Theft Alert

This comes from a neighbor on ARD.

I wanted to pass along some information I recently acquired which will be of interest to our neighbors and off-duty sheriff. It concerns a different, though less noticed aspect of crime in our neighborhood. It's well known that a large proportion of our neighbors utilize gardening services for their lawn maintenance, and consequently we see a number of gardeners working in Sierra Oaks throughout the day and early evening. I, too, have employed a gardener, and he services a number of lawns in Sierra Oaks. He reported to me that a few weeks ago, on a Thursday evening at around 6 pm, his pickup truck with his equipment loaded in the back was parked in front of my house on the 3000 block of American River Drive, and while returning to the front yard from the back yard he noticed that a black Ford Expedition had pulled up next to his truck. Four African-American youths (described as being in their late teens to early twenties) were reaching into the back of his pickup truck and tried to remove the edger and blower machines, though they were unsuccessful because the equipment was locked down with a cable. The gardener then ran toward the young men, one of whom grabbed a loose container with several gallons of gasoline for the lawn movers. They jumped back in their vehicle and sped off with the gasoline container. The gardener also informed me that his gasoline container was stolen from the back of his pickup truck while he was working in the back yard of a home on Hathaway Court. He has spoken with other gardeners in the area who report similar experiences. It has now become almost standard practice for gardeners to lock their equipment to the truck floor with security cables, and most gardeners who work in pairs split up so that one is always in the front yard while the other works in the back yard. Occasionally, however, a piece of equipment will be left unlocked on the back of the truck and thieves will quickly run away with a blower machine, edger, or even a lawn mower when they pull up with a large truck of their own. These expensive items are now apparently highly coveted by thieves, so everyone should be alert and instruct their service people to do the same.