Los Angeles, United States - August 22, 2024

08/22/2024 03:30 am (GMT-0700) | Chatsworth – LAPD Devonshire units responded to Smoke City at 21700 Devonshire St for a reported car that slammed into a building and suspects burglarizing the store.

The vehicle that drove into the business was described as a white pickup truck.

The pickup truck was located abandoned behind the building.

Sound on tape transcript:

"So my name is George.

And can you tell us where we are tonight? We are actually located here in Smoke City of Chatsworth.

-And it's a smoke shop here in Chatsworth, basically. Can you tell us what happened here tonight?

Well, what happened is, as you guys can see, I don't know if you can turn the camera. And let everyone see that a car basically drove into the shop and tried to steal or they can out of it, basically.

-Is this the first time that this has happened to you?

No, actually we just got broken into this same shop about three weeks ago. It was, they basically broke the front door and they got in. But today it was much bigger break in than before. And do you know what they stole? We don't know yet. We don't know yet. We still have to assess the damage and go through the cameras. Basically check everything and see if it's been stolen. It probably costs more to fix the damage that they did than the items that they stole, right? Or it's gonna cost probably a thousand times more than the cost of the items that they stole.

-How does this make you feel?

Very angry. Very angry because, I mean, we have multiple businesses and we've been broken into probably about seven, eight times at least.

And as you guys know, a lot of the insurance companies are leaving the state because of the way we run our state here.

A lot of the insurance companies don't cover basically the amount of damage. They usually cover up to 10,000. Some companies are a little bit more, but most of the damage ends up being paid from our pockets. And for small family owned businesses, when you get broken into once, twice, three times, I mean, how much can you handle as a family owned business?

It's getting out of control. And the other problem is, even when they catch them, they let them go.

Even when they catch these criminals, they let them go. It's as if this state, this beautiful state, is siding with the criminals instead of siding with the innocent people who are working so hard to make it at the end of the day. And it's just getting out of control. It's literally getting out of control. It's getting to a point where it's becoming like a boiling point."