$34K worth of items stolen from photography studio as downtown Sacramento sees uptick in business burglaries
SACRAMENTO — The Sacramento Police Department said it's seen an uptick in downtown businesses being burglarized in the last two weeks.
"The feeling of invasion is so heavy," said Lluvia Escobar, who owns uvVisions Photography with her husband.
Her studio on the second floor of an office building on J Street was broken into at around 3:00 a.m. on Monday. A security camera captured the two thieves snooping around her studio and then carting away expensive cameras and equipment.
"We had everything pretty much perfectly packaged for them because we keep our gear very organized," Escobar said. "We have two wagons filled with tripods on the floor, the base of it, and then our gear stacked just right on the inside and then five backpacks."
Escobar said the intruders had to get through three locked doors to get into the second floor of their office building.
It is unclear how they got through the first two locked doors, but Escobar thinks the suspects may have hidden out in the hallway before striking in the middle of the night.
She shared photos of a picked lock and a shoe print on door number three that shows how they busted into her business.
It took the thieves just five minutes to cart off $34,000 worth of items.
Escobar could not hold back tears when talking about how other local photographers have lent them equipment since they got hit.
Sacramento police could not give a definitive number of how many businesses have been hit recently amid an uptick but said it has increased patrols downtown.
A package of retail theft bills that Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law is trying to curb these crimes.
"I think we are going to see a real reduction in retail theft and burglaries," said local attorney Jennifer Mouzis.
Mouzis said the new laws allow officers to combine the value of stolen goods from different victims to impose harsher penalties and increase penalties for people reselling stolen items.
"It's not petty theft in the sense of someone who just went to steal a sandwich," Mouzis said. "It's a business plan and those people will be held accountable, and those people will be spending time in jail and prison."
Escobar plans to continue the business with her husband but no longer in this space.
"I couldn't even look at the footage," Escobar said.
This is now the second time her business has been burglarized. The first time was in 2021 when they were in an office a door down from where they are now. Now, she wants to move out of the building.
"We don't even want kids because this business means so much," Escobar said. "To have it broken into and have our means stolen from right beneath us. It just hurts so bad."