‘Flash mob’ thieves target U.S. retail stores on Black Friday By Reuters

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Black Friday customers weren’t the one ones out trying to find bargains on the day after Thanksgiving. Thieves have been busy as nicely.

Police in Los Angeles and cities elsewhere throughout the nation spent a lot of their vacation weekend patrols searching for suspects in a spate of “flash mob” robberies on Friday, a part of a surging U.S. crime development through which teams of thieves swarm a retailer, ransack the cabinets and flee.

Authorities even have used the time period “smash-and-grab” to explain the development.

A minimum of two such robberies have been reported on Saturday by the Los Angeles Police Division (LAPD) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division. An area tv station, KCAL-TV, counted a complete of six smash-and-grab heists on the town’s west aspect alone on Friday.

In a single incident, a bunch of eight males entered a Dwelling Depot (NYSE:) outlet at a shopping center in Lakewood, south of downtown Los Angeles, walked on to the instrument aisle and snatched a bunch of hammers, sledgehammers and crowbars valued at about $400 earlier than making their getaway, the sheriff’s workplace stated.

In line with L.A. tv station KTTV, the Dwelling Depot theft on Friday night time concerned as much as 20 suspects who pulled as much as the shop in as many as 10 automobiles and donned ski masks earlier than raiding the instrument aisle.

“We tried to cease them,” retailer worker Luis Romo advised KTTV. “We closed the entrance entrance, and so they put their sledgehammers up and whoever acquired in the best way, they have been going to harm them.”

The Los Angeles Metropolis Information Service stated 4 suspects in that theft have been arrested on Saturday by Beverly Hills police.

In the same incident Friday afternoon, a bunch of 10 males or extra invaded a retailer within the metropolis’s Fairfax district and began grabbing merchandise with out paying for it, pushing staff out of the best way earlier than fleeing the scene, based on LAPD.

Police are investigating doable ties between that incident and a flurry of different robberies and retail thefts on Friday and earlier within the week, together with two smash-and-grabs reported on Wednesday, an LAPD spokesperson stated.

The rash of retail crime prompted the LAPD to position its officers on a citywide tactical alert on Friday afternoon.

Mass robberies additionally have been reported on Friday at two Finest Purchase electronics shops within the Minneapolis-St. Paul space, one in all them involving as many as 30 suspects, whereas a spree of pre-dawn retail burglaries have been below investigation in Chicago.

In one of many greatest flash-mob robberies reported on the West Coast in current days, police within the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek have been searching for about 80 suspects who swarmed and ransacked a division retailer final Saturday.