‘Flash mob’ thieves check out US retail stores on Black Friday Reporter Reuters

Author Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Friday shoppers were not the only ones looking for sales the next day Thanksgiving. Thieves were also busy.

Police in Los Angeles and other cities across the country spent a long weekend patrol searching for suspects in the “flash mob” on Friday, part of a growing US crackdown on shoplifting gangs. . shelves and escape.

Officials have also used the word “smash-and-grab” to describe what is happening.

At least two such robberies were reported Saturday by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Local television station, KCAL-TV, broadcast six eagles west of the city only on Friday.

On one occasion, a group of eight men came into town Home Depot (NYSE 🙂 a mall in Lakewood, south of downtown Los Angeles, walked straight into the armory and confiscated several hammers, hammers and crows worth about $ 400 before fleeing, the sheriff’s office said.

According to LA KTTV television, the robbery of Home Depot on Friday night affected 20 suspects who boarded 10 cars and wore sloping masks before heading for the checkpoint.

“We tried to stop them,” store employee Luis Romo told KTTV. “We closed the front door, and they put their hammers up and anyone who could get in the way hurt them.”

The Los Angeles City News Service says four suspected robbers were arrested Saturday by Beverly Hills police.

In a similar incident on Friday afternoon, a group of 10 or more men entered a store in Fairfax state and began seizing unpaid goods, urging workers not to flee, according to LAPD.

Police are investigating possible links between the robbers and other robbers on Friday and early in the week, including two robberies on Wednesday, the LAPD said.

The proliferation of terrorists on sale prompted the LAPD to deploy its officers on a city-wide intelligence warning Friday afternoon.

A major robbery was also reported Friday in two Best Buy electronics stores in Minneapolis-St. Paul, one of those about 30 suspects, while the early morning robbery was being investigated in Chicago.

In one of the worst offenses that has taken place on the West Coast in recent days, San Francisco police in Walnut Creek are searching for about 80 suspected suspects who disrupted and demolished a store last Saturday.