Railway theft is a problem as old as the railroads themselves, though many thieves now concentrate on regional hubs like Southern California. Jessica Kahanek, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, said companies nationwide were increasing steps to combat the thefts, which have been a “persistent challenge particularly in the Los Angeles area.”
In the densely populated Lincoln Heights area, a general increase in crime and police staffing levels strained by the pandemic have made matters worse, Captain Hurtado said. “We have the perfect storm of crime with Covid,” he said. “People are losing their jobs. There is a lot of homeless right now.”
The strains of the pandemic, the uncertain economy, persistent inequality and a sense of falling behind make for “ripe conditions for some of these effects to emerge,” said Eesha Sharma, an assistant professor of marketing at the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University.
“A lot of individuals are facing financial challenges,” said Professor Sharma, who co-wrote a 2013 paper on the relationship between inequity and theft. “And these effects are not relegated to people who have the least amount of resources.”
Union Pacific said that it had started using drone surveillance, “specialized fencing and trespass-detection systems” in Los Angeles County, and that its agents had made “hundreds of arrests.”
Mr. Guerrero, the company’s spokesman, has called for more aggressive prosecution of railroad thefts. He said in his December letter to Mr. Gascón, the district attorney, that people caught by agents, when turned over to the Los Angeles County authorities, often had their charges reduced to lesser offenses and were then quickly released.
Alex Bastian, a special adviser to the district attorney, said that charges had been filed for burglary and grand theft in some of the Union Pacific cases, but that others were declined because of insufficient evidence.
Discussion about this post