Electronic Shop Owners Banding Together Over Rash Of Smash-And-Grab Burglaries
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Burglars shattered a store front window, making off with expensive equipment Wednesday morning in the city's latest smash-and-grab at an electronics store.
Neighbor Jarrod Hatfield woke up to the smash and then saw three men, faces covered in bandannas, pull off the grab.
At about 4 a.m., he saw them take speakers from Music Lovers Audio and Video, a retail store at Bush and Steiner streets.
The store owner told KPIX 5 he's not yet sure how much was stolen. He said there was a similar break-in at his store about four weeks ago, when thieves got away with $20,000 worth of merchandise.
Sgt. Dean Marcic said audio and visual stores have also been targeted down on the Peninsula. "But from what I see, there's different colored trucks, and different suspects at different locations. It's possibly copycat."
The owner of Music Lovers says there's been half a dozen similar thefts in the past month. Now local audio visual store owners are banding together.
"They are keeping an eye on each other, and other ways to safeguard their inventory," said Marcic.
Once taken, shop owners say the inventory gets posted to sites like Ebay or Audiogon.
There's been other smash-and-grab burglaries at San Francisco's stores recently, as well.
On Friday, burglars left a electronics store near Nob Hill in shambles and made off with thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
Then last month, three people wearing ski masks robbed San Francisco's Wells Fargo History Museum. A week earlier, three suspects also wearing masks and driving a U-Haul-type box truck smashed into the glass front doors of the Patagonia store near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.