Caught on camera: Pleasant Hill store manager thwarts attempted smash-and-grab
PLEASANT HILL – As businesses across the Bay Area deal with retail theft, a manager who foiled a robbery at his Pleasant Hill store describes how desperate things are becoming.
At Estates Consignments, the front door says locked even when they're open, and customers are let in by a security guard.
The store has had so many attempted break-ins that they've installed 48 surveillance cameras.
Last Monday, right at closing time, there was only one customer in the store, a woman in a striped dress who had been speaking to someone on the phone. As she left, store employees said she tried to hold the door open as a gang of six masked men ran up, forcing their way into the building.
Store manager Albert Marcu heard the commotion up front.
"When I look, I already knew something was happening," Marcu told CBS news Bay Area. "And they were coming toward the jewelry cases, which is in the back, with their sledgehammers."
In the video, the robbers advance on the jewelry cases but Marcu pulls out a gun, aiming it at the assailants.
"And when they got here, I let them know I have a gun, you know, to be careful. And they dropped the sledgehammers. They got scared and they ran out," he said.
Outside, the robbers scrambled madly out of the door, piling into two waiting cars as a police cruiser arrived on scene, literally following the two vehicles out of the lot.
"My salespeople in the front, they started screaming and yelling," said Marcu. "They were scared."
One of them was Marilou Rodriguez, who is still traumatized by the event.
"Yeah, I just keep praying...before I come to work," she said. "Yeah, that nothing happens, you know, again. Nothing happens again."
It's been a week now, but Marcu said he has no idea if the suspects were even arrested--the police won't tell him--but he doubts anything will happen to them if they were.
He's heard from plenty of his fellow business owners who said they are being robbed on a daily basis. In fact, a van that was used to crash into a Kohl's store on Thanksgiving belonged to Marcu and had been stolen from his parking lot.
"Just look around you. Why do all these things happen? You know, they don't get punished. They go out and they commit crimes again, you know, and people's lives are at risk," he said. "We work so hard, a lot of people work very hard and in a minute, you can lose everything. And not just me. The people who work here. A lot of people are unemployed because of those things. Stores are closing left and right."
Pleasant Hill police would not confirm if the suspects were ever arrested for the attempted robbery, saying the case "is still being investigated." But for many, like Marcu, the pendulum of justice reform has swung too far, leaving those left in its wake to fend for themselves.
"Crime with no punishment creates more crimes," he said.
