California- As Crime Explodes, Panic Rooms Become Hottest Trend

 

Just a few days ago, smash-and-grab suspects targeted a Beverly Hills jewelry store in broad daylight with sledgehammers, stealing items worth up to $5 million.

“I told my employee, ‘Get on the floor,'” Peter Sedghi, owner of the jewelry store, told the New York Post of the looting that unfolded Tuesday. “As soon as I heard what I thought were gunshots finally stop, I grabbed my gun. First, I made sure my employees were OK. I then went outside, but they were already gone.”

At least five suspects wearing face masks used sledgehammers to break the glass of Luxury Jewels of Beverly Hills at about 2 p.m. on Tuesday, according to police. Sedghi said it took the suspects eight or 10 swings of the sledgehammers to break the thick glass.

He estimates the suspects stole between $3 and $5 million, and “knew” which high-end items to take.

“We sell high-end jewelry and watches so they took big diamonds, big necklaces, Rolexes, Patek Philippe … they knew exactly what to take,” Sedghi told the New York Post. “Thank God, no one was hurt.”

Given the surge in crime, which includes the slaying of a luxury furniture store employee in another area of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles area residents are beginning to enhance their personal security.

Hence, panic rooms have become the latest fashionable trend.

Orders for armored safe rooms in luxury LA homes is skyrocketing due to rising crime rates and a number of high-profile celebrity robberies.

One company told The Hollywood Reporter that demand has increased more than 1,000 percent over the past three months for the pricy home additions, which can cost $1 million or more.

Though crime has risen in all areas, it’s a spate of burglaries and robberies targeting wealthy neighborhoods that has residents concerned.

In February an intruder reportedly broke into Kat Von D’s $15 million Hancock Park residence while she and her son were asleep.

Just a month earlier, actress Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli said their LA-area house was broken into – while in December TikTok personality Bryce Hall shared a clip of him confronting an intruder who entered his West Hollywood, California, residence.

It turns out that it isn’t just the locals committing crime in this state. California has now become a favorite destination of crime tourists.

Gangs of South American ‘crime tourists’ are being blamed for at least two home burglaries in California this week – as well as similar raids across the country in recent months, including sprees in Indiana, Texas, New York, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The criminals target wealthy neighborhoods in places with lax criminal justice laws to conduct their home burglaries, before returning home with the loot while out on bail, according to police.

The San Francisco suburb of Hillsborough is just the latest community plagued by similar schemes, with previous groups hailing from Chile, Colombia and elsewhere in South America.

Hillsborough Police said it suspected the ‘crime tourists’ were behind at least two brazen burglaries that took place recently in the affluent Bay Area community, where the average home price sits around $5.4 million, according to Zillow.

It’s not likely to get better anytime soon. That is why Los Angeles police are warning people that wearing expensive jewelry in public could make them a target for thieves.

The police department’s suggestion Tuesday came as robbers smashed the front window of a Beverly Hills jewelry store in broad daylight and fled with millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise.

Passersby recorded video of Tuesday’s robbery, the latest in a long string of brazen smash-and-grab thefts and robberies of people wearing expensive watches or jewelry in the Los Angeles region.

In the city of LA, robberies are up 18% year-to-date compared to 2021. Robberies with a firearm are up 44% in the same time period across the city.

“Over the last year there has been a marked increase of armed robberies involving victims wearing expensive jewelry while in public. If it is visible, it can be a target,” an LAPD statement said.

Welcome to life in California during the new era of progressive-approved raiding and pillaging.

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