Outwitting the Safe Burglar

The safe burglar is quick, quiet and thoroughly professional. No neighbors spot his car as he pulls behind the Chinese restaurant after closing. No one notices him climb atop the roof, chop a hole and slip to a hallway. No alarms are tripped as he kicks open the office door, breaks into the safe and grabs $2,500.

On a recent afternoon, after the restaurant owners discover the break-in, LAPD Det. Jim Becker arrives and studies the crime scene. It appears, at first glance, that Becker has little to go on. There are no fingerprints, no witnesses and no apparent leads. But as Becker walks around the dim restaurant, dodging customers lining up at the buffet and deliverymen dropping off supplies, he is surprisingly optimistic.

“The way this guy did the job . . . ,” Becker says smiling, “well, it’s just like he wrote his name.”

Becker and his partner--who is off this morning--are Los Angeles Police Department detectives who run the safe detail, one of only a handful of units in the country that track safe burglars full time.

Safe manufacturers and safe burglars have been engaged in a ceaseless minuet for more than a century. Every time the burglars figured out how to break into a safe, the manufacturers devised more complicated tumblers, or higher quality steel, or more impenetrable hinges. Then burglars conceived of another innovative technique, and the cycle would begin anew.

Because safe specialists were among the most sophisticated criminals, the LAPD decided during the 1940s that it needed a separate detail and trained detectives to track them.

At the Chinese restaurant, Becker’s training and experience pay off. While the uninitiated observer sees a perfect crime, Becker sees a concatenation of leads that, in his mind, conclusively connects the crime to one man: a 51-year-old burglar, a three-time loser who recently was released from state prison after serving yet another sentence for breaking into safes.

This burglar’s routine never varies. He always enters through the roof. He always cuts the wires to the alarm systems. He always punches a U-shaped hole in the back of the safe with a hatchet and a sledgehammer. He always targets Asian businesses. He always pulls his jobs on Sunday nights.

But without a fingerprint or a witness, Becker can’t tie the burglar to the crime. So he will try to track him down, put him under surveillance--on a Sunday night, of course--and hope to catch him in the act.

Distinguishing Techniques

Becker carries the flimsy, lightweight safe from the restaurant office to the parking lot to study it in the light. He points to the jagged opening in the back, a textbook example of a “rip job,” the most common method used by professionals today. The burglar chopped open the safe wall, cut through the fire insulation, ripped back the metal sheeting and took the cash.

Many of the rip jobs that Becker investigates are fire safe burglaries. Fire safes cost less than $500 and are designed to store documents, not cash, and to withstand flames and heat, not burglars.

“On this case, our guy probably got into this safe in less than 10 minutes,” Becker says, tapping the thin metal walls. “If business owners would pay an extra $500 and buy a better quality safe, these guys wouldn’t be able to get into them with a hatchet and chisel.”

Becker knows an amateur is at work if he sees a “pry job,” an attempt to jam a pry bar into a cheap safe door. Pry jobs usually are the result of serendipity, not criminal planning. Sometimes burglars stumble upon safes but have neither patience nor technique. They rely on brute force and often give up quickly.

“The rip jobs are different. . . . A job like this,” Becker says, rapping his knuckles on the safe, “took some expertise. Every safe guy attacks a safe in exactly the same way, using exactly the same tools. It’s almost like a fingerprint.”

Some professionals case their targets and only go after businesses that keep cash in low-tech fire safes. More ambitious burglars constantly upgrade their tools and seek bigger challenges.

When burglars started using acetylene torches to cut hinges or bore holes, manufacturers began building torch-resistant safes. So a few years ago, burglars who specialized in “burn jobs” graduated to a high-tech torch, developed in the construction industry, with a hotter and more concentrated flame that can rip through a thick safe wall in seven seconds. These torches were used on safes in 10 Southern California supermarkets during the past year.

Some safes, however, are so difficult to crack that unless Becker sees signs of a professional at work, he often suspects an inside job. He has investigated a number of cases in which employees with combinations access safes, steal the contents and then try to make the thefts look like crude break-ins.

Earlier this year, Becker investigated a safe burglary at a North Hollywood theater where about $5,000 in cash and $10,000 in theater passes had been stolen. He noticed that the wires to the electronic safe had been cut. But they had been cut, he determined, after the burglar had opened the safe.

After questioning employees, Becker suspected the assistant manager, who recently had been demoted to projectionist. Bluffing, he told the man his prints were on the safe. (Detectives are allowed by law, in many cases, to fabricate information when questioning suspects.) The projectionist confessed.

Burglar’s Craft Is Constantly Refined

Since the LAPD’s safe detail was formed more than 50 years ago, the safe burglar and his craft have changed dramatically.

The safecracker who sands his fingertips for extra sensitivity and plants his ear on the dial so he can hear the click of the tumblers is a hackneyed Hollywood character. But safecracking--called manipulation by the pros--is an outmoded technique eschewed by any self-respecting burglar, Becker said.

