Scores of looters, burglars arrested for hitting empty homes near L.A. wildfires

More than 100 people have been arrested over the past two weeks on charges related to the Los Angeles wildfires, including dozens of opportunistic looters and burglars.

Los Angeles authorities said at least one thief dressed as a firefighter and others used phone apps to monitor evacuated neighborhoods as deadly blazes ripped through the nation’s most populous county.

Criminals made off with high-end goods after ransacking swanky homes. Police said three burglars working together were arrested with six figures worth of stolen property. Other thieves were caught with entertainment industry awards in their arms.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would help upgrade looting to a felony after he was pressured by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman. Federal prosecutors were also looking to crack down on predatory burglars.

“We will not permit victims to be revictimized,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said late last week. “Our community has suffered tremendously, and we are here to support them. The Joint Fire Crimes Task Force is committed to addressing crimes coming out of the fires, including any looting, arson, illegal drone flights and fraud.”

Most arrests were for curfew violations or trespassing in the fire zones, but looters were taking the next step.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said one man donned firefighter gear to burglarize a home in Malibu.

The sheriff said he checked on the supposed firefighter because he was sitting down but then noticed “we had him in handcuffs.”

Prosecutors said three thieves were arrested in Mandeville Canyon, near the Pacific Palisades fire. Authorities caught them with $200,000 worth of property.

In Altadena, a suburb just north of Pasadena inside the Eaton fire zone, a group of people were caught stealing a resident’s 2002 Emmy Award from an evacuated property.

Altadena Town Council member Connor Cipolla called the looting a “unique evil.” He remained inside the fire zone to protect his home from the flames and the criminals.

“We saved our homes from a fire. I’ll be damned if we’re going to see them get ransacked after the fact,” Mr. Cipolla told The Washington Times.

Mr. Cipolla said he didn’t encounter any looters, but “shady characters” came to the neighborhood during the first 48 hours of the fire.

Some were just knuckleheads, he said, including a group of YouTubers taking videos of themselves near a destroyed home.

He said others likely had criminal intentions. Around midnight on the first night, a car full of men he had never seen before drove down his street and told Mr. Cipolla they were there to “help, quote-unquote.” He suspected they were looters and told them to get lost.

Mr. Cipolla, whose wife and three young children evacuated after the fire started on Jan. 7, said he remained in the neighborhood because he felt a sense of obligation as the representative for his district. This decision likely spared some of his neighbors from total ruin.

“My neighbor and I were here for the first three days. We put out fires and saved a bubble of, like, five to 10 homes,” the council member said.

Mr. Cipolla said he and others scrambled to tame the blaze while firefighters focused on attacking the source of the inferno.

He said he was helping stamp out baseball-size embers with shovels and sand when the fast-moving fires quickly enveloped a neighbor’s home in 40-foot-high flames.

The council member said he and another neighbor used a generator and a water pump to drain an inground pool and fill garbage cans with water. They used hoses to spray down the house.

The pair emptied multiple fire extinguishers on flaming wooden fences and tree roots. At one point, Mr. Cipolla said, he ran to a hardware store, bought the roughly $1,000 worth of fire extinguishers in stock and used them all.

Once police established a hard border around the fire zone, concerns about looters subsided, Mr. Cipolla said. He took issue with media reports portraying the Eaton zone as rife with crime and needing citizen vigilantism to keep thieves at bay.

Mr. Cipolla said deputies and police officers guarding the zone mentioned thieves trying to enter the evacuated area through canyon trails.

At least 27 people have been killed in the blaze: 17 in the Eaton zone and 10 in the Palisades zone.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the Palisades fire was 63% contained and the Eaton fire was 89% contained. Nearly 17,000 structures have been destroyed in the two zones.

Mr. Cipolla told The Times he planned to leave the fire zone and reunite with family. He was confident that the flames would no longer spread to his property and that fire officials were close to extinguishing the source of the blaze.

Next, he said, will be picking up the pieces.

“This is going to take sustained resources to rebuild,” Mr. Cipolla said. “But we will rebuild. This is a very resilient community, and we’ll make it happen.”