Deputies put ‘wrench’ on Oak Park robbery gang

Burglary crew said to be from Chile



The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office announced that deputies made several arrests in connection with a string of home robberies that have plagued the Oak Park community since the beginning of the year.

Five individuals associated with a gang that’s been responsible for the crimes were recently taken into custody, Senior Dep. John Chiaramonte said.

“A group from Chile was responsible for a lot of the break-ins in North Ranch and Oak Park in the last few months. I don’t want to say the crimes have stopped, but we aren’t getting hit anymore,” Chiaramonte said. “You can never tell if it’s the Chilean burglary crews or local gang members from Los Angeles, but we’re pretty confident we’ve put a wrench in their system and they’re moving on to other areas.”

In many cases, the criminals struck homes near the community’s open spaces, which allowed them to approach the houses and slip away unnoticed, the detective said.

“They’d do surveillance, whether it’s just sitting there and watching the house, waiting for the lights to go off or the garage door to open,” Chiaramonte said. “Someone from the front will radio an ‘all clear’ to someone in the back and (that person) will break the window. No one sees them go in.”

The criminals would also often break in via second-story windows or balconies. Many homeowners who invest in home-security systems will only get motion-activated alarms for the ground floor of their house. It’s also uncommon for people to install glass-break alarms on their second-story windows. In both cases, two-story homes are not as secure as the owners might think they are, the detective said.

Investigators put more plainclothes officers in the community, which led to the arrests, he said. No one was caught in the act of breaking into a home, Chiaramonte said. The first arrest was someone surveilling a home, and that led to further arrests, and the reports of criminal activity have declined in the last month, he said.

For residents worried about violent criminals breaking into their homes, Chiaramonte said the odds of people getting hurt are minimal.

“When they go into homes and people are there, they take off. They don’t want a confrontation,” he said. “That’s what everyone’s worried about, but (the burglars) just take off. They’re just there to get valuable property.”

Follow Ian Bradley on Twitter @Ian_reports.