Sitting on the porch of his mother’s home in South Los Angeles, the man arrested in the theft on Melrose insisted he had no intention of stealing anything when he and two women walked into the consignment shop on Black Friday. Staff at the youth home where he lives in L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood told him not to talk about his case, he said. “They don’t have things, and they want things.”ĭeHughes, 19, insisted he was innocent but declined to elaborate.

“I mean, it’s the pandemic, so some people are just struggling,” said Daniel DeHughes, who was arrested on suspicion of stealing sledgehammers and crowbars from a Home Depot that police believed he and his friends were planning to use in a smash-and-grab in Beverly Hills. Others keep what they swipe for themselves. In interviews, the suspects offered differing reasons for the theft: Some scratch out a living reselling what they steal.

Through interviews with police and some of the suspects and a review of court and probation records, The Times found that a wide range of people - from a group of Romani women from Orange County to crews of reputed gang members from South Los Angeles - have been implicated in the crimes. The Times identified several people arrested on suspicion of committing smash-and-grabs, follow-home robberies and similarly brazen heists in which people have simply grabbed merchandise off shelves in full view. Police news bulletins offer only vague descriptions of suspects - a race, an age, a height. Culprits have appeared in pixelated surveillance footage as blurry, masked figures. Largely absent from the conversation, however, are the people accused of committing the crimes.

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