Ventura County – Some people are faster learners than others. You remember them from school: the kids in the front row, wide-eyed and attentive, ready to raise their hands to answer any of the teacher’s questions.
Then there were those guys always hanging out in the back row, doing their best to raise a ruckus and break all the rules. Based upon the report filed on October 9th by Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Dan Hawes, 45-year-old Thousand Oaks resident Michael Rodriguez was, if the stereotype holds, one of those guys. It seems that Rodriguez had been the subject of a three-week long investigation by detectives of the Thousand Oaks Police Special Enforcement Unit and Investigations Bureau into a series of auto burglaries reported to have taken place throughout Thousand Oaks and the neighboring communities of Camarillo and Oxnard.
With a law enforcement reputation as “a habitual offender”, Rodriguez was identified as the principal suspect in the series of auto burglaries. When he was contacted by detectives on October 9th, he was found to be in possession of evidence linking him directly to the crimes. Remarkably, Rodriguez is alleged to have committed the burglaries while out on bail with “three open cases in Ventura County Superior Court,” including those pending adjudication on charges of possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, burglary, possession of burglary tools, accessory to a crime, and resisting or delaying an officer.
This most recent arrest earned him another trip to Ventura County Jail, where he was once again booked on charges of theft, possession of stolen property, and committing a crime while out on bail, with his bail set at $200,000.
