By Ritu Jha-
The city of Sunnyvale, California is taking action after a series of brazen daylight smash-and-grab robberies to Indian-owned jewelry stores.
The city plans to install automatic license plate readers and had a meeting with store owners to advise them on enhancing security.
Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein told indica that police had arrested five suspects concerning May robberies of Nitin Jewelers and PNG Jewelers. Klein said he recently met online and in person with store owners from Sunnyvale, Newark, and other Bay Area city jewelry stores [ Bhindi and Bombay Jewelry that have been hit.
“The store owners and the community have banded together to try to implement some best practices that would act as precautionary measures,” Klein said. “From a city standpoint, we told them how to harden their stores and to make them less attractive for potential thefts. What we’ve seen is that these are organized crime gangs that are hitting city by city. The positive thing from a Sunnyvale standpoint is that the second time it happened we responded fast enough to catch them. That in itself, hopefully makes it less attractive for such perpetrators to come into Sunnyvale knowing that our public safety is now on the ball. Now we’re working with all the jewelry stores.”
Klein said the city advised the owners on what video cameras to install and which procedures they should have in place to keep their employees and customers safe.
“We gave them a laundry list of things that they should do. From procedures that they should have as far as people coming into the stores, and what to do if they’re masked intruders. They can take preemptive action before the perpetrators can enter the establishment.”
Klein said the gang consists of 20 members and that there is a possibility of a different gang being involved, which has drawn federal support that the city welcomes.
“Our public safety department covers only Sunnyvale but the investigating agencies including the FBI are working with Berkeley, Oakland, Newark, and different East Bay cities,” Klein said. “FBI is also probing the incidents because ultimately this is considered a federal crime. The FBI has raised the stakes to a large degree, from how they’re doing this investigation. It’s not just a local California crime. It’s now seen as a federal crime, which makes it more prosecutable, which makes the penalties a lot higher, and that’s a positive thing from a city standpoint.”
Klein added that defendants have a harder time posting bail on federal charges.
“It was an important part of our process, trying to make sure that the people we arrested were held and not quickly released on bond, and we could continue to investigate and capture everybody involved.”
Klein says the FBI is working well with local departments, who are working well with each other. He said common defendants are involved in different incidents that took place in different cities. Once Sunnyvale had made arrests, it could start investigating the suspect’s contacts.
“Our public safety department is working with San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Newark, and the other officers to identify common criminals across each of these crimes and try to track them down. And some of them conceivably have already been arrested in other incidents.”
Klein says the city has long wanted to implement license plate readers, and that will finally happen in August and September.
“We will be able to read those license plates so that if there’s a stolen car or a vehicle used in any known gang activity, it can immediately pop up and alert us that there’s a potential theft coming into our city. Though a lot of cities have the system, not all the cities have them yet.”
At an Aug. 1 town hall she hosted in Milpitas, Calif. With U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, State Senator Aisha Wahab said local and federal officials are well-equipped to tackle the problem.
“Law enforcement is doing their jobs,” Wahab said. “The governor is pushing for more law enforcement support of local retailing, whether it’s a local store, clothing shops or jewelry shops, gas (stations). I think we have to trust what law enforcement experts are planning. We are seeing greater presence by local (California Highway Patrol officers), a coordinated effort by the police chief. I trust in the work that law enforcement is supposed to do.”
