L.A. man accused of robbery string while wearing GPS ankle monitor

Nov. 1, 2024 3 AM PT

A 19-year-old Los Angeles man was arrested five times in five months, including for robberies that he is suspected of committing while under court-ordered GPS tracking.
The case raises questions about how effectively the Probation Department is supervising pretrial defendants at a time when judges increasingly turn to GPS monitoring as an alternative to jail.

After Nhazel Warren was charged this summer with carrying a gun in public, a judge released the 19-year-old on the condition that the Los Angeles County Probation Department track his movements with a GPS device.

When Warren was arrested three weeks later on suspicion of robbing an elderly couple, a different judge let him out again with another provision for GPS tracking.

But even with the court doubling down on Warren’s ankle monitor, prosecutors allege he went on to rob two more people in September and October.

In an attempt to track his whereabouts, Los Angeles Police Department detectives served a search warrant on the contractor that operates Warren’s GPS monitor. The company, which officials said is paid around $350,000 a month by the county to operate the GPS system, could not determine where he was at the time of the robberies or attest to the reliability of its tracking data.

Detectives apprehended Warren last week — his fifth arrest in five months, court records show. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of evading police, resisting arrest, carrying concealed guns in public, assault with a firearm and four counts of robbery. His attorney declined to comment.

Warren’s case raises questions about how effectively the Probation Department is supervising pretrial defendants at a time when judges increasingly turn to GPS tracking as an alternative to jail.

In an emailed statement, probation officials said the department interviews defendants and conducts a risk assessment before outfitting them with ankle monitors.

In August, the most recent month for which the Probation Department provided figures, 402 of the 1,438 people under GPS monitoring had absconded, according to the statement.

An additional 231 defendants allowed the batteries of their ankle monitors to die, meaning they had possibly fled as well, the statement said. In addition, 142 defendants failed to show up to appointments with their probation officers.

As the pendulum of public opinion has swung away from requiring cash bail, probation officials have framed the monitoring program as a more equitable way of ensuring people show up to court while still keeping the public safe.

Pretrial release allows people to hold down jobs and care for their families instead of awaiting trial in jail. GPS devices are generally seen by probation officials, prosecutors and judges as reducing the risk that a defendant will abscond or commit a new crime.

In Los Angeles County, the Probation Department’s GPS program was designed to allow law enforcement authorities to track defendants in real time and establish a record of their whereabouts. But records filed in Warren’s case show this isn’t how the Probation Department and its contractor, Securus, are running the program.

When detectives served a search warrant on Securus, the company did not turn over information from Warren’s GPS monitor, records show. A Securus analyst said the data were so flawed he would feel “uncomfortable” testifying it was accurate.

“To that end,” he wrote in a letter to the LAPD, “we cannot certify any of the data during that time frame.”

A spokesman for Securus acknowledged an inquiry from The Times but didn’t provide a comment.

Warren had already been arrested twice in two months — on suspicion of leading police on a high-speed chase and illegal gun possession — when LAPD officers stopped him at 55th Street and Denker Avenue on July 15, court records show. They patted him down and found a gun in his underwear.

According to a motion filed by his lawyer, Warren said he carried the gun because he feared being robbed of his $20,000 Rolex watch.

After pleading not guilty to possessing a concealed gun in public, Warren was released subject to electronic monitoring by the Probation Department, court records show.

That’s when probation officers first affixed a GPS device on his ankle.

Detectives arrested Warren again three weeks later on suspicion of robbing an elderly couple at gunpoint. Prosecutors charge that Warren, who was not yet on GPS monitoring at the time, and Daelan Reed, 18, broke into the couple’s Mid-City home on July 2.

The female victim, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, told The Times she woke up at 4 a.m. to find two men wearing hooded sweatshirts, masks and gloves in her bedroom.

They told the couple not to move and they wouldn’t get hurt.

She watched as they emptied her jewelry box of a diamond engagement ring and necklaces, bracelets and earrings that she’d received as gifts from her parents and husband.

