By telemundo52
Both well-known and smaller family restaurants are targeted by gangs of thieves.
Four masked thieves pried open the front locked door of the Jar Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard at 3:32 am one Friday morning.
They quickly entered the restaurant and found the safe. When they could not open the safe with the crowbars they used, they stole the safe with the $2,000 in it.
In the next few hours, four more nearby restaurants had been robbed.
They just came in and destroyed your cabinet. The people who work at Jar have no regard for you, for your hard work, said Suzanne Tracht. She is one of America’s leading restaurateurs and was once on “Top Chef.”
It’s frightening, it needs to stop immediately.
Restaurants in Los Angeles are being targeted by gangs of thieves, which puts employees and customers at risk. These figures indicate that restaurant thefts are on the rise compared with previous years.
Home State Kitchen, Sherman Oaks was robbed seven times by burglars since December last year. They broke the glass door and took the safe.
Five restaurants, including Marmalade Cafe, on Ventura Boulevard in Ventura, say that they were all attacked just one evening last April.
Selywn Yusslowitz, owner of Marmalade said that the thieves had cut off all wires on our surveillance system to ensure no footage was recorded.
Yosslowitz is the owner of seven Marmalade Cafes, and this year three have been burglarized.
Yosslowitz said to sister station NBC4 that “there is definitely a deterioration in law and order”
The NBC4 I-Team analyzed LAPD crime statistics and discovered that the number of restaurant robberies in Los Angeles increased by 103% between 2019 and 2023.
The thieves targeted Fu’s Palace, a small restaurant on Pico Boulevard where they stole $5,000 last month.
It’s expensive for a restaurant of our size. Owner Margaret Fu said, “We have been at the same place for 28 years. This has never happened.”
Criminals usually attack restaurants at night. But on two separate occasions, the legendary Casa Vega restaurant in Sherman Oaks was attacked during the day. This is despite the fact that the Sherman Oaks-based establishment has been targeted 10 times by criminals in the past three years.
Christy Vega, the owner of Christy Vega Automotive Services says that two incidents were caused by thieves who broke into cars and stole items from customers while they ate a meal a few meters away.
“It was at 7 p.m., and our valets were running after [the thieves],” Vega said to the I-Team.
Vega pays $100k a year for an armed guard to be posted outside of his restaurant, during normal business hours.
Tracht, the owner of the Jar Restaurant, has armed her staff with pepper spray in the event that they see anyone suspicious exiting the restaurant.
“Vega says that the city pretends this does not happen and is looking away.”
Restaurant owners such as Vega would like LAPD to take more steps to protect their businesses. Perhaps they should form a taskforce to fight restaurant crimes, similar to the one that was formed to tackle the recent retail thefts.
Some LAPD officers wonder whether the gangs that attack restaurants are also the ones who target retail stores.
The LAPD commander Gisselle Espinosa of San Fernando Valley Station said that the brazenness in which the criminals are violating the law is similar.
Espinoza, NBC4’s Espinoza reported that despite the fact there are no task forces dedicated to tackling the increase in restaurant robberies yet, police officers in the entire city share information on these robberies.
She says that the Los Angeles Police Department is in need of more officers for these crimes.
Espinoza stated, “That would increase our presence…it would increase the number of hours we could spend to ensure that we were doing our jobs the right way.”
The prosecutor must also be strict with these criminals when they are caught by the Los Angeles Police Department.
When they (the suspects) go through the legal process, are charged and sentenced I believe people should serve their minimal sentence. I don’t believe we are seeing this,” Espinoza said to the I-Team.
Restaurant owners are in agreement that criminals who attack businesses such as restaurants and retail shops need to face more punishment.
Tracht, Jar’s owner, said that even if someone is caught they may not go to prison or be released the following day.
Many establishments, including Home State in Sherman Oaks and Casa Vega, no longer accept cash payments from their customers.
It makes us less of a target. Vega said to the I-Team that this was the main reason for going cashless.
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