LA County leaders increase rewards for information on Carson and Compton cemetery metal thefts

Los Angeles County Supervisors on Tuesday renewed and increased the rewards being offered for information that leads to the identification, arrest and conviction of the people who vandalized cemeteries in Compton and Carson in 2024, stealing dozens of plaques and memorial markers made of precious metals. 

The series of crimes began in early January that year and continued for months, targeting both Lincoln Memorial Park in Carson and Woodlawn Celestial Gardens cemetery in Compton, which supervisors acknowledged as "one of the oldest operating cemeteries in Los Angeles County" since it began operating back in the 1880s. 

"The cemetery contains the gravesites of numerous prominent figures and many local military veterans dating back to the Civil War and the Spanish-American War," said a motion from Supervisor Holly Mitchell, which requested that the reward be renewed and increased. 

The motion said that the property owner of Woodlawn estimates the financial loss of the repeated vandalism to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, due in part to dug-up gravestones and plaques that were removed from burial sites. A previous $20,000 reward offer for the Compton incidents was increased to $25,000 when the Board of Supervisors approved the motion during Tuesday's meeting. 

Read more: Nearly 600 grave markers stolen from Compton cemeteries

Supervisor Mitchell also introduced a motion to renew and increase the reward for information regarding the Lincoln Memorial Park thefts, in which damages are estimated to be worth more than $2 million. The alleged thieves ripped bronze plaques and grave markers from headstones and walls of the cemetery's mausoleum. 

"A prominent bronze statue of President Abraham Lincoln, dedicated in 1934, was also damaged in an attempt to remove a plaque affixed to its facade," Mitchell's motion said. "In addition, a large bronze plaque gifted to the cemetery in 1949 by former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Joe Louis, dedicated to honoring local veterans who died in combat, had also been removed and stolen."

The reward was increased from $25,000 to $30,000 in another unanimous approval from the board. 

Anyone who knows more was urged to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.