View of the Garden Church in full bloom. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala
On Jan. 5, several people broke into the Feed and Be Fed Garden at 1:30 a.m. and stole $5,000 worth of equipment. This equipment was used by the Garden Church, which meets there every Sunday. The thieves took a complete sound system and a gas-powered generator, said Peter Rothe, president of the board of directors for Feed and Be Fed.
“We’re doing our best to recover,” Rothe said. “It’s not a devastating loss, but for a nonprofit and a church, the loss constitutes a substantial part of our budget. And we’re soliciting donations online.”
Rothe said the sound equipment was worth about $2,500, and included portable speakers, amplifiers and microphones. The generator was borrowed from a friend of the church, and the church will now need to pay him back.
The Rev. Dr. Amanda Adams Riley, lead pastor of the Garden Church, said there weren’t any security cameras installed in the garden itself when the thieves broke in. The church had just purchased a camera, but had not yet installed it.
Rothe said that the San Pedro Historic Waterfront District, of the PBID, did have cameras nearby and picked up footage of the thieves entering the garden. Based on that footage, the PBID was able to tell Rothe how long they were in the garden.
“They were here actually for over an hour, inside,” Rothe said. “That initial break-in took place about 1:30 in the morning. And then again at 7, somebody else, another individual, seeing it open, or maybe related to the original, came in.”
None of the items that were stolen were insured.
“The insurance company doesn’t recommend insuring anything less than $5,000 in value,” Riley said. “The individual items … none of them were worth that amount, and it was kind of happenstance that the generator was present at the time.”
Riley said the thieves cut through the fence, and sliced through the padlock that was on the shed where the generator was held.
“They took, I guess wire-cutters, something, and they snipped along the chain-link fence, kind of vertically, and then rolled it back,” Riley said.
Rothe said that since the padlock did not work, the church would be instituting a higher level of security in the garden, including security lights and a security camera.
“We’re seeking funding to rebuild this fence with a wooden fence,” Roethe said. “But having said that, we understand that the place is not defensible. If somebody is really serious about breaking in here, they will break in, so we’ve had to institute a policy where we will no longer be keeping anything of value onsite, locked up or not.”
Riley said the thieves came with a plan. In the past, people have stolen things from the garden, but they were always less valuable things.
“It always seems more like a crime of opportunity,” Riley said. “This is the first one that’s felt much more like it was planned and intentional.”
When the thieves came to the property, they made a large mess while looking through the property, knocking several things to the ground, on a night when it was pouring rain. Linda O-Brien-Rothe, lead gardener of Feed and Be Fed, said that the thieves put up an EZ UP tent to protect themselves from the rain, and then left it behind.
“It’s hours and hours of volunteer work to clean it up,” Riley said. “It’s a nuisance for sure. And then it’s just sad, because … we don’t see ourselves as an obvious target, right? We try to do good in the community. Generally, people like us.”
The church did not have a sound system prior to the pandemic, and Riley said she planned on going without it for a while. However, a volunteer from the church was able to cobble together a sound system with his own equipment. Riley said it’s possible the equipment will be returned, and said that one police officer she spoke to was kind of optimistic. One church member has been looking in pawnshops around the area.
Det. Donald Blue of the Los Angeles Police Department said the likelihood of the equipment being returned depends on what information the church has about the items.
“If the stolen property is serial numbered and they have that, and we can figure out where it was pawned at, and there are a few places that will accept those kinds of things, then we can get it back,” Blue said.
Even if they don’t have the serial number, if the police are able to find a suspect, they can go to pawn shops and ask the shops if they’ve bought anything from the suspect, Blue said.
“But in lieu of that, even if the property is found at a location and we have no serial number and no suspect, I would not be able to confiscate or have that property returned because I can’t definitively determine if it was the property of the victim,” Blue said.
Rothe said that he does not have the serial numbers for the equipment.
Riley said that while they are raising funds to replace the equipment, she would prefer to use funding for the church’s ministry.
“We have church outside,” Riley said. “It’s in a garden, it’s a garden and it’s a church, what we grow is food that goes back out into the community.”
The church averages about 25 people every Sunday.
“We’re unsettled by having people on the property after hours, and with mal intent,” Riley said. “But we are praying for the thieves.”
