of behavior. We know that WiFi jammers are being used, so if the camera is connected to WiFi, it will be jammed and won’t record.”
Earlier this week, detectives announced the arrest of four men believed to be part of a ring of so-called “reflector vest” thieves who allegedly broke into more than 30 homes in Studio City, West Los Angeles and West Hollywood while posing as utility and construction workers.