South Bay police fighting rise in gold chain Indian jewelry thefts

SUNNYVALLE, Calif. (KGO) -- "I've been hyper-vigilant myself, a lot of Indian woman like myself wear a lot of jewelry, especially stuff we bring from back home," said Ramya Mehul, a South Bay resident of Indian descent.

Over the past six months, law enforcement personnel in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara have dealt with more than 50 cases of women having their jewelry snatched from around their necks. It's gotten so bad, that the two agencies have come together to figure out why.

"We're sharing resources, we're sharing investigators, we're sharing intelligence information, we're sharing all information that we gather from folks," explained Lt. Kurt Clarke with the Santa Clara Police Department.

On the streets, investigators are encouraging the community to report these crimes right away.

"These suspects are just blatantly approaching our victims, and just brandishing a weapon, and/or pushing them out of the way, and grabbing their jewelry and then taking off," said Lt. Clarke.

The suspects are described as black or Hispanic men in their early 20s. With little information to go off of, officials are also working with a Hindi and Punjabi translator to spread the word in an attempt to reach out to the community however they can.

"We put together a safety flier for our community, that we distributed to businesses, apartment managers at different apartment complexes and religious institutions," said Capt. Jeffery Hunter with the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.

And until these crooks are caught, many South Asian women in the South Bay will remain on guard.

"Most days it's fine, but you just never know if it's your unlucky day. And you don't want to take a chance after hearing about all of this," said Mehul.