Los Angeles police announced Tuesday a task force to buck a new trend they deemed follow-home robberies, in which suspects target people who are wearing flashy jewelry or driving expensive cars before accosting them.
“In this trend, detectives noted that the victims were being followed from such places as Melrose Avenue, the Jewelry District of Los Angeles, and high-end restaurants and nightclubs from Hollywood and Wilshire Divisions,” police said in a statement. Suspects wait to confront their tracked victims when they are in an isolated area or have returned home, police said.
The “Follow Home Task Force” will be comprised of 20 detectives from the department’s Robbery-Homicide Division and from other divisions, police said.
The task force’s objective is to identify suspects and their “associated crews,” police said.
On Tuesday, a homicide in the department’s Hollywood Division began as a follow-home robbery, officials said.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore spoke about the incident later on Tuesday.
“We’ve actually seen, what we believe this morning, is related to this, with this murder in Hollywood outside a restaurant,” Moore told reporters. “A practice of individuals that are copy-catting a technique of targeting the individuals with high-value jewelry, high-value cars, to follow them off or to confront them as they exit … high-end retailers and restaurants for the street robbery.”
Moore added a 23-year-old man died after he was shot while he tried to help a woman whom he was with after she was accosted by multiple suspects.
In a Nov. 12 statement, police said there have been more than 110 incidents labeled follow-home robberies in 2021. Investigators identified “at least six different LA street gangs” affiliated with the criminal technique, police said.
“It is our opinion that these crimes are all a trend, similar to the trend experienced a year or two ago with the “knock-knock” burglaries in which different crews/gangs participated in the same type of residential burglary,” police said.
A department spokesperson could not be immediately reached Wednesday to get updated figures on follow-home robberies, overall robberies and updates on Tuesday’s slaying in Hollywood.
NBC Los Angeles reported Tuesday’s homicide occurred on Sunset Boulevard outside the Bossa Nova Restaurant. The couple confronted by suspects arrived there in a Mercedes SUV, the news outlet reported.
Moore said of the robberies, NBC Los Angeles reported in a separate story, are more violent than in the recent past, and criminals are armed more often.
Robberies were up 3.2 percent this year compared with 2020, but they were down compared with 2019 in the LAPD’s jurisdiction, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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