"It's really bad," said the owner of Abel's Jewelry, one of scores of gold stores lining Broadway, a grubby street through the heart of downtown Los Angeles. "You work all your life trying to have something for the family and they want to take it all in one day."
The beauty of gold, from a criminal stand point, is that it's easy to fence. Rings and necklaces can be melted down - destroying the evidence - and sold. Precious items such as diamonds are harder to alter and easier to trace.
Abel, the jewellery store owner, asked his last name not be used for fear of bringing unwanted attention from criminals. His store has already been robbed twice this year, most recently about two months ago when three men smashed his glass displays with hammers and made off with about US$10,000 of gold. They escaped in a getaway car.
There were at least six Los Angeles gold store robberies in June and July. On August 22, four men with hammers were arrested outside a jewellery store, Los Angeles police Lieutenant Paul Vernon said.
These thefts were suspected to have been carried out by gang members who covered their faces with hoods and hats, then rushed into stores and swiped what they could in a matter of seconds. One surveillance video shows a shopkeeper being blasted by pepper spray while robbers destroy display cabinets and grab what they can.
"Certainly the surging gold prices motivated these people to want to do these smash-and-grabs," Vernon said. "They are not trading what they steal at the market value of gold. Even if they get it half that, they are making a pretty penny."
In Oakland, police say dozens of women have had gold necklaces yanked from their necks on the street. More than 100 similar thefts have been reported in Los Angeles, a rash of robberies is taking place in St Paul, Minnesota, and police in Phoenix say muggers chatted up high school girls then ripped their gold necklaces from them.
"We've never seen this," said Oakland police Sgt Holly Joshi. Most of the victims were robbed while distractedly looking at their phones.
In July, thieves smashed open a glass display in the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in New Jersey and made off with about US$400,000 in gold samples collected from mines across the globe.
Rodriguez, the LA security guard, hasn't had to use his weapon in the four months he's stood guard. The stocky 44-year-old earned his nickname from gang members who he says regularly look him over as they slowly drive past the shops he patrols.
Most of the jewellery stores on Broadway are low-end enterprises with owners keen to make a quick buck buying jewellery, melting it and reselling it. The street alternates from squalid to splendid, dotted with crumbling former theatres and refurbished art deco high-rises.
Opposing forces of gentrification and homelessness play out on the street, where hustlers stand outside cheap electronics stores blasting Mexican music and drivers swoop into secured garages beneath newly renovated apartment buildings.
A couple of hundred metres down the street from Rodriguez, another gold store guard pops open the leather clasp securing his .357 magnum pistol when he sees two young men walking toward him.
Oscar Quintero says he's never had to fully unholster his gun but a few weeks ago thwarted a robbery by blasting pepper spray at a man who tried to run away with a gold chain around his neck.
- AAP
