LA Deputies Get Bird's-Eye View of Looting During Uprising

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Aero Bureau helps patrol the skies during the unrest after George Floyd's death at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

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Los Angeles County Deputy Mike Coberg gets a bird's eye view, capturing events as they unfold this past weekend over West Hollywood and Beverly Hills as stores are targeted and ransacked in a night of unrest.

"We saw across the street four suspects on a roof trying to break into a building," Coberg said.

He and others from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Aero Bureau cover 4,300-square miles on any given day and night. Last weekend, they provided the eyes in the sky to fellow deputies on the ground -- policing while being mindful that hundreds of people were calling for justice and peace.

"You have your peaceful protestors, which is great," he said. "We need that - checks and balances in law enforcement and community. The public is great but when you have people who are in there who are outliers who try to incite looting and riots and vandalism, those are the people that we try to pick out of the crowd if we can ."

The department's air ships flew over hundreds of buildings where looting was reported, many times leading to arrests, though an exact number is not known.

The Los Angeles District Attorney announced Wednesday more than 60 people were charged with looting, burglary and other crimes over the past several days.

Coberg remembers arrests at a Boost Mobile store in Long Beach Sunday night.
"I see four guys running, taking off out the back," he said.

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Following the end of that shift early Monday, he says he slept for a few hours and then brought his family back to Long Beach later that day.

"I felt like we were apart of it at night," he said. "We could be part of it during the day."

He ended up at the same store he had seen people breaking into.

A Boost Mobile employee by phone he was grateful for the support.

The Coberg family helped the folks remove graffiti, stopping at a local hardware store to get supplies.

"You just see what they are going through on the ground and it makes you work harder and do a better job," Coberg said. "When my kids make decisions later on in life they want to bring good to it."

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