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Two East Palo Alto teen boys have been arrested for an extensive spree of vandalism at construction sites around town between April and June, causing roughly $200,000 of damage.
In the course of their vandalism spree, which they freely admitted to police, they went to construction sites at night and drove bulldozers through fences, knocking down portable toilets, fencing and concrete forms, broke windows in temporary buildings and left graffiti in their wake, Sgt. Sandra Brown said.
In the most dangerous of their exploits, the teens knocked down poles and beams of the new Jewish Community Center under construction at 901 San Antonio Road.
“These kids are lucky they weren’t killed,” Brown said.
The boys repeatedly vandalized a city-owned construction site at 2027 East Bayshore Road, the Jewish Community Center under construction, 3290 West Bayshore Road and the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course, where they took 18 golf carts and drove them around, leaving some of them in East Palo Alto and others on a levee.
They also broke gas lines at the recycling center and damaged a bulldozer and caused damage at the Palo Alto Sanitation Co. site at 2380 Embarcadero Road.
They drove forklifts and bulldozers and often damaged the ignitions of construction equipment, rendering them useless.
The boys were caught because they allegedly stole a bike from a woman in Midtown, Brown said. When they were caught by police on the bike theft case, one of the boys had a key to a bulldozer in his pocket, Brown said.
“We knew we had all these cases,” Brown said. The boys admitted to everything they had done, she said.
— Don Kazak
By
— Don Kazak
By
— Don Kazak
By
And what about restitution?
Or is the Weekly going to be taking the position that these kids’ behavior is the fault of “not having enough city government provided entertainment” rather than flaws in their up-bringing?
There is no reason that these kids should not be identified. They are little monsters .. and people need to know who they are.
Actually, I do agree that these vandals should be identified.
As the mother of teenage boys myself, I try my hardest to know their friends and what they are doing. It is hard to be judge and jury of my sons’ friends, but how else can I know who they are hanging out with. I hate having to say it, but if these vandals are at my sons’ schools, then I want to be able to prevent my kids from hanging out with them and the only way I would know this is if they are publicly identified.
Why on earth would construction workers leave ignition keys in heavy equipment? That is an open invitation to anyone with vandalism on their minds. Hopefully the Campus for Jewish Life will now post a guard or two at night to watch over their very exposed construction site.
It seems that keeping keys in construction equipment is fairly common practice due to the fact that the person driving or operating this equipment today may not be the person tomorrow. If the operator took the keys with them they would not be available when the next guy comes along to use the equipment. It may not be what the rule book says, but our own contractor told me that leaving they keys in was the only sure fire way he knew of not losing them even amongst a small work crew.
Why can’t the supervisors or foremen have an extra set of keys? Too simple?
The same goes true for public buses… I remember there was an article about some teens taking a VTA bus on a joyride in the middle of the night. A spokesperson for VTA says that anyone who can read can be able to start and drive any of its buses since they all use keyless ignition systems.
$200K? Penalty = working after school (every day) and weekends – at the beck and call of the JCC construction contractor. Summers are included. Continue right through high school. No extracurricular activities; no drivers permit; no sports. Just school and the JCC construction site, and working maintenance jobs at the JCC after construction is finished. Oh, yeah, monitor bracelets on their ankles; house arrest, with exception made for school attendance, and work. Any recalcitrance, or violation of terms, is added to their post-high-school years.
If the equipment on a construction site is so accessible with no one taking responsibility for securing heavy equipment, I hope their insurance company doesn’t pay out on this expensive mess.
OMG.
Potential for future joy riders~they now know how to start the buses.
I hope the parents also are penalized. This is a tragedy. It appears our society is accepting this kind, and other types criminal. activities. I would guess there may be others who new or had an idea of the incidents but did not come forward.
I believe that EPA should become part of a better managed city, Palo Alto comes to mind. Reporting criminal activities to EPA seems like a waste of time and effort. Help either does not come at all or comes well after the suspects are gone.
Making EPA a part of Palo Alto is the worst idea I have heard in a long time.
If you are one of the people who have in the past referred to Iraq as a quagmire, EPA would make it look in comparison like a simple back yard clean up project…
Making EPA part of Palo Alto won’t ever happen, the two Cities are in different Counties. EPA needs to raise it’s tax base and become more pro-active in managing it’s youth.
Anyway, it’s a stretch to say Palo Alto is a well managed city!!
EPA also has 94303 ZIP, if that means anything. The city needs help, but is being too proud to admit and/or ask for help.
I hope someone out there reading this article can offer some resources to citizens who would like to see a significant change in a hurry.
making east palo alto a part of palo alto would be wonderful except that epa is in san mateo county and palo alto is in santa clara county.
in regard to the teenage violators. there is no excuse for their actions. they should be held accountable.
however seeing e. palo alto as a pretty much a fenced in community with only three entrances into the city, those being university avenue to the dumbarton bridge and embarcadero rd.,not including only 3 streets that allow entrance into the city from willow road at the menlo park east palo alto border. i sometimes wonder if these youths feel fenced in. at times it’s kinda like a warsaw ghetto especially if there is a crime related police related lock down.
I am sure that San Mateo County would love to rezone their boundaries so we could incorporate EPA into Palo Alto in Santa Clara County.
Merge EPA and PA and let all EPA kids into PA schools and you will have Berkeley. Hypocritical liberal Berkeley parents send their kids to private schools because OF COURSE they do not want their kids in Berkeley public schools, which have a huge influx of poor black kids from Oakland, because Berkeley liberal parents do care about quality of education and they do not want to publicly admit a simple fact that poor kids tend to underperform and affect school ratings, etc.
NO WHERE IN THIS ARTICLE DOES IT SAY THE KEYS WERE LEFT IN THE EQUIPMENT.
This is so typical, everyone jumps to conclusions.
Have you ever driven a golf cart? The keys are universal. The same goes for alot of construction equipment.
“They drove forklifts and bulldozers and often damaged the ignitions of construction equipment, rendering them useless.”
this place is full of you types…
EPA was annexed to SM County some years ago.
Revealing the names of juveniles is illegal, whether they’re the accused or the victim. To demand that a juvenile have their name revealed for a property crime is asinine.
All of you who feel so strongly about these crimes should contact the DA’s office to see if you, as PA taxpayers, can give voice to your feelings or give suggestions for sentencing, when it comes to that.
no palo alto teens have ever done anything bad. shame on epa!
I loved your comment. Hmmm, a Paly grad raped that young south Palo Alto woman recently. When I was at Paly, one student killed another in a drunk driving incident. Don’t get me started…
When the schools where I grew up, which were already integrated, were forced to take on students from the poorer, more violent part of town, it did not just damage the ratings of our schools, it exposed all students to violence, inappropriate sexual behavior, and drugs. When parents in Berkely, how ever well meaning, send their kids to private schools to avoid the kind of experiences I had, this is simply good parenting. Being accepting of other groups, whether racial, socioeconomic, political, etc. does not necessitate the sacrifice of one’s children.