Video captured a mob of thieves swarming a Nordstrom in Canoga Park as they cleared out the store during a destructive robbery on Saturday.
Chaos ensued as a large group of masked thieves clad in dark clothing scrambled around the store, grabbing armfuls of designer clothing, purses, accessories and more.
Los Angeles police received reports of the mass robbery at the Westfield Topanga mall around 4 p.m.
Police said anywhere between 20-50 suspects are believed to be involved, although the exact number has not been confirmed.
The thieves were seen violently grabbing whatever merchandise they could carry, with many seen ripping the security devices attached to designer purses and luggage items. Store shelves and display racks were destroyed, knocked over and littered across the floor along with a ton of fallen merchandise.
At one point, a security guard who tried to intervene was attacked with a chemical spray, police said. It’s unclear what that person’s condition is.
The suspects all fled in multiple getaway cars before officers could arrive. Guests were evacuated from the department store as officers cordoned off the scene during a busy Saturday.
The estimated dollar amount of stolen merchandise is not yet known.
Citizen video later showed store employees sweeping up broken glass from the floor and clearing the mess and debris strewn everywhere. Details on how the smash-and-grab robbery was coordinated remain under investigation.
I am honestly surprised it’s not already an epidemic of mass robberies over mass shootings. As the divide between rich and poor widens, more and more people are bound to become outraged as they’re backed into a corner. I don’t condone this, I just see it as one of of the natural consequences of our predicament.
Who steals designer bags with 20-50 of their friends when backed into a corner? Isn’t food generally wiser to steal if you are extremely poor?
No, if you’re already cool with stealing, it makes way more sense to steal high value items to fence for the cash to spend on all your needs. One robbery might net you food, gas, and some rent money.
Steal food and all those other things are still a need. Also you are limited to the food you can actually steal.
I’ll admit I’m not too familiar with crime, but I can’t see them getting anywhere near face value for any of these things. And I wouldn’t want to go down for larceny in the amount thousands + violent robbery + potential culpability regarding the harmed security guard.
I rescind the comment if it really is that easy to sell high value stolen items. Just assumed pawn shops would be suspicious, eBay would have too large a paper trail, and selling them individually is difficult and time consuming.
You really really don’t need a business to fence things in 2023. It’s also safe to assume that a group that can coordinate a robbery like this one likely has put the effort in to coordinate where the loot is going.
Yeah fair I hadn’t thought that far into it and would make a pretty poor criminal. I was also mentally framing it as a need-to-eat situation where I presume most don’t have the resources to coordinate the loot sale. But organized crime does need to eat too.
Again I don’t condone this and don’t necessarily believe this was the reasoning behind what happened, but no it’s not wiser to steal food over luxury goods if your intent is to feed your starving family for the foreseeable future. With one handful you can leave with $10k from that store. This is why they were dragging the purses that were basically fused to the display racks. A single purse might be $3k. So a thousand times the price of a loaf of bread. If you already made the decision that you’re stealing to support your family, are you going to want to do it every other day, or are you going to want to grab one purse that feeds your family for a month?
They’re not going to get anywhere near retail value for those, and robbery like this vs petty larceny is punished more harshly.
So is bear spraying a security guard. He’s probably not rich, and if you get caught, you’re not feeding your family anything for a long time.
Anyway I know you said you don’t necessarily believe that was the reason, but I just didn’t like the implication that poor people would gather 20-50 like minded friends to ransack a store and potentially hurt people to steal designer bags. I know some people, when pushed far enough, will resort to robbery but the number and willingness to harm for a commodity that’s difficult to sell feels like typical organized crime. Not your intention and maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I feel like associating poor people for large scale crime like this only makes things worse for them societally.
It doesn’t matter that they won’t get anywhere near the 100k worth of the items. They still grabbed far more value with a single purse than they could ever clutch running out of a Whole Foods.
I forgot that already biased people could use this as just another reason to hate the poor. First they want to steal a loaf of bread, now they want luxury goods worth many loaves, right? Except this isn’t an evil poor mentality, it’s a human mentality. Bear spraying the guard that is standing in your way isn’t a poor thing, it’s a criminal thing. No one is spraying guards because they are rich.
The reality is that if these people were in the top 1%, there’s no chance they’d have resorted to this, and would instead conduct their thieving unmasked in a cozy office chair. We can’t know where exactly this mob falls in the bottom 99%, and my point is that with the increasing divide between rich and poor, it’s becoming less relevant where they fall.
We can’t allow our voices to be silenced for fear of someone else twisting them in hatred.
I get that and largely agree, but I still feel it’s unfair to associate the mass robbery alone with poor person things. All of this is my personal opinion and I’ll repeat that a lot to emphasize that I’m not saying anything as fact.
The message of “this looting isn’t surprising given the increased divide between the rich and the poor,” to me, is already bridging the gap for opportunistic bad actors. While we shouldn’t be silent, it’s worth noting that some words may do more harm than good. In my eyes, the potential gain is minuscule (most people know that desperation begets desperate acts) and the inverse is high (very few people in the country this happened in will agree with a violent robbery, especially one of this scale). Outside of the unique ecosystem of Lemmy, that comment would be good ammo for bad actors and a bad supporting statement for good arguments.
And yeah, some of it is simply that I personally don’t like associating poor with a crime like this.
Anyway, beyond that I don’t disagree with the primary point, merely how it was presented. I also doubt there’s anything that would make me feel more comfortable with that association, but fortunately the opinion of one random person doesn’t matter and that saves you time responding. Be well!
BREAKING NEWS: Bad Actors twist what research suggests! In a shocking turn of events, opportunistic Bad Actors claim “Poor people bad!” after an internet forum user points out what research has already said ages ago; that violent crimes are correlated to income inequality. The user went on to point out that this is the fault of billionaires, but the Bad Actors were unrelenting.
Holding me personally accountable for real life is you being unfair. Be well, too. Careful the bad actors don’t get to your words, next!