4:45pm | A nearly three-month investigation into a barrage of commercial burglaries in North Long Beach led to the arrest of a Lakewood parolee who police said had been out of prison for less than a month before he allegedly began stealing items out of the same two storage facilities he had previously been convicted of burglarizing.
Joseph Fordyce, 50, of Lakewood, was arrested at his home on June 9 in connection with the burglary spree, according to information provided by Long Beach Police Department Sgt. Rico Fernandez.
Fordyce is on parole for commercial burglary. He was released from state prison in February after serving just seven months of his 16-month prison sentence, Fernandez said.
In March, just a month after his release, police noticed a burglary trend at two North Long Beach storage facilities, one located at 4140 Cherry Ave. and the other located at 3207 South St. Using surveillance videos, investigators were able to identify Fordyce, a man they had arrested in 2010 for commercial burglary at the same two storage facilities, Fernandez said.
The video depicts a man entering the property with an empty truck and dolly. Later, it shows him drive the truck off the property, its bed chock full of property, Fernandez said.
At the time of Fordyce’s arrest, police uncovered an array of stolen items that had been taken during the burglaries. As of early Tuesday, officers were still unable to identify most of the owners of the property.
Fernandez said that anyone who has a storage unit at the Public Storage in the 4100 block of Cherry Avenue or the Public Storage in the 3200 block of east South Street that was recently burglarized should call Detectives Dave Fritz or Dave DeMasi at 562-570-9818.
Additionally, anyone who rents a storage unit at either of these two facilities and has not checked on his or her stored property in a “significant” amount of time is encouraged by police to do so, Fernandez said.
Photographs of the recovered stolen property can be viewed on the LBPD’s Facebook page by clicking here.