Police in Laurel said the male and two other teens smashed car windows and stole items from 54 cars in Laurel and 67 more in Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, and Howard Counties on the night of May 4, WRC-TV reported.
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Police arrested the 16-year-old on Wednesday morning, the station said, but just five hours later, police were forced to release him.
“He was released back into the community, back into the environment that allowed him to be out roaming the streets in all of these counties late at night and in the early morning,” Laurel Police Chief Russ Hamill told WRC.
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“We don’t do this lightly. We don’t ask for young people to be held on a whim. We do so to help protect the community and them,” the chief also told WRC. “I have little hope there will be further accountability for him due to this broken system.”
Blaze News on Friday morning asked a Department of Juvenile Services spokesperson if the agency had any comment on Hamill’s “broken system” declaration, but the spokesperson told Blaze News that “laws in place preclude our ability to talk about individual cases at all.”
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“They were just simply going through neighborhoods and targets of opportunity, breaking into cars,” Hamill added to the station. “If there was something in there, they’d steal. If there was nothing in there, they’d move to another car.”
“I had one woman stop me and mention to me that this is the third time this has happened to her car,” Hamill told the station. “And because the deductible was so high, she had to make adjustments in her home, including the purchase of food.”
Laurel police on Friday morning told Blaze News that the two other juvenile suspects wanted in connection with the car break-ins were arrested for unrelated crimes in other jurisdictions.
* Original Article:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/broken-system-16-year-old-linked-to-121-car-break-ins-in-1-night-released-after-5-hours-in-custody-police-chief-is-livid
