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Emeryville Apple Store hit by ‘Grab & Run’ Thieves for fourth time in a month

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The Emeryville PD sent a Nixle alert yesterday for another ‘grab & run’ robbery at the Bay Street Emeryville Apple Store. This was at least the fourth incident of this type in a one month span.

Today at about 12:23PM, a group of 6-8 subjects committed a grab and run theft at the Apple Store in Emeryville. The suspects fled with an unknown amount of Apple products. The investigation is ongoing.

On August 25th, a resident reported being witness to one of these incidents on Nextdoor.com. Since then, there have been similar incidents reported on September 4th & 12th. Phone carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T have also reportedly been targets of these type of thefts.

The m.o. of the robberies typically involves a group of young men dressed in hoodies and sneakers who swarm the store, collect as much merchandise as they can carry, and jump into an awaiting getaway vehicle.


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A witness of the incident commended the staff of the store for ‘walling off’ customers, including his two-year old son, from the thieves. Twitter user Cassie Arnold captured a display table of empty charging docks where phones have been yanked or cut from their security cables.

Apple began stocking the recently released iPhone Xs models on September 21st. The display models can be disabled remotely but can still have value on the black market or can be disassembled and their parts sold oversees.

Apple security will not engage the thieves to avoid escalation or injury to bystanders. There have been situations where the thieves were confronted by good samaritans and caught including last week in Santa Rosa.

Technology products aren’t exclusive to these crimes as thirteen Lululemon stores have robbed in the Bay Area in the past 12 days including the Berkeley store.

Update: KRON4 is reporting that several arrests were made in Oakland today in connection with Apple Store thefts and the DOJ is expected to provide additional information on Thursday.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Emeryville Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Section at (510) 596-3700.


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Rob Arias

is a third generation Californian and East Bay native who lived in Emeryville from 2003 to 2021. Rob founded The E'ville Eye in 2011 after being robbed at gunpoint and lamenting the lack of local news coverage. Rob's "day job" is as a creative professional.

5 Comments

  1. One of these days someone will get hurt. Customer / employee / both. Apple probably has settlement funds set aside as part of their passive approach.

    Criminals know nothing will happen.

    Crap like this makes it easier to buy online at the price of our local businesses.

  2. I’d love to see drones developed (maybe even by Apple!) that can spring into action by some sort of “Follow That Car!” command from the employee nearest the front window. This would alert the police who could then get the drone to zoom in on the license, follow the thieves for miles. drop paint on the car’s top, shriek like crazy, etc., until some sort of resolution of the matter was made.

  3. kudo’s to the previous comment. it would seem the police should be notified as soon as anyone sees the group of thugs in the area. with a 5 min response time the EPD could be there, it would seem that an officer should be stationed there as a deterrent. we know the police can’t be everywhere, but the volume of sales at Bay Street could warrant this approach.

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