Photo Credit: Fox 10
While Scottsdale may be known as a world-class city best known for high end shops and restaurants, recently there has been a darker side to it. Along with being the launch point for numerous scam artists and fraudsters, it has been the target of organized theft rings quite frequently recently (read our coverage here). And a recent development demonstrates that this problem unfortunately still persists.
Last week Scottsdale police arrested seven individuals linked to a South American theft group suspected of committing burglaries across the western United States. The suspects, all Colombian nationals, were apprehended at a short-term rental near Camelback and Miller Roads following coordinated surveillance efforts.
The arrests were prompted by information from Burbank, California police, who alerted Scottsdale authorities about the group’s activities. Surveillance led detectives to observe the suspects committing burglaries in Tempe and Mesa. Subsequent searches recovered stolen property, including a French Bulldog taken during a California burglary. Each suspect is held on a $150,000 cash-only bond.
Authorities believe these suspects are part of a broader trend known as “crime tourism,” where individuals enter the U.S. on tourist visas to commit organized burglaries targeting affluent neighborhoods. Law enforcement agencies across multiple states have reported similar incidents involving South American nationals exploiting visa waivers to facilitate these crimes.
So why Scottsdale? That shouldn’t be a big surprise; it’s a city with a high concentration of wealth and relatively little crime historically, making it full of relatively easy targets. Perhaps the interesting aspect is that this is still happening; like it or not, the Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to immigration has heavily dissuaded attempts at immigration, with border crossings down dramatically. Apparently that fear doesn’t extend out to everyone though.
While one can argue that Trump’s policies have been too extreme and inappropriately doled out from time to time, it would be positive to see some similar consequences for these sorts of criminals. If a public case was made of sending these criminals to the awful prisons in El Salvador, perhaps that would dissuade others from following the same course of action.