LASD: Don’t let your or your neighbors’ home become part of a burglary growing trend

Santa Clarita Neighborhood Watch keeps you informed of all of the Santa Clarita crime news!

Did you know the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) has a Residential Burglary/Robbery Task Force (RBRTF), which investigates the ever increasing residential burglary trends?

A unit out of Major Crimes Bureau (MCB), 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 over 600 felony burglary arrests. These felony arrests are primarily 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 Los Angeles County, are also victimize.

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.
• Noise inside the house (leave TV or radio on) to give the impression someone is home.
• Commercial security services that have become popular, 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, making contact with neighbors and looking 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.

Have a safe and happy Holidays!

Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station polices the City of Santa Clarita and the unincorporated communities and a portion of the Angeles National Forest, as well as Bouquet Canyon, Canyon Country, Castaic, Gorman, Hasley Canyon, Newhall, Neenach, Sand Canyon, Santa Clarita, Saugus, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Sleepy Valley, Southern Oaks, Stevenson Ranch, Sunset Point, Tesoro del Valle, Valencia, Val Verde, West Hills and West Ranch.

The KHTS Santa Clarita Neighborhood Watch is a service provided by KHTS Radio to help inform Santa Clarita Communities including Valencia, Saugus, Newhall, Canyon Country, Stevenson Ranch, and Castaic of any crime reports in their area. All crime reports are provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office and are meant to inform our community of any crime incidents and other emergency information. Please visit the Santa Clarita Neighborhoods section of our website for other information in your community. You can submit a listing for your neighborhood here.