More than 100 people have been arrested over the past two weeks on charges related to the Los Angeles wildfires — including dozens of opportunistic looters and burglars who tried to cash in on the catastrophe by raiding empty homes.
Los Angeles authorities said at least one thief dressed up as a firefighter and others used phone apps to monitor evacuated neighborhoods as the deadly blazes ripped through the nation’s most populous county.
Criminals made off with high-end goods after ransacking swanky homes. Police said three burglars working together were nabbed with six figures worth of stolen property, and other thieves were caught with entertainment industry awards in their arms.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said he would help upgrade looting to a felony after being pushed by L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. Now federal prosecutors are looking to drop the hammer on the predatory burglars as well
“We will not permit victims to be re-victimized,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said late last week. “Our community has suffered tremendously, and we are here to support them. The Joint Fire Crimes Task Force is committed to addressing crimes coming out of the fires, including any looting, arson, illegal drone flights and fraud.”
A majority of the triple-digit arrests are for curfew violations or trespassing in the fire zones, but some looters are taking it to the next step.
L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said one man went as far as to don firefighter gear when burglarizing a home in Malibu.
The sheriff said he went to check on the supposed firefighter because he was sitting down, until Sheriff Luna noticed “we had him in handcuffs.”
Prosecutors said three thieves were nabbed in Mandeville Canyon, near the Pacific Palisades fire, after authorities caught them with $200,000 worth of property.
And in Altadena, a suburb just north of Pasadena that is squarely inside the Eaton fire zone, a group of people were caught stealing a resident’s 2002 Emmy Award from an evacuated property.
The looting was called a “unique evil” by Altadena Town Councilman Connor Cipolla, who remained inside the fire zone to protect his home from the flames and the criminals.
“We saved our homes from a fire. I’ll be damned if we’re gonna see them get ransacked after the fact,” Mr. Cipolla told The Washington Times.
While Mr. Cipolla said he didn’t encounter any looters, he said “shady characters” came into the neighborhood during the first 48 hours of the fire.
Some were just knuckleheads, he said, including the group of YouTubers who were filming themselves near a destroyed home.
But he said others likely had criminal intentions. A car full of men he’d never seen before drove down his street around midnight on the first night and told Mr. Cipolla they were there to “help, quote-unquote.” He suspected they were looters and told them to get lost.
Mr. Cipolla, whose wife and three young children evacuated after the fire started Jan. 7, said he remained in the neighborhood because he felt a sense of obligation as the representative for his district. It was a decision that likely spared some of his neighbors from total ruin.
“My neighbor and I were here for the first three days. We put out fires and saved a bubble of, like, 5 to 10 homes,” the councilman said.
Mr. Cipolla said he and others scrambled to tame the blaze as firefighters were consumed with attacking the source of the inferno.
The councilman said he was helping stamp out baseball-sized embers with shovels and sand when the fast-moving fires quickly enveloped a neighbor’s home in 40-foot-high flames.
The councilman said he and another neighbor used a generator and a water pump to drain an inground pool, fill up garbage cans with the water, and then sprayed the house down with hoses.
The pair emptied multiple fire extinguishers as they put out flaming wooden fences and tree roots. Mr. Cipolla said he ran out to a nearby hardware store at one point, bought the roughly $1,000 worth of fire extinguishers in stock, and used them all.
Once police established a hard border around the fire zone, the councilman said his concerns about looters calmed down. He took issue with some other media reports that have portrayed the Eaton zone as rife with crime and needing citizen vigilantism to keep thieves at bay.
That said, Mr. Cipolla added that deputies and police officers guarding the zone have mentioned thieves trying to enter the evacuated area through canyon trails.
At least 27 people have been killed in the blaze, according to officials, with 17 deaths in the Eaton zone and 10 in the Palisades zone.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Tuesday the Palisades fire was 63% contained, while the Eaton fire was 89% contained. Nearly 17,000 structures have been destroyed in the two zones.
Mr. Cipolla, the councilman in Altadena, told The Times he planned on leaving the fire zone soon and reuniting with family. He was confident the fire would no longer spread to his property, which was miraculously unharmed, and that fire officials were close to extinguishing the source of the blaze.
Next, he said, will be picking up the pieces left behind by the inferno.
“This is going to take sustained resources to rebuild,” Mr. Cipolla said. “But we will rebuild. This is a very resilient community, and we’ll make it happen.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.