“The locking mechanisms are simply too good today for a manipulator,” he said. “And the tools are too good today. Why would some guy spend two hours trying to pick a lock when he can defeat many safes in 15 minutes using a high-powered drill?”

Even the late Willie Sutton, the Picasso of safecrackers, gave it up in the 1920s, according to his autobiography. He soon progressed to “punching” the safes by driving a pry bar through the dial, to drilling quarter-inch holes into the tumbler boxes.

“I knew we were fighting a losing battle, though,” wrote Sutton, who specialized in bank safes. “The safe companies were beginning to use hardened steel, and I could see where we were going to come to a time when . . . [my tools] weren’t going to [work] if we wanted to stay in the big time.”

Although their craft has changed over the decades, the safe burglars have remained at the apex of their profession, the aristocrats of the criminal hierarchy. Most have disdained firearms, enjoyed their mano a mano struggles with safe manufacturers and constantly refined their expertise.

“The safe burglar was always looked up to by other thieves,” said Ed Willis, who headed the LAPD’s safe detail for a decade before his retirement in 1984. “Anybody can grab a gun and hold someone up. But opening a well-built safe takes great skill.”

During the past few decades, however, their numbers have been decreasing, Willis said. Some have become discouraged by the new alarm systems and sophisticated locking devices. Others were sidetracked by the quick money to be made dealing drugs.

Although Sutton’s techniques now are antiquated, his most famous quip endures. He was once asked why he continued to rip off banks.

“Because,” he replied, “that’s where the money is.”

Sophisticated ATM Burglaries

Today, most safe burglars are intimidated by the electronic security systems at banks and the complex vaults. As a result, they have targeted automated teller machines.

“At first, ATMs were in bank lobbies to draw people from the teller lines,” said Barry Schreiber, a professor of criminal justice at St. Cloud State University and editor of the ATM Crime and Security Newsletter.

“The machines were protected by the four walls of the bank,” he said. “Then they moved to a drive-up lane. Now they’re outside the banks so they’re much easier to attack.”

Last year, more than 300 ATMs across the country were burglarized, more than triple the number in the early 1990s, Schreiber said. The most sophisticated ATM burglars, he said, are crews from Albania and the former Yugoslavia. The crews are suspected of committing hundreds of safe burglaries across the country since the early 1990s, according to federal law enforcement authorities.

The burglars, who use blowtorches and specialized saws, are extremely well-organized. They disable alarm systems and cut telephone lines, and their lookouts often carry police scanners and walkie-talkies.

Based on the East Coast, they have hit about a half-dozen businesses in Southern California in the past few years, Becker said. Their trademark: They always leave their tools at the scene. Since most return home after they pull jobs in Southern California, they will not risk going to the airport with their metal tools.

“There was a real concern for awhile about them continuing to hit Southern California businesses,” Becker said. “We’ve had a few arrests, though, and they’ve stayed away from this area during the past year. But maybe they’re just waiting for the heat to die down, before they come back at us again.”

Becker and his partner investigate about 50 ATM and safe burglaries a year and solve about half of them. During his 26 years with the department, Becker has been a patrol officer, a patrol sergeant and a detective assigned to narcotics and a number of burglary details. He feels he has found a home with the safe detail and has no plans to move on. The department sent him to weeklong locksmith schools in Oakland and Kentucky, and he now is a certified safe lock technician.

In the aftermath of a burglary, Becker, 51, who has run the safe detail for about four years, moves about the crime scene unobtrusively. He questions the victims in a low-key, soft-spoken manner and studies the battered safes like an archeologist examining a pre-Columbian pottery shard.

Because Becker is one of the few safe experts on the West Coast, he collects data on all safe burglaries in the state, and other agencies often consult him. LAPD narcotics cops also frequently call upon him when they discover a locked safe during a warrant search. He has the expertise--and the high-powered drills and carbon tipped bits--to break into almost any class of safe.

Suspect Arrested in Alhambra

After the restaurant burglary, Becker began searching for his suspect. But he was unable to discover where the man had been living since his release from prison two years ago.

Then, a few weeks ago, a street source of Becker’s came through. The suspect, he said, had moved to a condominium complex in Woodland Hills.

On a Sunday night, Becker and a few other detectives set up surveillance. About 10 p.m., the suspect, who was dressed in black, walked out of his condo and put a half-dozen tools in his car trunk. He drove to the Alhambra area, as the detectives tailed him. He parked, stuffed his tools in his waistband and walked off into the darkness.

Three hours later the suspect returned, sweaty and dirty, his pockets stuffed with $1,600 in cash.

Detectives took him into custody and discovered a rip job at an Asian market around the corner. Despite the $1,600, the burglary tools and the mangled safe, the suspect--who later was booked on burglary and grand theft charges and is now awaiting trial--appeared unruffled. He shrugged and told Becker:

“I was just out for a jog.”