Recently in Tania Category

When I heard the sirens and saw the flashing lights of two Monrovia patrol cars whizzing down Huntington Drive Monday night, first thing I thought of was: "No. Couldn't be another shooting. Or could it?"

Sure enough, seconds later, I watched as police set up a perimeter in the 200 block of West Cypress Street. Turns out there was a drive-by shooting.

It seems the violence in Monrovia is growing, and residents of the area are not surprised. I spoke with more than a dozen residents Monday night - including students of Monrovia High - who knew all about rising tensions between Black and Hispanic gangs.

Turns out last night's shooting - though it may have had been fueled by a domestic dispute - involved two adult Black men who shot an adult Hispanic man.

We're just getting more information about the incident this morning. Attempts to talk a sergeant at the scene last night were unsuccessful. One officer kept saying this: "140 E. Lime. That's the Police Department." Yah, I know.

Look for a story in tomorrow's paper.

Arcadia police arrested a 44-year-old high-risk sex offender Thursday morning on a parole violation. Apparently, Paul Jeffrey Cricks, of Arcadia, didn't charge his electronic ankle bracelet – which has a global positioning system attached to it – and essentially disappeared from parole officers for a few days.

When the state agents realized Wednesday they weren't getting a signal from the bracelet, they went to Cricks' house in the 600 block of Baldwin Avenue. After breaking down the door, they found personal items, the bracelet's charger but no Cricks.

Further investigation found the offender had skipped out on work the last couple of days. He works at a tire shop in La Puente, according to police.

It wasn't until Thursday morning that Cricks was finally found. Arcadia officers, following up on the case, went back to Cricks' home. This time he was there, along with a small amount of narcotics, according to Arcadia police Lt. Larry Goodman.

So where was this offender – previously convicted of annoying or molesting children and indecent exposure – hiding out the last few days? No one seems to know.

All police have to say is the fact that Cricks was MIA was a major "public safety" concern. Really? But now he's in custody, so I guess the game of Where's Waldo? .... er.... Where's Cricks? is over.

This morning reporter Tania Chatila got a call from a woman letting her know detectives were at an El Monte ARCO station investigating a potential stolen credit and debit scam. The scam works by capturing magnetic information from the strip on the back of your card. Here's Tania's dispatch from the field:

In the time I've spent covering fraudulent crime stories, I've built up quite a list of do's and dont's when it comes to credit and debit card use. One of those dont's is the idea that when given the choice, people should use their debit cards as a credit transaction, requiring no pin number, instead of a debit transaction, requiring a pin number. This is to protect from debit card fraud.

But when the criminals are coming up with advanced enough technology to steal your information both ways, what's the point? El Monte Police detectives are investigating at least 15 cases of credit card fraud linked to an Arco Gas station near the El Monte airport. In this case, police believe the suspects used technology that could read both electronic strips on the back of cards and pin numbers.

So either way, the patrons of this popular gas station were doomed.