The LAPD says it is working to protect businesses that have shut down and boarded up due to the coronavirus outbreak. Eric Leonard reported on NBC4 News at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.
LAPD officers have been making lists of closed businesses that have boarded doors and windows, worried that the locations could become targets for burglars.
"We will continue to monitor those locations and assure extra patrol," Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday. "We're watching our commercial burglaries carefully to see instances of those businesses, which are not opening, are falling victim to offenders that would want to prey on them."
The LAPD's crime has not shown an increase in the number of burglaries: there were 192 burglary reports in the last week of March and about 195 in the first week of April.
The number of burglary reports this year is down about 16% compared with the same time last year, though the number of burglary arrests increased in March, the data showed.
In recent days officers in some LAPD divisions were tasked with creating an inventory of closed businesses. Moore said the initial surveys showed some "non-essential" businesses had boarded up because it appeared the owners expected to be closed for weeks or months.
