Jerome Larkins
Ventura County – There may be no more frantic 911 Emergency call received by law enforcement dispatchers than one made by a residential resident reporting an active break-in wherein bad guys are making a sincere effort to force entry into a home.
But that was exactly the nature of the call received by Thousand Oaks Police Department dispatchers on March 27th, when panicked homeowners reported home invaders breaking windows and attempting to gain access to the residence.
At that point, TOPD units, according to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Peter Frank, “immediately responded to the emergency.”
Upon arrival at the reporting residence, officers quickly ascertained that those inside the home were safe and unharmed and then established a secure perimeter of the neighborhood and initiated a ground and air search that included more than a dozen cops, a K-9 unit, and the implementation of a reverse 911 call to area residents.
That reverse 911 call delivered information relating to a suspect vehicle, whereupon TOPD detectives, working in concert with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies from the City of Walnut and the Sheriff’s Burglary Robbery Task Force tracked down Jerome Larkins and two unidentified juveniles.
Larkin and his cohorts were then associated with “several other residential burglaries in the Southern California region.”
But it wasn’t until several days later, when, on April 5th, Larkins, in the company of a male minor accomplice, was detained in a routine traffic stop in the City of Walnut and found to be in possession of personal property recently stolen from “a nearby home,” according to Sgt. Frank’s April 17th media report.
Over the next ten days, both juveniles were contacted and taken into custody and charged with residential burglary. Both were subsequently released to their parents.
For his part, Larkins was transported to Ventura County Jail where he was booked on multiple charges of residential burglary, with his bail set at $500,000.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
