June 3, 2008

Crime Spree? What Crime Spree?


View Atwater Village Crime Spree 2008 Map
HELLO NEIGHBORHOOD Officer Gina Chovan – This morning I filed an LAPD report via telephone and am following up via email with you.

My Honda Civic was broken into, sometime between June 2, 6:30pm, and June 3, 8:30am, in the 3700 block of Valleybrink Road in Atwater Village.

Missing this morning were a $400 in-dash AM/FM/CD/MP3 stereo, a handful of coins, and the vehicle's manual.

The right rear triangular window was popped out, not broken, and left on the rear seat. All other contents of the vehicle, including CDs, were left scattered on seats and on the floor. The driver's seat was left in a fully reclined position. All vehicle doors were left closed but unlocked.

Thank you and Northeast division for your attention.

Sincerely,
Atwater Village Newbie

P.S. - I think this might be part of a larger problem.

9 comments:

AVN said...

UPDATE:

Email from Officer Gina Chovan:

Thanks so much for keeping me informed......... about 2 weeks ago we arrested an individual who was breaking into homes in the area......... I will keep you posted on any leads......if you hear of anyone person involved in this please let me know.....tx again, gina.

ninatim said...

Hey newbie,

Thanks for bringing light to this and I'm sorry it happened to you too. Definitely frustrating to come out to your car in the morning to find it burglarized. I just spoke to Gina on the phone and posted this on the AVNC website:

While the LAPD has specific terminology about calling trends crime "waves" or "sprees", she definitely agrees there has been a "spike" in property burglary in Atwater Village. She also said it is not specific to our area - burglary is up all over the city.

She also confirmed that someone was apprehended based on eyewitness testimony of a Valleybrink home burglary a couple weeks ago. Yeah!

Also, they have made some arrests of people burglarizing cars and have been surprised by some of those arrested - teenagers from affluent neighborhoods with meth or cocaine addictions. They are targeting our area because they know that there are people living here that make good money and tend to leave things in their cars.

Lesson - If you can avoid leaving any property (especially anything of value) in your car.

Finally, she is very appreciative of the emails and calls she has been getting and it has been helping them follow up on clues and leads, so she asks that they keep coming.

Senior Lead Officer Gina Chovan - 30347@lapd.lacity.org

Carol Moore is having a Neighborhood Watch meeting on June 11 at the public library. If the problem is citywide and the police are already overextended, we definitely need to reinvigorate the neighborhood watch for the area. Please get involved!

Judy Graff, Broker Realtor said...

Newbie, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I'm told that property crime is up in Burbank as well.

Lulu said...

Hi Newbie, sad to hear this happened to you. Especially on the "best" street in Atwater.

When one thinks back to LA of the early 90's and the thick recession going on then, crime was up and people were fleeing LA in droves. I know because I was young and my parents were vacating because of all of the above. Then LA had a triple whammy of events that lead to the "shittification" of LA even more. Earthquakes, fires then riots. LA took a major downturn and Atwater wasn't a pleasant place back then. We're STILL recovering from then with the remainder of bars on windows and properties.

Perhaps its safe to assume we aren't quite as safe as we'd like to think we are. This isn't and never will be Maybury. All we can do is look out for each other as neighbors and hope police presence will increase as well.

meta said...

I moved from Atwater late last year and we're in a temp apartment in the Miracle Mile area. My Honda was broken into exactly like that, stereo yanked (taking most of the center console out with it), all my CDs, IPod, etc. stolen. It 3 weeks in the body shop and a high deductable, but it's finally fixed. It's happening everywhere!

Unknown said...

the exact same thing happened to my honda civic last night (between 11 p.m. june 5 and 10 a.m. june 6) on griffith view.

doors were locked though. and i'm certain that the only reason my stereo is intact is because it has an alarm on it. thankfully, they didn't like my taste in music, so only a few cds were stolen, as well as my car insurance papers, a cell phone charger and an old (first generation 5g) ipod.

i also noticed that the white honda civic parked in front of me had been broken into.

a friend of mine in atwater has had his car broken into twice now. no joke, i used to live in harlem and i NEVER had anything stolen.

sigh.

ninatim said...

Sarah if you haven't already please file a police report with Northeast Div. so they can add it to the list and try to make sense of the pattern.

Unknown said...

I did file a police report throuh the Northeast Division this morning. I am also emailing a detailed account to Officer Chovan now, and will be heading downtown this afternoon to see if they can get some prints off my trunk. (Whoever did it left a big handprint).

Thanks.

Unknown said...

sorry to know this happened, that is why insurance becomes such an important factor.