[imagesource: CNN]

It turns out, smash-and-grabs are not exclusive to South Africa.

Now, there’s a “wave” of them happening across major US cities, CNN reports, with big groups of brazen thieves taking all the expensive goods that they can from upscale stores.

There’s been a particularly bad rash of robberies over the last few weeks, with a thousand-dollar robbery happening in Los Angeles on Monday, plus a jewellery store break-in in a nearby area over the weekend.

Then, there were around 80 suspects who ransacked a department store on Saturday night, only three of whom were arrested.

Friday night also saw a spate of smash-and-grabs, while later last week, 14 robbers targetted a Louis Vuitton store in suburban Chicago, managing to steal $100 000 (R1,5 million) worth of merchandise:

Here’s footage of the jewellery store break-in that happened in the San Francisco Bay Area Sunday evening:

A large mob robbed Sam’s Jewelers inside Southland Mall, Hayward. PD said they received calls at 5:25 pm today. Witnesses told me 1st wave of robbers involved about 30-40 kids. A 2nd wave with fewer robbers returned to clean it up. Story tonight 11 on Ch 5 ⁦@KPIXtv⁩ pic.twitter.com/1kXj5N4UT2

— Da Lin (@DaKPIX) November 22, 2021

Not that we don’t know what this all looks like already…

San Francisco has seen a massive surge in thefts and overall crime according to police statistics, “with larceny and theft incidents up almost 88% from a year earlier and overall crime up almost 52%”.

Thieves wearing masks are hard to identify, and so they often walk away scot-free.

One might immediately jump to blaming the desperation and restlessness felt as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that is apparently, not at all the cause:

“This has nothing to do with the pandemic,” said Pete Eliadis, a former law enforcement official and founder of security company Intelligence Consulting Partners. “The pandemic is overused at this point.”

One cause of the rise in these crimes, in a nutshell, is a lack of resources for law enforcement:

…which means theft cases sometimes are put on the back burner, [Eliadis] said.

And, he added, the “defund the police” movement has sapped some officers’ morale.

“There’s no political will to prosecute the people in this climate. Why should a police officer waste time getting into an altercation when the person is not going to jail because it’s overcrowded and a prosecutor is not going to prosecute that case because it’s not high on the priority list?” Eliadis said.

The problem is that low-level offences have basically been decriminalised in some states in order to alleviate prison overcrowding, but that gives criminals a lot of space to take advantage of the system:

“For the low-level criminal, the benefit far outweighs the risk, since the threshold for a misdemeanour offence is $950 (R15 000)– meaning that a person can steal up to that amount and only be charged with a misdemeanour,” [Lynda Buel, president of Ohio-based security consulting firm SRMC] said.

Organised crime rings are often behind these types of “smash-and-grab” operations and pay low-level criminals to steal for them, she said.

The reason these smash-and-grabs seem to coincide with the holiday season is simply that stores stock up, so there’s more to steal and more payback.

But it is not just exclusive to the holiday season either…

[source:cnn]