OAKLAND \u2014 Police say four men who were recently charged in a cigarette store robbery are believed to be part of a crew linked to several brazen smash-and-grab incidents all over the East Bay, according to court records.<\/p>\n
The suspects \u2014 two Vallejo men, a Pittsburg man and a San Leandro man \u2014 were charged with a Jan. 14 incident where plainclothes officers allegedly witnessed the foursome leave an Oakland smoke shop, rob someone of an Acura, then drive to a gas station and commit an armed robbery. At that point, uniformed officers showed up and arrested the men, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Authorities had already been tracking the group for alleged involvement in similar robberies dating back to last November, including a robbery in Pittsburg where four men drove an Acura through the front-ent of a convenience store and made off with $60,000 to $100,000 in merchandise, according to court records. Other incidents were documented in Walnut Creek, Antioch and Oakland, police said.<\/p>\n
At least three other suspects, including a local rapper who served time in federal prison, were identified as suspected members of the same robbery crew but haven\u2019t yet been charged, according to court records.<\/p>\n
In one of the incidents, on Nov. 20 in Oakland, the group made off with a cigarette carton that had secretly been equipped with a GPS device, according to police, a tactic employed by local store owners to combat thefts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 Police say four men who were recently charged in a cigarette store robbery are believed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[32462,861,862,143,145,144,1780,78769],"class_list":{"0":"post-162479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-antioch-crime","9":"tag-bay-area-crime","10":"tag-california-crime","11":"tag-oakland","12":"tag-oakland-headlines","13":"tag-oakland-news","14":"tag-oakland-robbery","15":"tag-pittsburg-crime"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}