“Any ideas as to why the LAPD refused to use common sense?”
There was not a clue. It was really perplexing and disturbing. Prior to the final incident, he and his mother had described to me what was happening to them. They showed how the existing deadbolt was being defeated when they kicked the front door open each time. You could see the broken wood door frame and how difficult it was to fix the damage to keep it from being to weak to offer any meaningful resistance to such kicking the next time.
We often discussed the problems and expense of installing a video surveillance system to catch the robbers in the act with videotape proof. The LAPD kept using the lack of independent witness testimony or other evidence as an excuse to do nothing meaningful about these attacks. We discussed how my friend could cut away the damaged part of the door frame and screw on a replacement block of wood holding a new and stronger deadbolt lock. In the final attack, the repaired deadbolt lock defeated the battering for awhile, but it ultimately failed when they battered it enough to breakaway the wood framing the repairs were screwed into. After the final attack it was necessary to remove the entire door frame and replace it with a new door frame. Still, the landlord refused to use a steel doorframe that could defeat such battering.
The son finally agreed to move the mother back to the East coast to live with the daughter to escape this nightmare.
About LAPD so far as I know basically refuse to make any comments justifying the arrest under California law except for the formal accusation that the friend was supposedly brandishing a firearm in violation of the law, and the witness testimony of the robbers was supposed to outweigh the witness testimonies of the mother and son, their smashed door, and their looted home. The LAPD also relied upon the inability of the mother and son to identify the persons who robbed their home to justify relying upon the robbers’ false allegations while giving no credence to the victims’ allegations. All of this happened almost within line of sight of the police station at the end of the block, after numerous complaints about the robberies had already been made to the same police station.
The only other factor was the Jewish ethnicity of the son and mother.
Your friend saw the robbers in his house and talked to them in the front yard and still couldn’t identify them? HUH? Something smells.
I can now understand the hesitancy of the LAPD to arrest them.