Police closed in on a Toyota Camry with four persons aboard on westbound Highway 24 near Pleasant Hill Monday, the vehicle believed used the armed robbery of a customer at a Walnut Creek Starbucks location moments earlier.
Four individuals suspected of the robbery were removed from the car at gunpoint after their car was stopped near the highway’s center divide. Witnesses said the car’s occupants appeared to have surrendered without incident.
Police in Walnut Creek were reportedly looking for the car after a customer at a N. Main Starbucks location was robbed of his wallet and laptop by at least two men, one of whom flashed a small, black pistol.
There was no immediate word of injuries as a result of that incident, which took place shortly after 3 p.m. Monday.
If only every crime was solved this quickly and successfully. Great job WCPD (or other agencies).
If they would only be held .. chances are they will be out there n hours.
Gotta say I agree with both posters.
But I’m so fracking glad they at least caught them and the victim will be made (somewhat) whole. Used to be that (that Starbucks) was a safe Starbucks, but proximate distance to a Honda to freeway says no. So so sad.
Oh wait, and it goes without saying perps released to do it again.
Did it go down inside or outside the store?
The workforce participation rate is the smallest it’s been since the WWII era– that means there are countless young people on the streets without jobs living hand to mouth– this is fertile ground for crime, which is itself unacceptable. More than 80% of the jobs created since the 2008 financial crash are of the temp or near-poverty “gig” economy types that studies have clearly shown lead nowhere and keep those job-holders in near-poverty given the very low pay and minimal opportunities for advancement. Whether we like it or not, if that’s the best we can do we’re going to continue to see a steady increase in property crime. Putting the offenders all in jail is an option– but the cost of that ($75.000 per person per year) is vastly higher then the cost of doing something about it– investment in families, poverty reduction, educations, etc. This comment will likely infuriate some, but those are the facts– we get the society that we pay for.
Totally get you, Wes… thanks for a thoughtful and thought-provoking post.
You’re forgetting one important fact. A lot of criminals REFUSE to work for a living. Crime IS their profession. And if you don’t want them in jail, let them stay at your house. Crime does pay (until you’re caught) and a lot of them aren’t. It’s the criminals responsibility to do something about their own pathetic situation. I want them in jail where they belong, and I don’t care what it costs.
Many is not most. Far from it. And like it or not, there is a well-documented and thoroughly studied connection between poverty, downward social mobility and property crime. The US is no longer an upwardly socially mobile society. In 1980 you had an approximately 80% chance of doing better than your parents just by getting an education and working hard. Today that number sits below 45%. A precipitous decline. This is what you get in highly unequal societies where most of the productivity gains are distributed almost entirely to the top income percentiles. It is what it is. According to a Federal Reserve study done last year nearly half of all US families cannot afford to pay an unexpected $400 expense without using a credit card or selling off their personal property. The figure rises to nearly 80% when you increase the number to $1000. Countless thousands of families use GoFundMe pages to raise money for medical bills– and most of these people are insured. More than 500,000 US bankruptcies per year from medical bills (again, most had insurance). I could go on but the main incontrovertible point I’m making is that after more than forty years of negative economic trend data we now live in a far less stable society and economic insecurity leads to more crime. So what’s your solution? Lock’em all up!
I agree with you on medical bills and bankruptcy. Medical bills has been the leading cause of bankruptcy for a long time. As far as not having more than $400 to pay off a bill, that’s because most adults don’t keep liquid assets in their SAVINGS ACCOUNT. It doesn’t mean they don’t have more than $400 in assets. I can honestly say we have less than $400 in a savings account right now, and we’re not poor. If you’re not getting an education and working hard, that’s your fault. Anybody can go to college if they have the grades and test scores, and the poorer you are, the easier it is to get a student loan. You can get a good paying job without a college degree, especially skilled labor (union wages). Cry me a river. Well, at least we both voted…
I’ve learned that if I want to know what’s going on I need to come here.
Actually, the rate is above that in the range 1948 to 1976 and climbing slowly after its most recent nadir in 2012-2018: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate . This link shows rates by different segments of the population since 2020. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm.
There is no current excuse for bad behavior.
The LFPR graph is quite clear– your positive spin notwithstanding– we’ve lost forty years of progress. LFPR is in the pits. It’s not an excuse for bad behavior BTW, it’s just economic reality. People need to be punished for their crimes, especially violent ones. But would you prefer to invest in a full-on police-state to minimize it rather than making the social investments that would bring the number down naturally? Like I said, the US has become a downwardly mobile society for most of its citizens and that is a reversal of fortune that’s been trending downwards or sideways for decades. So I expect more property crime as economic inequality grows, opportunity wanes, and no one wants to pay all of the taxes necessary to really do anything about it– especially the wealthy– who, as a percentage of income, pay by far the least.
Sounds like Titania McGrath has adopted a male pseudonym and started taking an interest in Walnut Creek.
And that’s what you get when they find the facts are not on “their side”. I’m sure you’d support a “stop and frisk” policy in Walnut Creek too. Waiting for problems to end up in the criminal justice system is the dumbest way to deal with crime– and by far the most costly. I could cite studies but you’d probably label them all as “fake news”. Enough said.
So it boils down to the great divide. The 1percent and the rest of us who fight over the crumbs. Maybe Bernie Sanders is right. I’m just thinking out loud.
Something better be done and soon–or the US can expect much worse than Donald Trump in our future. There has been a complete reversal of fortune for the entire middle class within the US. The evidence for this is overwhelming and those that deny these economic realities are likely to be the same people that deny the incontrovertible scientific reality of Climate Change. We seem to be living in a post truth, post science society where consensus on anything– even settled science, or decades worth of hard trend data, is simply dismissed as “fake news”. How does a nation solve serious and worsening problems in a situation like this? Look to history… it is not pretty.
Gulp. Yes. Happened upon “On the Beach” during our early morning movie streaming-thon this morning and its messaging hit home again – more perhaps than it did when we last saw it in the early 70s. Sticking with kid movies from here on out…
As much as I hope and fight for democratic change, events are more likely to be driven by catastrophe and will be reactionary rather than deliberative. “On the Beach” would be something well worth showing in pubic schools again. Believe it or not movies like that were commonly shown in our public schools in this county– I recall others like “All the President’s Men”, “Little Big Man”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, and so many others– they went a long way toward helping me understand this country– I doubt that anything like this is being done today in our schools. Young people– who are literally facing climate Armageddon if major changes are not well under way this decade– simply aren’t showing up to vote. Mind-blowing…