The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Residential Burglary/Robbery Task Force offers tips to combat residential burglaries, calling such crimes a rising trend in the county.

A unit of the LASD’s Major Crimes Bureau, RBRTF works closely with station detectives on impacting this crime trend.
The task force services all LASD stations as well as smaller law enforcement agencies throughout Los Angeles County.

Year-to-date, RBRTF is responsible for more than 600 felony burglary arrests, primarily for residential burglaries and burglaries associated with extremely high-dollar amounts.

As residential burglaries have become a trend, middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods, near freeways, are often targeted, although working-class neighborhoods throughout the county are also victimized.

With the holidays fast approaching, and on any other given day, the LASD would like to remind the various communities we serve to remain vigilant and help us protect your homes and that of your neighbors, by following these burglary prevention tips:

* Homeowners should make an attempt to give the impression someone is home at all times, which would include leaving a car in driveway, leaving lights on in and around the home at night.

* Make some noise inside the house (leave TV or radio on) to give the impression someone is home.

* Use a commercial security service, inexpensive and easy to use, including but not limited to video recording devices.

* Use pets such a dog for property protection and deterrence.

* Most importantly, make contact with neighbors and look out for one another’s homes.

We don’t want our residents to be paranoid; however, they should appropriately suspicious of unusual vehicles or persons slowly traversing through their neighborhood.

We encourage residents to ALWAYS and IMMEDIATELY contact law enforcement when they believe they are seeing something suspicious in the neighborhood.

Law enforcement recognizes the value of social media, but information should not just be posted on social media without also sharing with such information with local law enforcement agencies.