Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto recently reported his department was investigating 152 burglaries—not a big number for one of the state’s largest parishes.
But it’s the burglaries that took place after Hurricane Ida that are drawing particular attention from the top lawman.
Lopinto’s focus on solving burglaries has borne fruit as his criminal investigations team has apprehended one suspect in possession of a number of stolen items.
Speaking at Tuesday night’s press briefing, Lopinto addressed residents who evacuated ahead of Hurricane Ida and recently returned:
“If you had a burglary while you were out of town, whether it’s your business or whether it’s your home, please report it to us. As I’ve said we’ve not had widespread reports of crime in Jefferson Parish. But as of yesterday we had 152 burglaries, that’s vehicles, businesses and homes.”
He related one arrest of an individual suspected of committing burglaries: “On September first we stopped an individual with obvious stolen property. A lot of stolen property on him. We were able to identify that person, take the property and make an arrest for additional charges. Well sure enough a person came home to report a burglary at their house—devastated at the amount of stuff that they lost—which was very expensive and sure enough we had already recovered it a week earlier.”
Lopinto is on a roll as he described another arrest which yielded another big amount of stolen property:
“We made another arrest with a search warrant where we located a lot of stolen property that we were able to connect with four other burglaries in that same neighborhood. So although we may not have a lead for your particular burglary, we may have made an arrest of an individual who burglarized somebody on your block.”