Los Angeles Lincoln Heights
Cemetery of the Amazon packages – this is how thieves systematically rob freight trains
Freight for companies is unpopular because the thieves often have no idea what the contents are.
© T. Fallon / AFP
Railroad tracks covered in looted packages shock US In Los Angeles, freight trains are regularly robbed. The thieves are after the packages from private customers.
Railroad robberies have a long history in the United States. After all, that’s how outlaws like Billy the Kid stole their money together. Shocking photos from Los Angeles now show that the tradition of train robbery is by no means dead. Entire trains are regularly looted in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood.
Like the gangs of the Wild West, the robbers take advantage of the fact that the trains there have to run particularly slowly. The thieves jump onto the wagons and break open the containers with bolt cutters or angle grinders, the packages from parcel services or senders such as Amazon contain. Then the contents are first randomly shoveled onto the tracks.
Only there is the prey sighted. The remains of thousands of crates and packages ripped open lie strewn along the tracks. And the content that is of no interest to the perpetrators.
robbers and vultures
After the actual robbers, the “vultures” come to rummage through the remains. The railroad company Union Pacific had the tattered, image-damaging packaging removed from a section of track a month ago, but four weeks later the tracks are back filled with the packaging. The railroad states, “We have increased the number of Union Pacific special agents on patrol, and we have deployed and researched additional technologies to help us combat this criminal activity.”
Long railway lines
But that’s hardly enough. Much of the crime occurs along sections of the railway line where homeless people are camping. The trains are not plundered by individuals, but by larger groups. A single patrol of security guards cannot oppose them. Again and again there are long waiting times due to the congestion in the port of Los Angeles. A stationary train is a particularly easy target. John Schreiber, a cameraman for the CBS television network in Los Angeles, said: “There are looted packages as far as the eye can see. Amazon packages, UPS boxes, unused Covid tests, fishing bait, shipping containers, everything on the broken-in trains was found.”
Private packages are in demand
Parcels intended for private individuals with residential addresses are particularly popular. Because they usually contain products that are intended for the end customer. What is particularly frustrating for the railway company is that the robberies are hardly ever followed up. In Los Angeles, prosecutors stopped prosecuting minor crimes in December 2020. The controversial policy has led to a sharp rise in shoplifting. Professional gangs rob entire shops. Union Pacific said in a letter to the Los Angeles District Attorney last month that theft rate in LA County increased 160 percent in a year. Even their own security forces are powerless if the train robbers are released from custody within a few hours, according to Union Pacific.
Source: LA Times