Authorities Arrest 4 After ‘Follow-Home’ Robbery : Crime: Officers of a controversial unit trailed one suspect for three weeks. A Woodland Hills woman is the victim in the latest holdup.

Officers from a controversial undercover unit followed a suspect in a series of San Fernando Valley “follow-home” robberies for three weeks, arresting him and three alleged accomplices Tuesday after they robbed a Woodland Hills woman they followed from a supermarket, Los Angeles police reported.

Bernard Roberts, 24, of Granada Hills; Richard Talley, 22, of Pasadena and Derrick Mosley, 20, of Pacoima were being held at West County Jail on suspicion of robbery, Detective Gus Ruiz said. A fourth suspect, a 17-year-old Pacoima boy, was being held at Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

Ruiz said Roberts, who has been charged in six other follow-home robberies, had been tailed for three weeks by detectives of the Special Investigations Section, which specializes in following suspected criminals until they commit a major offense.

About 2:30 p.m., all four went into a Ralphs grocery store near Winnetka Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, police said. They picked out Catherine Rothenberg, 53, inside the store because of a $30,000 seven-carat diamond ring on her finger and followed her when she left, police said.

Police have several times in recent months warned women not to wear jewelry on such shopping trips, saying it attracts follow-home robbers.

The robbers, traveling in two cars, followed Rothenberg to her home in the 4700 block of Nomad Drive, where Roberts and Mosley accosted her in her garage, Ruiz said. They grabbed her around the neck and forced her to give up her purse and took her ring, he said.

Detectives moved in to stop the holdup, he said, arresting Mosley as he left the garage.

Rothenberg was not hurt.

Talley and the youth fled in the car and were arrested when they struck an unmarked police car at Winnetka Avenue and Wells Street, Ruiz said.

Roberts ran down the steep hillside and eluded police until about 5 p.m. when he was arrested with the help of police dogs and helicopters, Ruiz said. The ring was recovered in a bush where he hid, Ruiz said.

Police said they suspect Roberts may have been involved in 24 follow-home robberies from Burbank to Calabasas. He was arrested Feb. 25 on suspicion of robbery in four cases. He was charged in two other robberies on May 12, Ruiz said.

Roberts was free on bail at the time of his arrest Tuesday and had a preliminary hearing scheduled today in Van Nuys Municipal Court on one of the previous robbery charges, he said.

‘We’d received several other similar complaints” since he was released on bail, Ruiz said. “Since it was difficult to guess where the next robberies were going to occur, we had to ask special investigations to follow Mr. Roberts.

“It surprises me because of the brazenness of his activities. The arrest didn’t mean anything to him.”

SIS tactics have come under fire in the past.

A federal court jury on March 30 found Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and nine SIS officers liable for the killing of three robbers and the wounding of a fourth outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland two years ago. The plaintiffs had sought $10 million, maintaining that the excessive force violated the robbers’ civil rights.

SIS officers had followed four men, suspected in a string of restaurant robberies, until they broke into the closed McDonald’s and robbed the lone employee inside.

Ruiz stressed that in Tuesday’s robberies the SIS officers had used no force, just “good police work.” He said they tried to stop the robbery, but were unsure if Rothenberg was the intended victim until the robbery had begun.

Times staff writer Michael Connelly contributed to this report.