(Akiit.com) It wasn’t the first or even second time I stood in front of a 7-11 store or other small retail store in South L.A. decrying the latest smash and grab attack on the store. It was getting to be an annoying task, but one I felt necessary to do. Two things I felt were missed in the media coverage and public and law enforcement reaction to the snatch grab vandalism.
The first was that the businesses that the mob targeted for looting were mostly in South and Central Los Angeles and other areas nearby. The continued attacks could have only one possible result. The businesses would shutter and flee. Their legitimate complaint was that the cost of business and the risk was just too great to keep their doors open. Their flight would be the community’s loss. These stores provide low-cost food, and basic convenience and necessity items for consumers. They also provide employment for many in the community.
The second thing missed about the snatch and grab looting sprees was that tougher laws, tougher sentencing, and tougher police action has done little to stop the mob store thefts. The legislature recently passed a new round of stringent laws toughening the penalties for snatch and grab robberies. Governor Newsom promptly signed the measure into law.
Yet, within days after the signing a couple of more 7-11s were hit.
The LAPD publicly pleaded for the help in identifying the culprits. At the same police officials announced that they had a team of detectives working on targeting the looters and making arrests. Again, within hours another 7-11 was hit. Tough penalties and tough policing are important; however, they obviously are not enough to deter the crime sprees.
One problem is that these are young people, well organized, drawn to the mob by the cheap thrill, and the ability to mostly get away with a crime. The organizers put the word out who to hit, complete with time and place, through social media or word of mouth. The antidote is for law enforcement teams tasked with combating the snatch and grab thefts to be just as proactive in the use and monitoring of social media. To be blunt, they must beat the mob to the targeted location. It does no good to be there after the store is hit. The looters as police in their frustration continually find by then are long gone.
The mob thieves are mostly young, very mobile, even ride bikes. It’s thrill seeking for many of them at its most perverse extreme. The antidote. There must be a heightened effort by parent, care givers, educators, business and religious leaders, and youth violence prevention groups, to intensify their efforts at finding job training, skills, counseling, recreation and intervention programs to stir at risk or just plain bored, and aimless young persons away from mob crime, and the perverse fascination with it.
Police officials in pleading for community help in identifying mob looters recognize that there will be little chance of success in combating the snatch and grab looting without community involvement. That’s going to take more than just listing a we tip or hotline number and hope that someone will call in a name. The antidote. It’s going to take organized community watches at or near the stores to instantly report any build-up or gathering or convergence of a number of young persons at or near a store in their neighborhood. The key is instant reporting before not after the moob attacks.
There also must be a more concerted effort to ask and answer the question: Who are the individuals who gather gleefully at a store for the rampage? There has been no detailed profile of the typical store looter or their motive for participating. From my observation, they are mostly young, comprised of all ethnicities and even genders, and treat the store attack as part thrill, part happening, part sense of momentary empowerment, and almost certainly part defiance of authority. LAPD, the L.A. County Sheriffs, and L.A. city officials should make the construction of a specific profile of these individuals a [priority.
Finally, in the press briefing I did in front of a local 7-11 in South L.A. following another 7-11 mob rampage I publicly called for the creation and deployment of a specially trained task force of the LAPD, the CHP, and the L.A. County sheriff’s officers to provide an instant response to a flash mob store attack. They would employ a combination of intelligence information to quickly arrive at and then surround the scene. Then quickly follow with targeted arrests. This type of response and action sends the strong message that law enforcement had a workable tactic to combat a mob looting with the proviso that it could get ahead of the mob.
A swift, tough, proactive, community based early warning crackdown is the best antidote to combating the mobbing of the stores in our community. Anything less virtually ensures more boarded up stores in South and Central L.A. The losers are the community.
Columnist; Earl Ofari Hutchinson
One can visit this brother online over at; TheHutchinson Report.