Folks, let me tell you: If you think crime in Los Angeles has gotten bad...you're right. You are absolutely right. It has gotten really, really bad.
More than a dozen Los Angeles gangs are targeting some of the city's wealthiest residents in a new and aggressive manner, sending out crews in multiple cars to find, follow and rob people driving high-end vehicles or wearing expensive jewelry, according to police.
In many cases, they're making off with designer handbags, diamond-studded watches and other items worth tens of thousands of dollars — if not more — and then peddling them to black-market buyers who are willing to turn a blind eye to the underlying violence, police said.
In some cases, suspects have been arrested but then released from custody, according to police, only to commit additional robberies.
Just to be clear, we're not dealing solely with grand larceny here:
Shots have been fired in 23 cases, and two victims have been killed, said Tippet, who also heads the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division, which investigates high-profile crimes.
"In my 34 years on the job, I've never seen anything like this," he said.
Now, you'd think that—presented with the sight of one of the world's alpha cities being overrun by savage criminal violence on a daily basis—everyone would be pretty much totally in favor of a major police push to bring this insanity under control. Right? You'd think that, right?
Okay but you'd be wrooooong!
That intense focus has also caused some consternation among activists and criminal justice reform advocates, who worry that wealthy residents with political clout and politicians eager to please them will use the trend — based in part on fraught and sometimes false police assessments of gang involvement — to claw back past policing reforms.
Hmmm people are getting robbed of gargantuan sums of money and in in some cases being murdered by roving gangs of psychopathic criminals and "criminal justice reform advocates" are worried about losing "past policing reforms?"
Yessir, things are going very poorly in Los Angeles these days, unless you're a criminal I guess.
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