“He even took the pearls my mother gave me,” she said.

One of the robbers ordered her husband out of bed, pressed a gun into his back and demanded cash, checkbooks, credit cards and the couple’s PINs, she said. The pair took car keys from a kitchen drawer and drove off in the couple’s BMW.

The following day, the thieves withdrew as much cash as they could from the couple’s bank accounts, the woman said.

“What they have taken from me, apart from the tangible things, is my sense of security,” she said. “My love for my own home. I don’t look at strangers the same way. It has flipped me 180 degrees.”

After arresting Warren, detectives searched his mother’s home in Long Beach. They found four handguns and seized $21,000 from a nightstand and $2,583 from Warren’s pocket, his lawyer, Geoffrey Ojo, wrote in court papers. Ojo demanded the return of the $21,000, which he said belonged to Warren’s mother, a “gainfully employed” healthcare professional who made $136,859 in 2023.

After pleading not guilty to robbery charges, Warren was released again after posting $150,000 bail. A judge ordered the Probation Department to put Warren under a second GPS tracking program, listing the conditions of his release as “no force, violence or weapons.”

Two weeks later, police say, Warren robbed a man returning to his Bentley SUV after shopping at a Bristol Farms in Woodland Hills. Police say Warren and another man wearing dark sweatshirts and masks knocked the victim to the ground and robbed him of his watch and phone.

A black BMW with a stolen license plate waited nearby, Det. Emily Delph wrote in a search warrant affidavit. An hour later, the BMW was seen in the jewelry district of downtown Los Angeles, where the suspects probably were trying to sell the stolen watch, Delph wrote.

Detectives found video of the suspects entering a jeweler’s business. Delph recognized one of them as Warren. She requested a search warrant on Oct. 16 to get GPS data from Warren’s two electronic monitoring cases. The historical data would determine whether he was present at the Woodland Hills robbery, Delph wrote; live tracking information would help the LAPD locate and arrest him.

She got neither. In a letter, a Securus analyst said the data were so imprecise he was unwilling to swear to its accuracy in court.

“We would never put you in the position of including our data into evidence that we would feel uncomfortable testifying to the accuracy,” wrote the analyst, Jeff Marino.

Marino didn’t respond to requests for comment. He didn’t say in his letter why the data were imprecise or how widespread the problem was.

Some authorities outside of Los Angeles County have questioned the reliability of contractors responsible for monitoring GPS trackers.

Prosecutors in Louisiana this year charged a Mississippi-based contractor, AEM, with negligent homicide after a defendant under its supervision shot his wife to death before killing himself in 2021. The defendant repeatedly violated a court-ordered exclusion zone around his wife’s home without triggering a response, prosecutors allege.

On Oct. 23, Warren showed up at Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles to be arraigned in the gun possession case for which he first received a GPS device. He pleaded not guilty and was allowed to continue with electronic monitoring.

Later that day, prosecutors allege, Warren returned to Woodland Hills. A man was talking on the phone when he noticed a black BMW double-park next to him on Ventura Boulevard around 8:30 p.m.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of his safety, told The Times two people stepped out of the BMW. They wore masks and pointed handguns at his face, he said. When he heard them cock the guns, he thought they were going to kill him. He yelled, “No, no, no — stop!”

They demanded the Breitling Navitimer on his wrist. He loved the silver watch with a stratos gray dial, No. 193 out of only 1,000 made. “It was the first expensive watch that I’d bought,” he said. “I’d been working very, very hard.”

He handed the $10,000 timepiece to the masked men.

Warren was arrested the next day. He and two other men were charged with both robberies in Woodland Hills. Warren pleaded not guilty on Monday in a Van Nuys courtroom.

Police haven’t recovered the Breitling. Its owner wondered whether the robbers would kill someone before they are locked up.

“Are we really going to wait until it gets to that point to do something?” he asked.

A judge set Warren’s bail in the robbery at $150,000.

He posted it and was released, still under court-ordered GPS monitoring.