Car thieves in Thousand Oaks caught on camera

A dozen vehicles were broken into in a Thousand Oaks neighborhood over the weekend, with the thieves even stealing one to use a getaway car.  

Cameras captured at least one of burglaries as a gang of crooks terrorized an upscale neighborhood, breaking into not just cars, but homes as well.  

“Alarms were going off in people’s houses and the police ended up coming a little while after,” resident Alisa Bertram told KTLA’s Jennifer McGraw. “They took all their stolen merchandise and put it into my car and then drove away with my car.”  

Bertram said all of the burglaries happened the night after Thanksgiving and that the thieves likely assumed that many of the residents would likely be out of town.  

Neighbors in the area believe that these thieves have been targeting them for some time, with one even chasing a woman through the neighborhood.  

“He turned around to come back to our street,” one resident identified only as Kim told KTLA. “My kids were at home asleep and so I turned around and then it sparked off about a five-minute car chase, that he was chasing me around the neighborhood and going the wrong way, trying to run me off the road.” 

For her part, Betram said the crooks thought they could simply remove her license plates and that would be enough to get away with stealing her car.  

“I happen to have a tracker on my car, an AirTag,” she explained. “We located it in Pacoima and the police went to the house and they towed the car.”  

Neighbors say they are hoping more can be done to protect their homes and property, even thinking about putting up cameras in the area that would capture license plates.  

Anyone with information or surveillance video of the break-ins is encouraged to contact police.