by Liz Mullen
HBPD gets a new pair of eyes
The Hermosa Beach Police Department is using new technology to more efficiently distribute resources, and solve crimes, as well as to determine whether a crime occurred, HBPD Chief Paul LeBaron told the City Council on Tuesday.
The city recently received the first year’s installment of a four-year grant from State Homeland Security, which allowed it to install new cameras in the downtown area, LeBaron told the city council.
“The cameras were installed on June 13, a little over a month ago, and they’ve shown immediate results,” LeBaron said.
On the night of June 16, HBPD were called to Pier Plaza about a fight. They found a man, unconscious on the ground.
“Witnesses told officers he had been attacked by three people and those suspects ran away prior to the officers’ arrival,” LeBaron said. “On its face, this seemed like a common thing we respond to in Pier Plaza. But detectives were able to review the camera footage that was provided — what we like to call a 360 degree perspective of what happened that night.”
Pier Plaza had cameras before which may have given HBPD a partial perspective of what happened, LeBaron said. But the new cameras provided more detailed and longer views of the participants in the fight, as well as showing the license plate of the combatants’ car. HBPD officers were able to track down the other participants in the incident because of that license plate number.
“Although the case is still being investigated, I can tell you that our investigation shows there was way more to this case than what the initial witness statements had indicated,” LeBaron told the city council.
“Thanks to the camera systems and some good detective work. we were able to locate the other people that were involved,” LeBaron said. “We were able to gather accurate accounts of what really happened that night. We were able to put that entire package of information together with accuracy to make sure we are more fair and more impartial as a police department in providing the facts necessary to seek prosecution.”
Chief LeBaron provided details of another event where the new cameras were used, which enabled HBPD to more appropriately deploy officers than it might have been able to do without the new cameras.
“On a busy night our officers can be stretched very thin when they are responding to calls,” LeBaron said. “This was the case on July 22. We responded to a traffic collision on Longfellow and Highland. All of our on-duty officers had to respond.”
While the officers were there, they received a call about a fight happening on Pier Plaza. Using the new camera system “officers determined there was no fight… and they did not need to leave the scene of the accident and go down there,” LeBaron said.
Trail of blood update
A third example of the new camera system’s usefulness, the Chief said, involved the man who left a trail of blood that stretched 11 blocks along the Strand from Pier Plaza to the city border of Redondo Beach.
The blood trail alarmed many residents, who called HBPD on July 14. As previously reported, the man broke the window glass of a business and then, bleeding profusely, headed south on the Strand.
“It was originally dispatched to us as a burglary that had just taken place to a Pier Plaza business,” LeBaron said. “When officers arrived, they found a broken window and a large amount of blood on the ground with a trail that was leading southbound on the Strand,” he said.
There were no witnesses who could tell police what happened.
“Our officers were able to immediately review the cameras in that area and they determined that the injury from the broken glass was self-inflicted and the actions that led to that were not criminal in nature,” LeBaron said.
Shortly after getting the potential burglary dispatch, HBPD was called to help the Redondo Beach fire department, which was treating a man who was critically injured, bleeding from his arm.
Had it not been for the cameras, police may have treated the situation as a major crime, LeBaron said.
“We would have considered this, possibly, even a homicide, depending on the victim’s status and what was happening to him,” LeBaron said. “We would have cleared the entire area… and the city would have been left without regular police coverage for the span of that investigation.”
LeBaron has been a strong advocate for using technology to solve crimes. The city received another federal grant earlier this year to create a real time crime center.
MB construction sites, El Porto car hit
Manhattan Beach Police Department detectives are investigating two burglaries of construction sites in the city that occurred over the weekend of July 12 through July 15.
Sometime over that weekend thieves broke into a construction site on the 1700 block of Manhattan Beach Boulevard. When workers returned on Monday, July 15, they found a large hole cut out of the chain link fence protecting the site and a toolbox missing.
Also that weekend, thieves were able to make entry into a construction site in the parking lot of Northrop Grumman on 1700 Rosecrans Avenue. The work crew had secured a storage chest inside a fence surrounding the site.
But when those workers returned on Monday July 15, they found the storage chest had been broken into and tools were missing.
MBPD officers arrested two suspects for vehicle burglary using the victim’s “Find My Iphone” feature earlier this month.
On July 11, a woman parked her car at 13th Street and Manhattan Avenue. When she returned she found the passenger window was shattered and a backpack that had been left on the passenger seat stolen.
There was another vehicle burglary in the El Porto parking lot on July 11. The owner of the vehicle locked it, but hid the keys on the racks on the roof of the car.
When the victim returned to his car he saw that he had notifications of fraudulent activity on his credit cards. The victim realized that someone found his car keys, used them to enter his car and steal several credit cards from his wallet.
MBPD is warning residents, again, about leaving their keys hidden on or around their cars when they go to the beach. Thieves target cars parked near the beach because they know people often leave wallets and purses with their vehicles.
MBPD officers used “Find My iPhone” to locate the backpack and two suspects. The property was returned to the victim and the suspects were arrested. ER
