‘The thing is ugly out there’: trains thieves leave the roads full of stolen packages

La escena era un tramo de las vías del tren en Lincoln Heights el sábado: Una ventisca movía los envoltorios de plástico rotos, cajas de cartón y embalajes de papel que atestiguan una ola de robos de vagones de tren que, según las autoridades, ha ido en aumento en los últimos meses.

Several scavengers rose among the remains, hoping to find electronic devices, clothing or any value object that thieves have left behind.

"There is everything on the train: mobile phones, Louis Vuitton bags, design clothing, toys, cutcases, electrical equipment, electrical tools," said a 37 -year -old man who did not want to give his name.He narrated that he went to the roads regularly and that once he found a Louis Vuitton bag and a robotic arm valued in five figures: "We found things here and there, and we earned some money with it".

The robbery of the railway cars is a crime that goes back to the days of the bandits on horseback, but that is fed by a series of modern realities, such as the rise of electronic commerce and the role of southern California as the center ofMovement of merchandise.

The images have generated national attention and showed the tension between rail operators, government officials and authorities about what can be done to reduce assaults.

Later, on Saturday, about 17 wagons of a Union Pacific train derailed in "the same area where vandalism has occurred," said Robynn Tysver, Union Pacific spokesman.The crew was not injured and the cause is being investigated, he added.

Union Pacific reported an increase of 160% since December 2020 in the robberies along the railroad tracks in Los Angeles County.The railroad did not release specific data on what was stolen or the value of what was lost, but said that the increase in crime cost the company at least 5 million dollars last year.

A bottleneck in the supply chain and the presence of homeless camps near the railway lines have contributed to the robberies, authorities said.

“Organized and opportunistic criminal railway theft... impacta a nuestros empleados, a nuestros clientes en la industria de la cadena de suministro en general”, dijo TOdrián Guerrero, director de asuntos públicos de Union Pacific.

Guerrero estimates that about 90 cargo containers per day are committed, sometimes by an organized group that has stopped trains and recruited people who live in the street to loot the containers.

Union Pacific is deploying drones, has hired additional security and has resorted to the Los Angeles Police Department, the California road patrol and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department to combat robberies, Guerrero said.

But Union Pacific is part of guilt for not deploying more security, said the Los Angeles Police captain, Germán Hurtado, who works in the Hollenbeck division.

"We have hundreds of millions of dollars in articles and equipment, but they are not monitored," said Hurtado."There are even weapons in these trains.Everything goes by train ".

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El problema ganó atención la semana pasada cuando el fotoperiodista de KCBS y KCTOL, John Schreiber, publicó una serie de videos y tweets, incluyendo uno de él mismo recogiendo paquetes desechados esparcidos a lo largo de una línea ferroviaria en Lincoln Heights.

He took out a discarded coronavirus test and a Rei merchandise box along some plague.

"Is a package missing? Has shipping been delayed? Maybe your package is among the thousands that we find discarded along the tracks," Schreiber wrote on Twitter, next to an aerial image of the routes full of garbage.The messages were viral, since others published their own photos.

TOunque Los Ángeles ha experimentado un aumento significativo de los homicidios en los últimos dos años, los delitos contra la propiedad, como los robos en las vías, son una historia diferente.According to the data of the County Police until November 27, the crimes against the property increased a 2.6% with respect to the same period last year, but they have dropped a 6.6% in relation to 2019.

On Saturday along the tracks, a couple who said he presented himself after seeing an Instagram post reviewed the pile of abandoned cartons in search of something valuable.An Xbox package had caught their attention.Another man who had been waiting for a bus stopped to search among the remains.He found car speakers that meant that he could sell for $ 200 to compensate for the hours he had lost at work that day.

"It's ugly out there," said Hurtado, from the Los Angeles Police.

In a letter to the prosecutor George Gascón, Guerrero, of Union Pacific, he estimated that more than 100 people have been arrested, but "they boast before our officers that the charges will be reduced".

TOlex Bastian, un asesor de Gascón, dijo que la oficina del fiscal de distrito ha presentado cargos en algunos casos de robo y hurto mayor, pero en otros no tienen suficiente evidencia para procesar.

Lena Kent, BNSF Railway spokesman, one of the main operators in southern California, said someone depends on those stolen articles."They are not crimes without victims, especially when many of these packages include very necessary supplies," he said.

Los Angeles and Long Beach ports drive around 40% of the country's maritime imports.Most of the almost 450.000 million dollars in goods that move in the ports end up reaching a train.

The dumping, the garbage and the camping around the train tracks made last year the councilor of Los Angeles, Joe Searcho, asked that the city declare them a public "discomfort".However, the initiative was abandoned after Union Pacific cleaned a strip of the roads, said its spokesman, Branimir Kvartuc.

Even so, I said that Union Pacific needs to hire more agents to patrol the roads."It is not a surprise that we are seeing additional crimes," he said in a text, adding that the problems have been "growing for years".

The biggest problem is around two railroad courtyards where the load loading to the trains or vice versa is transferred.One of those areas is an expanding rail installation that is located just east of the city center, next to highway 5, in Lincoln Heightts.

Keith Lewis, Vice President of Operations of Cargonet, a company that tracks cargo thefts, said it is difficult to calculate how much trains are stealing because much is not reported.

Union Pacific operates about 3.200 railroad miles in California and BNSF has 2.100 miles.In southern California, many of those roads border businesses and homes in low -income communities such as Wilmington and Lincoln Heights.In the serene, where crime has been increasing, spike wire fences border the train tracks.

"It's not that we give up.We do working groups with the sheriff, other agencies along the roads and arrests, ”said Hurtado.

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