Crime Most Foul in Claremont

Thursday morning (November 1) saw a strong-arm robbery on the Pomona College campus. Apparently around 8 in the morning two perps flashed a gun, hog-tied a female student in one of the northern dorms, and took her bank and credit cards. At least one bank card was used at 8:30 at the Stater Brothers at Towne and Foothill, and then at the Washington Mutual on Moreno in Montclair at 8:50. The Insider is grateful there are no reports of injuries to the student beyond the roughing-up mentioned.

Male, white, approximately 35 years of age. Female Hispanic or light skinned black, green eyes, blond wig, approximately 18-25.

The photos are taken from the Claremont PD website and enlarged here.

One comment on the surveillance photos. Please, can we get higher technology and higher resolution surveillance cameras, if we are going to have them at all? The originals linked on the PD website are 432 by 288 pixels for the entire frame. Maybe once upon a time there was reason to have such crummy photos due to camera or storage technology, but that time is past.

If the US government can see Osama bin Laden from space--well, OK, they can't do that, but they can read license plates from space--wouldn't you think the Stater Brothers could get a decent shot of a person's face from 30 feet? Maybe if the City Council has time amid it's important work of approving marijuana dispensaries and shoveling out money to the homeless, it could require any new surveillance cameras installed to produce viewable pictures.

Heck, they could hire a homeless person to sit in front of the market, which they are doing anyway, and snap pics of people entering with a cheap cell phone camera. You'd get better results than these.

There. The Insider solves two problems in one swell foop.

(By the way, this one is bad news for the Pomona College crime stats.)