Burglars target storage facilities

By Stephanie Bertholdo bertholdo@theacorn.com

When Kevin Shepard and his family moved from Newbury Park to Thousand Oaks last September, they decided to store their belongings at Hollywood Storage in Newbury Park while Shepard and his wife, Jenna, remodeled their home.

In April, Shepard returned to the locker to pick up some of the equipment, which he had planned to lend to a friend. He punched in his personal access code that opened the doors to the building, but when he tried the lock on his container, the key didn’t fit.

"I went to the front office and said that there’s a lock on the container that’s not mine," Shepard said. "The girl’s face just dropped."

Shepard’s recording equipment, musical instruments and other high-tech items, valued at $30,000, were gone. Every item in his locker that had a market value had been stolen.

Storage facilities recently have been robbed in Oxnard, T.O., Simi Valley and into Los Angeles, according to Sgt. Jerry Weaver of the Thousand Oaks Police Department.

The video surveillance at Hollywood Storage showed a truck entering the building and strategically parking to block the video camera. Two men had rented a space with fake identification. The access code opened the doors to the same building that Shepard used.

Detectives said the thieves simply break the locks on individual containers, empty those with saleable items and replace the locks. No one knows a crime has been committed until a customer tries to retrieve his property.

In one respect Shepard was lucky. At least he filed a police report and could hope that his equipment might be found in pawnshops or on the Internet.

Other Hollywood Storage customers may not even know that they’ve been robbed.

Hollywood Storage is a booming business. Jay Sundher, general manager, admitted that not all of his customers have been contacted about the threat of the crime ring.

"We have over 1,600 customers," Sundher said. "We’re not going to contact them all.

"We have a lot of information on our cameras," Sundher said. "We’ve notifying a lot of people, but are not going to notify people who are far away from this building," he said.

"I believe that everyone in the building where there was theft was contacted," he said, but added that he had to verify that information with the manager.

"I don’t understand why (Hollywood Storage) doesn’t notify all tenants and give them the opportunity to file police reports if their items were stolen," said Jenna Shepard. "That would be the only way that they’d have a chance to recover their possessions." After property is stolen, police could match items that are being sold at pawnshops, which must file data reports with authorities.

Shepard added that some people don’t regularly check on their valuables at storage facilities. "If you only check your stuff once a year, good luck finding it," she said.

According to Weaver, Hollywood Storage has been robbed repeatedly. He said that nine customers have filed reports, but added that there could be more victims.

"They take whatever they think they can turn over," Weaver said of the criminals.

The day after it became apparent the Shepard’s possessions had been stolen, Hollywood Storage implemented 24-hour surveillance. The company now employs a security guard and has other security measures