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Southern California -- home of the high-speed freeway chase -- was the scene of a different kind of pursuit Friday afternoon: one that reached speeds of zero mph.
Thanks to "some type of tracking device" hidden in a bag of stolen money, authorities were able to locate bank robbers on the northbound 110 Freeway in Los Angeles, halt traffic and conduct a car-to-car search, said Deputy Albert Martinez of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.
"The trackers out there are pretty accurate," said Martinez.
Hundreds of cars were backed up in the Hawthorne area near Manchester Avenue around 1 p.m. local time, as police officers on foot waded through a sea of vehicles.
Also on NBCLosAngeles.com: Family in deadly DUI crash gets Santa visit
Aerial video showed at least two people being taken into custody (pictured below). By 1:20 p.m., the freeway was reopened and traffic was returning to normal levels.
The search was believed to be linked to an armed bank robbery in Moreno Valley, Calif., earlier in the day. At least three masked men robbed the Altura Credit Union at 12125 Day St. in Moreno Valley around 9:20 a.m. local time, police said.
NBC Los Angeles
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Nice headline. Is there such a thing as an un-busy LA freeway?
It would be a blast to be stuck next to the target vehicle.
I'm troubled by the fact that yet again, everyone is presumed guilty. They stopped a highway and searched car to car. Reasonable suspicion does not apply to every vehicle on a highway.
GM Bill
Shades of the OJ Simpson 20 mph chase by LAPD! LOL However, the police got the suspects! Good Job.
Hey, any L.A. freeway between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. is okay... so long as there's no accidents up ahead of you.
Those had to be two very surprised bank robbers.
Nice job!
Dumb answer Atlas, not everyone is presumed guilty. What if the perps were murderers fleeing the scene. The police knew they were somewhere on the freeway. I would rather have the cops capture the bad guys instead of being concerned if you were inconvenienced for a bit.
Look at it this way. What if the bank robbers started shooting, when they saw all those police officers coming up to their car............
A lot of innocent people, could of been killed............ DAMMED IF YOU SERVE AND PROTECT, AND DAMMED IF YOU DON'T........
AtlasWillShrug, #1.4- I agree with you that "something" is troubling about it and agree that it's in the "infliction" of "presumed guilt", with consequence, unwarrantedly onto so many. AND, this is a great example of undue "technological" interference and intrusion by Law Enforcement into a mass of "innocent" bystanders with another "bad call", as to immediacy of the situation. Did they have to apprehend right then and there? Couldn't they have assigned a couple of Law Enforcement People to follow the tracking for a while until the car finally got off the highway and stopped somewhere, etc? The only good thing about this that I see is the message it's sending to Bank Robbers is to think twice, if not 3 or more times, that the money they're stealing will be "literally" traceable. Other than that, The Police had NO WARRANTED URGENCY for this Search and it's Grandiose, at best; and most tellingly shows how they are not able to make distinctions like that, between what constitutes an emergency requiring "immediacy-at-any-cost", even to Others and Innocents and what does not and how they're operating on "hyper-vigilancy", like EVERYTHING IS AN EMERGENCY and IMMEDIATE, because the technology being used is IMMEDIATE.
Also, I saw another story similar to this one, with the same hours-long stopping of traffic and car to car search, but in that happenstance, the car to car search entailed huffy ordering around of People and even the handcuffing of a Woman in front of her kid/s, etc....
WAY COOL and FAR OUT! I LOVE IT!!
Yeah, right up until they could have carjacked and used you as a hostage. People around these vermin are lucky it didn't turn into a shootout. I'm sure many remember that massive shootout in LA years ago with two bank robbers who eventually wound up on the wrong side of the bullet, one at his own hand.
Personally, I think we should bring back public gallows. But the bed wetters would never go for that. Anyway, never fear...these perps will be out in a decade or so (if that long) to do it all over again thanks to our liberal judicial systems around the nation.
I guess that some (?) of you have never been to the LA, East LA area on any free way in the afternoon let alone on a Friday afternoon. It's like this IF you can go at 5-7 MPH for more than a minute, you are going at rocket speed. They could have actually walked up to the car on foot and pulled them over.
Great strategy for the cops. Only question is what if the suspects didn't use I-10? But if there was a tracker in the bag I guess they would have still caught up to them. The only down side I can see is there were a lot of potential hostages stuck in traffic.
#1.14 Dulcygqb523
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Atlas, you're right, Rex is wrong. Should we now expect that every time there is an alleged perpetrator on a highway that the police will halt all traffic and conduct car-to-car searches?
Rex - its not a matter of being inconvenienced, its a matter of not getting to the point that the police in this country are free to stop everyone without any reasonable suspicion of wrong doing, for an indeterminate amount of time, while they illegally search hundreds of cars without warrant or probable cause.
garcher - This isn't a "great strategy". It is the willful, blatant usurpation of the Constitution of the United States. But you and Rex are apparently so happy living under the thumb of the police that you don't care about your freedom.
"some type of tracking device"
Piece of string ?
Bread Crumbs! Blood would work better as long as all of those officers aren't tracking the wrong person they shot. Looks like a lot of confusion and some with guns drawn and some just standing around? Having a Police officer pull a gun on you for a tail light out isn't fun!
Kudos to the police on this one. Instead of chasing these idiots and endangering others, they shut it down. Well done.
And had there been a shoot out there would have been a lot of people in the line of fire!
And that would have been the criminals fault. Do some of you guys have a love affair with criminals?
Yeah real fine, lots of bystander targets if the suspects decided to shoot it out, not to mention instant hostage. Yeah real good.
Police don't care about innocent civilians.
Now if law enforcement could be as effective in stopping the bankers from robbing the bank, they'd be onto something.
