Along the Union Pacific trainline in downtown Los Angeles, piles of shredded Amazon boxes litter the tracks where old-school train heists are back in vogue.
California cops have been left scrambling as gangs of thieves armed with bolt cutters and crowbars are clambering aboard mile-long trundling freight trains to loot expensive electronic goods, high-end clothing and jewelry.
Sometimes the robbers strike while the lumbering locomotives are still moving, while others brazenly trigger the emergency brakes so that their accomplices can hack their way into the metal containers.
LA is the undisputed ‘capital of cargo theft’ with trains ferrying goods from the major ports, but the spate of train thefts have almost doubled across the nation since 2019.
Unsightly mounds of discarded cardboard boxes and undelivered items lay by the side of Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles, January 14, 2022
A person carries items collected from train tracks, after criminals targeted a locomotive before leaving its doors wide open in a daring train heist
Officials say thieves target carriages with bolt cutters, making off with valuables without a care for care for the chaos left behind. Pictured: A couple rummage through stolen items fallen from cargo containers near
The issue of mass cargo theft shot into focus almost three years ago, when a Union Pacific railway track was overrun with thousands upon thousands of ransacked delivery boxes.
Stunning footage captured by NBC Los Angeles in November 2021 showed the tracks littered with cardboard as opportunistic criminals picked at the scraps – before the cameraman caught a thief in action with a pair of bolt cutters.
As outrage over the thefts swept the internet – with one expecting mother in Seattle telling the outlet she was ‘honestly just disgusted in human behavior’ after seeing her child’s car seat on the side of the tracks – photojournalist John Schrieber went to see the looting in action for himself.
He shared clips to X of abandoned packages ‘as far as the eye can see’ from the side of a Lincoln Heights track several months after, where he noted that thieves make an effort to target products bound for people’s homes as they are more valuable than bulk items such as toilet paper.
But the episodes are far from isolated incidents.
In 2022, Union Pacific claimed around 90 cargo containers were being illegally opened each day, and theft on its trains on the West Coast were up 160 percent that year.
Compared to the year ending October 2021, the spike stood at a staggering 356 percent.
In January 2022, the crisis even brought out California Governor Gavin Newsom to the tracks, where he likened the mess caused by the thefts to a shanty town, adding: ‘I couldn’t take it. I can’t turn on the news anymore. What the hell is going on?’
The year before, the FBI estimated that cargo-theft losses amounted to $1 billion – a figure it admits is an undercount, according to the New York Times.
The outlet cited a supply-chain risk expert that gave their own estimate at over $50 billion lost annually, with the reasons for the crimewave primarily falling on the abundance of online shopping, and lax security on freight trains.
California Governor Gavin Newsom visits a Union Pacific railroad site in January 2022, where he said he had to visit the mess for himself. ‘I couldn’t take it,’ he said. ‘I can’t turn on the news anymore. What the hell is going on?’
Much of the spike has been connected to the dramatic rise of online shopping in recent years, with the online retail sales soaring from $5 billion in 1998 to an estimated $2.7 trillion by 2027
Law enforcement said the gangs use cunning techniques to target trains, including triggering the emergency brakes and pulling trucks alongside the locomotives
The first reason is clear: E-commerce sales in 1998, the year the US Census Bureau began collecting data on the subject, stood at around $5 billion; the $958 billion figure today is forecast to rise to over $2.5 billion by 2027.
While the need for ultra-quick deliveries has torn up the landscape of online shopping expectations, it has also reshaped how packages are transported from A to B.
Notably, the seemingly secure route by sea becomes far more vulnerable as soon as packages are loaded out of California’s Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.
Once on the tracks, carriages are often only secured by solitary metal locks, and are typically manned by the drivers and staff who may be miles from looters down the end of the long carriages.
While the mechanics and logistics of hauling tones of goods across the country lend themselves to opportune criminals, the soft-on-crime policies of Newsom and Los Angeles DA George Gascon have come under fire and been blamed for the mess.
In December 2021, Union Pacific sent a letter to Gascón urging more aggressive prosecutions for cargo thieves and calling for an end to a no-bail policy for some defendants aimed at reducing overcrowding at jails during the coronavirus pandemic.
‘These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than twenty-four hours. Criminals boast to our officers that charges will be pled down to simple trespassing – which bears no serious consequence,’ the letter said.
In January 2022, as train car thefts swept the state, the National Review had had enough.
‘This breakdown of order is happening because the bedrock of civilized society, the rule of law, has been abandoned,’ the outlet’s editorial board concluded.
‘Never before have such arrays of riches from the world over been so invitingly there for the taking… For Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón, a paradigm exemplar of today’s progressive prosecutors, this is literally the express-track redistribution of wealth.’
In 2022, Union Pacific claimed around 90 cargo containers were being illegally opened each day. Pictured: Shredded boxes and packages are seen at a section of the Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles Friday, Jan. 14, 2022
Amid fury over the repeat cargo heists, Union Pacific sent a letter to Gascón urging more aggressive prosecutions for cargo thieves while residents blame lax Democrat-run policing for fueling the crisis
Union leader Edward A. Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said that in his 28-years as a Union Pacific engineer he would frequently watch looters crack into trains unencumbered.
He detailed to the New York Times how criminals would even use ladders to clamber up carriages, or pull trucks alongside the trains, but his only option was to call the rail police dispatcher and keep going.
Once opened, the carriage doors would also remain open, leading to thousands more items pouring out of the cargo along the tracks.
‘Between L.A. and Tucson is where I know a lot of theft happens,’ Hall added.
The safety mechanics of the freight trains also offer another route in, as thieves have also reportedly taken to cutting the air-compression brake hoses between the carriages, triggering the emergency brakes.
From there, a conductor may try to locate the source of the problem, however their miles-long walk along the length of the train hardly lends itself to a quick arrest.
Officials warn that the rise in online shopping is only adding to the chaos, as they are increasingly able to pinpoint more expensive cargo loads as they practice – such as identifying certain locks and tracking shipments across the Pacific.
Former Union Pacific law enforcement agent Gary Rogers said he became adept at tracking the tactics used by gangs on his decades on the force, who moved with such ruthlessness they left it almost impossible for cops to catch them in the act.
He told the New York Times that the most successful heists would see one daring criminal climb on board the train, before timing the emergency brakes to just the right moment to strike.
‘The train would stop, and the guys would be there waiting to unload.’
