HomePublicationBurbankBreak-Ins Target Four Magnolia Park Businesses

Break-Ins Target Four Magnolia Park Businesses

First published in the Dec. 4, 2021, print issue of the Burbank Leader.

Burbank police are investigating burglaries that affected four small businesses in the Magnolia Park area early Friday morning.

Officers received notice that an alarm at a hardware store had been triggered at about 2:40 a.m. in the 3200 block of West Magnolia Boulevard, and found that three other businesses had also been burglarized. All had their windows smashed, according to Lt. J.J. Puglisi of the Burbank Police Department.

Puglisi added that some clothing and a “small amount of cash” were taken during the burglaries, but noted that investigators may discover that additional items were stolen.

The lieutenant also said that incidents do not appear similar to the recent string of smash-and-grab retail thefts in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area that have attracted widespread attention.

“I think that would be an irresponsible conclusion to draw at this point,” Puglisi said. “It doesn’t fit the [method] at all of what’s going on in parts of the state.”

No suspect information was available this week.

Anyone with information regarding the burglaries was asked to contact the BPD’s investigations division at (818) 238-3210.
Burbank-area burglaries appear to be on the rise compared to the past few years. BPD crime data, which is available for months through October 2021, indicates that 269 burglaries were recorded from January to October this year, a 15.4% increase from the same period in 2020 — though the crime statistics for that year are usually considered abnormally low due to the coronavirus pandemic. The BPD data indicated 252 burglary reports for that period in 2019.

Burglary reports often fluctuate from month to month, however. Police noted 37 reports of that incident type in October, more than double the 18 reported in August. But Burbank also saw similar counts in January and July of this year.

Generally, reports of most major incident types — murders, rapes, burglaries, robberies, aggravated assaults, thefts and auto thefts — in Burbank have trended downward since 2017. The January-to-October total for those crimes was 2,205 this year. With the exception of 2020, that figure is the lowest Burbank has seen since 2015, though data from November and December could shift that standing.

— City News Service contributed to this report

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