Jewelers in 5 States Alerted on Holdup Ring

Jewelry retailers in at least five states have been put on alert that a ring of Los Angeles-based youth gang members, possibly directed by adult professional thieves, have robbed as many as 60 jewelry stores on the West Coast in the last year, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

The latest holdup was the armed robbery of a Reseda jewelry store Tuesday by three youths believed connected to the ring.

“It’s still pretty early, but we’ve got 50 to 60 jewelry store robberies that look an awful lot alike,” Detective Robert Johansen said. “This leads us to believe that there’s a ring out there that seems to work out of Los Angeles and could have as many as 150 people working for it.”

Robberies that have “striking similarities” have occurred in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and California, Johansen said. This has prompted authorities in the affected states to alert jewelry merchants to the threat of similar crimes, he said.

In all the cases, the robbers have been young men or teen-agers who travel in groups of three or four, he said.

Typically, a gunman enters the store first, followed by another youth, who smashes jewelry cases with a sledgehammer or large club, the detective said.

“Bag men” then sweep the valuables into cloth or paper sacks, before the robbers flee in cars that are usually stolen, he said.

On Tuesday afternoon, three boys ranging in age from 12 to 15 robbed Talbert Jewelers in Reseda, shooting store credit manager Ron Flury in the arm when he tried to escape out a rear door, police said. Flury was not seriously hurt.

The young robbers escaped with an undetermined amount of valuables, police said.

Officers, using a license number obtained at the robbery scene, traced the getaway car to a Woodland Hills car rental agency. The vehicle was rented Oct. 22 by someone using a stolen credit card, Johansen said.

Johansen said that because the robbers in Tuesday’s holdup were so young and appeared to have their operation “mapped out so well,” investigators believe that they were following a strategy worked out by someone else.

“Young kids just aren’t that sophisticated by themselves,” he said. “There’s a ringleader out there somewhere.

“We don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with, but it could very possibly be that these jobs are carried out by kids as some sort of initiation rite for a larger gang,” the detective said. “That sort of thing is not all that out of the ordinary.”

Several suspects in various robberies linked to the ring are in custody in Arizona, Washington state, Bakersfield and Los Angeles, Johansen said.

Earlier this month, five suspects were arrested by Kings County sheriff’s deputies in the community of Metler. They were seized after a jewelry robbery at a Bakersfield Best Products department store in nearby Kern County. A sixth suspect eluded a police manhunt.

“Well in excess of $100,000” in merchandise was stolen in the robbery, Bakersfield Police Detective F. E. Bertrand said.

The suspects in the Bakersfield robbery, Johansen said, had been seen “casing” the jewelry store section of a Best store in Northridge a day before they were caught in Metler, he said.

All the suspects in the Bakersfield robbery were from Los Angeles, as was the case last month in Bellevue, Wash., when four youths robbed a jewelry store of about $300,000 worth of valuables, Johansen said. One youth was arrested in the holdup.

Bertrand, who commands the Bakersfield robbery detail, said, “A great deal of intelligence work has been carried out” throughout the western states and information is being funneled to Los Angeles police.