Results tagged “theft”

There's been a lot of bicycle talk on LAist today and here's one more: the idea of bicycle sharing in Los Angeles has been mulled over about quite a bit and next week, a city panel will examine (.pdf) using a site near Olvera Street and Union Station for a variation that theme--bicycle rentals. From a motion introduced last month:

Advocacy via Google Maps is a lovely thing. Take your neighborhood, your city, etc., document what could be improved, where incidents are happening and let the data help drive more livable streets. Today, we become savvy to a newer website called Bikewise, which documents bicycle hazards (leaving room for suggestible improvements), crashes and thefts in the Los Angeles area. Caltech student Zane A. Selvans, who runs the site, began with Pasadena is hoping others will add information about their neighborhoods, too. Related: Super awesome community organizer Andrea Ambrose continues to update her LA Neighborhood Cleanup Project Google Map on neighborhood improvements in the Silver Lake/Echo Park area.

According to Lee Joseph, publicist for La Luz de Jesus art gallery in the back of Wacko on Sunset, two paintings were stolen from the gallery today. The works by Lauren Gardiner are worth $1750 total and were already sold to patrons.

On April 4th, it was halftime during an NCAA game so Gary Norris and two friends headed to the park across the street to shoot some hoops. He put his belongings, including an iPod to the side of the court while they played. At some point, two young men in their teens or early 20s walked up and took his iPod, which prompted Norris to jog after them to a nearby alley where one of the suspects turned around and shot him. "They shot him in cold blood," his roommate told the Long Beach Press Telegram. "They're animals. They do what they need to do to get their way." Norris moved to Long Beach less than a year ago to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering from USC. After the Houston native graduated, he became an engineer for Mercedes-Benz.

Hollywood resident and Metblogs writer David Markland got a hold of some apartment security footage showing an unidentified women entering the grounds and acting suspicious. Later, some residents reported that their mail was opened. Apparently, there has been a string of thefts in the neighborhood--one local heard a clank on their mailbox and saw this woman with her bicycle and fugly uggs when they stepped outside. Both incidents happened northwest of the Hollywood and Highland area.

Many small libraries use web resource LibraryThing to help sort their inventory, as do readers all over the world who want to keep track of their tomes. The site is now urging users to form FlashMobs to catalog complete library inventories. They explain that the event usually entails a gathering where "LibraryThing members descend on some small library with laptops and CueCat barcode scanners, catalog their books in LibraryThing, eat some pizza, talk some talk and leave them with a gleaming new LibraryThing catalog."

      

This weekend, some neighbors in Beverly Hills called in the cops and broke out the video camera to tell the tale of the thieves who helped themselves to items from their outdoor Christmas displays. Expressing dismay at the theft of things from $1000-elves, the Baby Jesus in his humble manger, and a wreath, the real 90210-ers were horrified that they would now have to chain down their lit-up snowmen and reindeer, and hoped that the public knew about their plight. LAist photographer Tom Andrews took a trip to the home of Peter and Shera Falk, whose pricey decorations were swiped. Is their holiday display less than it could--and should--be?

New Orleans earned the unfortunate top city ranking in crime, according to a Congressional Quarterly book based off 2007 statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Los Angeles came out at 158 on the list of 385 cities analyzed for murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and car thefts reported to the FBI. Combining Los Angeles with the rest of the county dragged the ranking down to 66 on the Metropolitan areas list. They also listed the "Greater LA" area, which ranked 99th.

As part of the unified command set up yesterday in Los Angeles to combat the Sayre Fire, the LAPD had 150-200 officers on hand to assist evacuees and to patrol the evacuated areas once the fire was out. In Porter Ranch, at least one homeowner reported looting, as he returned to his property to check on his doors, and found two women taking his belongings from his home.

David Markland of LA Metblogs posted this above video from a surveillance camera at the his apartment building in Hollywood. A man dressed up as a construction worker walks up to a bike, cuts the bolt of the lock and steals it shortly after 8:00 a.m. last week Tuesday.

The former owner of Images of East and West art gallery located at 12627 West Washington Boulevard in Venice. After fleeing Los Angeles in 2002 with art property from more than 45 artists and customers, Kajorn Lekhakul Howard was arrested during a routine traffic stop in Seagoville, Texas. "Art theft detectives recovered over 290 stolen artworks from storage locations in the Dallas area," LAPD statement said. "The detectives transported the art back to Los Angeles and are asking for victims to come forth and claim their property." In June, Howard pled guilty and was sentenced to the jail with terms of the sentence including probation and restitution.

Copper thefts in Los Angeles could no longer be the only crime of desperation surging the city. With gas prices increasing everyday (the latest: nearly $4.11/gallon of regular unleaded), so are sales of lockable gas caps at auto stores.

Post-holiday shopping took a gruesome turn in the parking lot of the Target store in Gardena last month when three women robbed another woman of her earrings and slashed her face.

Thefts of catalytic converters, according to one cop in El Segundo, have reached "epidemic" levels, the LA Times reports. Helpfully, the paper also includes instructions on how to go about stealing your own:

California Highway Patrol Officer Joshua Blackburn, charged with stealing $1 million worth of cocaine being held as evidence, has had his arraignment postponed at his lawyer's request until early next month, KTLA is reporting.