Jewel Theft Crackdown Pushes Crime South

An LAPD crackdown on organized gangs of robbers who prey on jewelry store couriers may have forced the thieves south to Orange County, where there have been nearly 100 increasingly violent attacks on jewelers in the last 12 months, officials say.

Three incidents this week in Orange County have reinforced fears that a special task force set up by Los Angeles police to deal with jewelry theft rings has moved the problem south.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that these thieves are moving out into other areas as a result of the heat they’re feeling in L.A.,” said John Kennedy, president of Jewelry Security Alliance, a national trade association. “It could very well account for an upsurge in robberies in Orange County. Things are fresh there.”

Since it formed seven months ago, the 12-member LAPD task force has arrested 51 members of organized jewelry theft rings. In the same seven months, jewelry robberies in Orange County have averaged 10 a month, mostly in the northern cities, police said. That’s double the number before the push in Los Angeles, and the majority remain unsolved.

The thieves, who police believe are connected to a crime syndicate made up of Colombians, are becoming better organized, better armed and more inclined to use violence, authorities said.

“They’re using just plain brute force out there,” Kennedy said. “Being a jewelry salesperson has become one of the most dangerous jobs in Southern California.”

At about 2 p.m. Thursday, six men surrounded a saleswoman as she drove into a jewelry store parking lot off Crown Valley Parkway in Mission Viejo. The woman accelerated in reverse, rammed into another car that had pulled behind to block her, and drove away as a bullet hit her one of her tires.

Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Garner said officers are concerned that the robbers are willing to fire.

“You usually hear about the crooks having a gun or brandishing a gun, but to actually fire it during one of these is rare,” he said. “It doesn’t look like they’re messing around with this stuff anymore.”

The day before in Westminster, three men carjacked a jewelry courier at gunpoint and escaped with a briefcase of diamonds valued at nearly $130,000. The victim had been moving the stones from Los Angeles to the business district in Little Saigon.

“They just took me over,” said the victim, who requested anonymity. “They shoved me around and yelled, and before I knew it, in a split minute, they were gone.”

For years, wholesale jewelry suppliers carted their wares from shop to shop, employing little to no security. The belief was they would be less conspicuous without guards in tow, police said.

But gangs of Colombian jewel thieves eventually began to target the traveling salespeople. Law enforcement officials said the groups netted about $20 million in jewelry robberies in the state last year.

Although such thefts have been reported in other states, they are not as prevalent as in Southern California. Los Angeles is the second-largest jewelry district in the country, industry officials said.

“It’s reached crisis proportions there,” said Kennedy, whose security association is based in New York, which has the largest.

Victims usually have trouble giving detailed descriptions of the robbers, who tend to dress similarly, police said. When a salesman was confronted by three men in Fullerton last week, he managed to lock his briefcase in the trunk and throw his keys away, which sparked an argument between him and the gunmen.

Even after one of the robbers chased down the keys, opened the trunk, took the diamond-filled case and left, the victim was able to provide only a sketchy description of the getaway car, said Fullerton Police Det. Mary Murphy.

“They’re usually so shaken, and have been swarmed by so many bad guys, that they can’t see straight,” she said.

Other police departments have begun asking the LAPD task force for help, Corella said. The team has developed a database of suspects with prior jewel theft arrests, including information about their cars, methods and descriptions.

“Hopefully, we can start tying some of this all together by exchanging information among departments, and get some results,” Corella said.