The Los Angeles Police Department responded to three separate alarms at GardaWorld’s Sylmar cash storage facility the day thieves stole $30 million from its safe during the largest heist in city history.
Despite the presence of officers at the property in the early hours of Easter Sunday – in which it is believed the sophisticated theft was carried out – the perpetrators were not located, according to three law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation of the incident.
According to officials, during at least one response by a patrol car, GardaWorld was alerted, but the Montreal-based security services company did not register the intrusion.
The Times previously reported that GardaWorld crime not detected Until the safe is opened the next day, April 1. Until then, LAPD investigators were informed that a substantial amount of money had been taken, authorities said.
The sequence of events, partially revealed in LAPD call-for-service logs obtained by The Times, raises questions about the security Guardaworld created at the Roxford Street property, which was used to deposit cash for the company’s L.A.-area customers. Used to process and store. The timeline also reveals details of the complex crime, which is believed to have been carried out by a crew who breached the roof of a single-storey building.
Jeffrey Zwiran, a longtime security consultant, said the success of the robbery appeared to be the result of a “systemic failure.”
“It appears that there were deficiencies in physical and electronic security that were not investigated by either the alarm company, and/or the security command center and/or designated security director, to ensure that the system was more than adequate High risk environment.”
GardaWorld did not respond to requests for comment.
According to police logs, the LAPD had responded to 13 alarm calls at the building in the year before the robbery, and all of them were determined to be false alarms. Specifically, a robbery had occurred the night before, on March 30, just before 11:30 pm. A few minutes later a patrol car arrived at the warehouse and mistook it for a false alarm.
According to the log, another alarm went off in the building at 4:36 a.m. on Easter. Logs show that hours later, a police car was dispatched to the property, a supervisor was notified and a report was written. The log does not indicate what police found. However, a resident of the neighboring Tahiti Mobile Home Park The Times was previously told FBI agents met with him the day after the theft and asked if he “saw or heard anything suspicious around 4 a.m.” on Easter. (The woman said she was sleeping at the time and had not.)
At 7.22 am, another alarm went off at the GardaWorld warehouse and a police car responded about 45 minutes later; LAPD logs show it was deemed a “legitimate alarm.” Eventually, the alarm was raised at 3:51 pm and a police vehicle responded at about 4 pm. It was deemed a false alarm, according to the logs, details of which were first reported by TMZ.
According to Aria Kozak, chief executive of Elite Interactive Solutions, an LA-based security services company, the false alarms triggered before the robbery may have been the result of criminals testing the security mechanisms in the building.
“In that particular case, false alarms may be just a small window into criminal activity,” he said. “They are very capable and clever and they will look for a soft or weak point.”
Law enforcement agencies have been unusually silent about their investigation into the incident. LAPD Captain Kelly Muniz declined to discuss the timeline of the crime, stating that the investigation was being handled by the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman said she could not disclose when the agency responded to the robbery and declined to provide details of the investigation.
The GuardWorld facility, surrounded on two sides by active train tracks and a mobile home park, is located in a rundown part of Sylmar, where locals have said street crime is a curse, And neighbors have said strange things happened in the area over the weekend.
A park resident said he heard a strange mechanical sound Coming from the GardaWorld property over Easter weekend. His house overlooks a portion of the warehouse where thieves had also broken into a portion of the building. a KABC-TV news Video aired April 3 A large cut was visible on the side of the structure which was covered with a piece of plywood. And the owner of a nearby convenience store said its Wi-Fi was down Most Easter and mobile phone calls also failed. It is unclear whether this was connected to the robbery or not, but Wi-Fi jammers have become a common tool of theft gangs as they destroy many security cameras.
According to security industry experts, given the amount of money stored at the Roxford Street facility, such unusual activity should have been detected by GardaWorld or an alarm service provider.
Security consultant Jim McGuffey, who previously held senior positions at Brink’s & Loomis, called the robbery “a very professional job.” However, he said, “There was no way this should have happened.”
“A well-guarded facility that has that kind of money…usually in those facilities they have two different alarm systems, they have sensors throughout the facility, cameras inside and outside, ” They said. “No matter how you enter the building, a sensor detects that activity and sends an alert. That’s why it was such a big shock.”
Zwirn said such a property would typically include an alarm system that would be triggered by the presence of wireless signal jamming.
He said, “Although these criminals were sophisticated… based on what we know, this should have been a detectable incident.” “The question is why no one responded to an incident that should have been detected.”
