OAKLAND TWP. (WWJ) — Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard believes high-end burglaries carried out by transnational gangs have returned to the county.
Last fall Bouchard warned of groups of foreign thieves that had targeted expensive homes in expensive neighborhoods across the area. He said last December that as many as 30-40 homes had been targeted since September.
On Thursday Bouchard told WWJ Newsradio 950’s Luke Sloan that a home in Oakland Township was recently burglarized and authorities believe the robbery “matches the M.O. of the Chilean gangs that we have previously seen and actually caught in the past.”
Bouchard did not say exactly when or where the Oakland Twp. incident happened, but said he believes the “same type of crew” was responsible and
“Very much the same pattern, method — coming in through a dark backyard, patterning the movements of the homeowners, quickly going in and going for high-end jewelry,” Bouchard said, noting the home had already been targeted by thieves in the past.
“So yeah, it’s back and they got a substantial amount of high-end jewelry out of the home,” Bouchard said of the recent burglary.
Bouchard said the apparent Chilean crews study their victims’ “pattern of life” and movement and try to strike when they’re gone, targeting a “very particular kind of home that’s more secluded and very high-end” and using devices to jam frequencies of wireless alarm and security systems to avoid being caught.
The sheriff said one of the biggest challenges in catching the alleged transnational gangs is that they’re “so transient.”
“They move quickly, there’s no connectivity to the community, the area, they have no confidential informants we can communicate to about who might be involved because they move from one state to another and they’re constantly on the move,” he said. “There’s no kind of typical pattern to be able to be prepared for. You don't know when they’re coming and when they’re gonna leave.”
That’s why, Bouchard said, police have to, in part, “rely on neighborhoods to up their vigilance, to report something if they see something and our police partners.”