Joseph Rose
GOLETA — In the world of criminal larceny, burglars who sneak into private residences or business establishments are considered by other social miscreants to live low on the totem pole of criminal enterprise and to have little in the way of courage or bravado. Burglars are, by and large, opportunistic cowards who live by taking the property of others when nobody’s looking.
A recent exemplar of this variety of thief appears to be Joseph Rose, a Santa Barbara County resident recently arrived from Boston, Massachusetts, who was arrested on April 3rd pursuant to the investigation of an attempted burglary at Goleta’s Unitarian Universalist Live Oak Church.
According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Kelly Hoover, it was early in the morning of April 2nd when law enforcement received “a report that a burglary had just been interrupted” by a church employee who was preparing the premises for Sunday religious services.
The employee “provided a good physical description” of Rose to detectives as cops flooded the area to look for him.
Shortly thereafter, deputies made contact with Rose and discovered that “he was carrying stolen items that implicated him in the crime” and that he bore “cuts and scrapes” to his arms that indicated he had broken a window to gain entry into his burglary target.
The immediately ensuing investigation indicated that Rose had also burglarized two other churches in the Goleta area, the facts of which continue to be investigated. Following his contact by deputies, Rose was arrested and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was booked on two counts of burglary.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