Law enforcement shouldn't have to work that hard to stop bank robbers. In the age of bullet proof glass and several other security measures banks have very little excuse to be robbed.
You must be thinking of check cashing stores...most banks don't have bullet proof glass.
Best thing to have is a tracking device on the money. So if a criminal wants to steal it...welp they'll be in for a rude awakening. :)
20 cops and 2 crooks... Wow! The cops won!
Most bank robbers just want the money and they know if caught that it is jail time. They don't want Murder to the charges also.
Just blast it out "tracking device" so the world knows !!! Another blunder .....pisssst.....shhhhh !
Must have been some kind of "GPS" tracking device since almost 4 hours had passed since bank was held up, how else would you find the robbers in a sea of cars on any freeway.
Seems like the banks have finally "upgraded" I'll call it from using those "exploding blue dye packs they put in with the stolen cash like in the movies.
I'll bet the crooks had one heck of a look of total surprise when the police picked them out from all those other cars, another priceless moment I wish had been caught on video so we could have seen there faces.
Good job to the police and the banks this time around and no one was hurt, except maybe the crooks pride!
The tracking device was probably a small chip that would be hard to spot by the crook.
Turn off your phone!
When bank CEO's lose billions of other people's money, they get government bailouts and millions in bonuses.. When poor people steal a few thousand, they get life in prison. Why is that, Judge Judy?
They didn't "lose" it, they hedged and swindled (they called it legislation) small fortunes for themselves ...
Because you willingly place the money in a bank to keep it safe from those "poor people", and indirectly pay those CEOs to manage it for you and pay you interest. Sometimes those investment decisions pay off, other times not. Meanwhile those "poor people" directly steal the money from people like you and generate no benefit for you at all.
Are you really this dense or are you just pretending to be stupid?
dumbest criminals material here. taking the busy interstate while running from the cops how stupid.
Very nice use of technology. We should see more of this in America. The only deterrant to crime is vigilance. Since people will not be vigilant, let machines do it! We are watching you, and Im OK with that.
This will be one day be a antiquated scene. Look for Drones near you in the future. The satellite infrastructure and laws are already being set up. Why can't Cali's say Interstate 110 or I-110?
I'm glad the bad guys were caught but...
#1: Dumb to reveal the method (tracking device in money). Now the next robbers will look for / neutralize the device.
#2: Lucky this didn't turn into a shoot-out with all the innocents around. And there were plenty of ready-made hostages in the adjacent vehicles...
#3: What is the precendent for 'searching' all the surrounding cars? Is everyone presumed guilty? Was anyone else 'busted' because something was 'found' in their vehicle?
When this technology is in wide spread use and the cops are used to using it they will be able to release cars at the beginning of the line. They will hold just enough traffic to hold the criminals wherever they are. The cops have choppers/drones to keep an eye on em incase they light out on foot.
I counted over 20 different officers at the scene of the arrest!What is this? Do they all get some merit badge for showing up? Wouldn't 4-8 officers be enough to arrest 2c bank robbers? Why is it,after the robbers are caught ,do the same number of officers hang around the area for the next 2-4 hours?Are there no other crimes in the area to investigate or was this it for the week.?Knowing the area and the people wh live there propensity for commiting crimes,certainly someone,in this area were committing and getting away with crimes these 20+ police were to busy to investigate!With money so tight,we should be more careful with the utilization of our resourses!
I was stuck on a Chicago highway this past summer for 4 HOURS due to a chase of criminals. It was 90 degrees, I had two toddlers in the back, and when I called for information they were extremely rude and made no apologies and they kept lying and saying there was an accident--and there was but it was cleared up within 30 minutes and the criminals escaped from the care so they haulted everything and let me tell you if I could sue them for the inconvenience I would. They have no right make such chases when innocent drivers are on the highway.
Control traffic you control crime.
We all know who these people are.
I think the tracking device line might just be bull@!$%#. Why the heck would they have to search car to car if they had a device? Surely they could have at least gotten within a couple dozen feet. This would then mean a grand total of several cars max. So, no one saw what the vehicle looked like that they left in?
From the looks of the picture they had every cop in the county out there. Good job.
Very stupid and thoughtless act by the cops.
A gun fight would have ended the lives of a countless number of innocent, law-abiding people.
The cops could have easily allowed the robbers to get to their destination and arrested them there. But, of course, that would not have been as exciting as stopping traffic and putting people in the middle of a possible shoot-out.
If there was a tracking device hidden in the money that the police had a bead on, why didn't they just wait until the perps got off the freeway and then pull them over? Why shut down the whole freeway?
In a perfect world none of this would have happened, BUT since this is not a perfect world.......People need to realize that these police officers HAVE to do their jobs and catch the criminals....Or would you be happy to let them run amuck and unchecked? So sorry to inconvenience you with someone actually doing their jobs...BLAME the F-ing CRIMINALS not the police officers...They are the ones who caused all of it, unless you are the criminal and then I say screw you and they should have shot your sorry a$$ right when they found you.
I'm so tired of the cops and robber scenario being shown on TV and the public put at risk. It's not that I don't want the alleged criminals to be caught and prosecuted; but what about the innocent bystanders? What if these robbers had a gun? Sitting in traffic, the people in the other cars could be shot and/or killed while the authorities are swarming these people. What about the high speed chases, when other drivers on the road are hurt or killed? Many innocent people are hurt and killed every year because the law must get their criminal, no matter what. I remember about 10 years ago, during a chase; cops hit a van full of people and killed several children. The money stolen is just not worth the life another person. There are so many other ways to catch these people where the public will not be affected. Also the media does not help this situation with covering every single car chase in the Southern California region. Work at getting your ratings up in another way.
How many CHIPs does it take to apprehend a thief?
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i did mozz
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