A recent string of residential burglaries on the Palos Verdes Peninsula has prompted authorities in multiple agencies to collaborate in their search for suspects.
The Peninsula has seen an uptick in residential burglaries in the past few months, said Det. Joseph Vazquez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Lomita station.
“We’re working in conjunction with Palos Verdes Estates police,” Vazquez said. “What happens in their backyard affects us, and what happens to us impacts them.”
The Sheriff’s Lomita Station has jurisdiction over Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates, and the city of Rolling Hills, while Palos Verdes Estates has its own police department.
There have been at least 22 robberies in Palos Verdes Estates since Oct. 1, according to data from the PVE police department. Rancho Palos Verdes, which has more than three times as many residents as Palos Verdes Estates, has seen at least 33 in the same time period, data from the Sheriff’s department indicate.
Many of the burglaries have followed a similar modus operandi, involving multiple suspects entering a home by breaking rear windows or glass doors, according to the PVE police
department. They also tend to be clustered together, with multiple burglaries occurring in one area in quick succession, suggesting one crew striking various targets. For example, on Oct. 23, three midday burglaries were reported within three hours in a twelve-block triangle in Rancho Palos Verdes.
And on Nov. 9, five attempted burglaries occurred in Palos Verdes Estates in less than three hours, according to a release from the PVE police department. During the fifth burglary attempt, suspects broke a window then fled on discovering a resident in the home. The suspects fled in a light-colored four-door sedan.
The burglaries have mostly taken place in empty homes, without interaction with residents. But sometimes such encounters have spun out of control.
On Nov. 19, a home invasion robbery took place in the 3300 block of Palo Vista Drive in Rancho Palos Verdes. Five suspects kept two women, residents of the home, hostage for more than four hours, Vazquez said. None of the suspects had weapons, but the victims complied with their demands out of fear.
The circumstances of the incident suggest that the burglars had not intended to encounter the residents, Vazquez said.
“We think they went in to do a residential burglary, and stumbled up on the residents in the house,” he said. “And once they were in, they just went through with it. That’s our suspicion right now.”
The burglars were seeking cash from the home’s safe, but neither of the two residents knew the safe’s combination, Vazquez said. The suspects used tools found in the home to cut into the safe, and made off with a large amount of cash. Neither of the residents was injured.
Vazquez described the targeted home as “very large mansion,” and said it sits in a neighborhood of other residences exceeding 10,000 square feet. The large size of homes in the area likely made it difficult for neighbors to hear what was happening, he said.
The suspects included four men and one woman, all of whom wore hoodies concealing everything but their eyes from the two residents, Vazquez said. They exited through the front door, and fled by unknown means.
Most recently, a man returned home to the 2000 block of Via Visalia about 7:30 p.m. last Friday to find two masked men ransacking his home, said Sgt. Luke Hellinga of the PVE police department.
The suspects in that case, two men, may have been armed with a handgun, according to a release from the PVE police department. The suspects took cash from the resident’s property and fled in an unknown direction.
It is unclear how many of the burglaries have been committed by the same person or group. But police urged residents to be vigilant, and to share information with police and with each other.
“We definitely need to be on the lookout for each other,” Vazquez said. “There has been a surge in residential burglaries throughout the South Bay, and throughout Southern California as far as I can tell.”
Anyone with information about the burglaries is urged to contact the Lomita Sheriff’s station at (310) 539-1661, or the PVE police department at (310) 378-4211.
