The Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday it's recorded a 40% increase in the number of residential burglaries in one Encino neighborhood, where at least five homes were broken into in the last week.
Assistant Chief Blake Chow said during the last four weeks, there were eight more break-ins reported in an area south of the 101 freeway and west of the 405 than during the same period last year.
He told the Board of Police Commissioners LAPD helicopters will provide extra patrols of the area during the times most of the recent burglaries have occurred, and he asked residents to check security video recordings regularly as there are indications these thieves are watching potential target houses before breaking in.
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
“There is a little bit of intel gathering and casing, so they know which houses to hit. If people see something unusual, maybe on their ring cam, that’s something we need to know about," Chow said.
Other LAPD officials told the I-Team they suspect a small group of thieves has been working the area as was seen in security video that captured three masked men shattering a glass window to enter a home during a burglary over the weekend.
Residential burglaries in Encino
Chow said city-wide the number of residential burglaries has crept up by nearly 4% this year, adding detectives had made progress in the unrelated investigation of break-ins at three homes on one street in the Silver Lake area over the weekend.
"Detectives are actively working to identify the subject using evidence recovered from the scenes, in all three incidents we believe we have forensic evidence," he said.
