The Piedmont Police Department issued a community alert on Wednesday, Nov. 1 regarding an armed robbery that occurred that afternoon at Monticello Avenue and Park Way at 3:25 p.m. According to police and reporting by KTVU, two young suspects described as wearing black hoodies and black masks robbed a resident at gunpoint in his driveway after following him home. The suspects demanded phones, wallets, watches, and keys. The suspects were reportedly both armed with black semi-automatic handguns. The vehicle left the area and headed up Park Way toward Highland Avenue. No one was injured in this incident, according to police.
The vehicle was described as a 4-door, Grey 2016 Nissan Maxima stolen in Oakland. KTVU reported that Piedmont’s ALPR system did not register the stolen vehicle as it entered the city. Piedmont police discovered the Nissan was stolen after seeing the car in a neighbor’s surveillance video. They then asked Oakland police to check the license plate and OPD informed them that it had been stolen the day before.
“In this case, there was no initial ping on the camera, and we don’t know why. We’ve got to find that out,” said Piedmont police captain, Chris Monahan. “We don’t know if there was a data entry flaw with the technology or something else that delayed putting it into the system, but it was a late hit.”
Piedmont police say they will be following up with Flock Safety, the company that makes the license plate readers, and with Oakland police to find out what happened.
Anytime a car is reported stolen, the local police agency that takes the report is supposed to put that information into a state-wide database called the Stolen Vehicle System.
Once the information is in that database, Flock updates the information every 1-2 hours. If the information isn’t entered into the database, Flock’s cameras can’t alert police about a stolen car driving into a city.
It’s not clear when, or how quickly, OPD entered the information about the stolen car into that database.
Piedmont police say that may have been the reason the Flock system didn’t alert them.
Allie Rasmus for KTVU, “Man followed to Piedmont home, robbed at gunpoint”
If you have any information or video relating to this incident, please contact the Piedmont Police Department at 510-420-3000.