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Members of the Cerritos Sheriff’s Department are investigating the theft of 1,200 undelivered community newspapers from outside the office of Los Cerritos Community Newspaper on early Friday morning.
By Brian Hews
Members of the Cerritos Sheriff’s Department are investigating the theft of 1,200 undelivered community newspapers from outside the office of Los Cerritos Community Newspaper on early Friday morning.
According to Brian Hews, Publisher of both the Los Cerritos Community Newspaper and La Mirada Lamplighter, over 1,200 printed newspapers of Friday’s edition of the Lamplighter were stolen from the front of the Lamplighter office located at the corner of Artesia Boulevard and Shoemaker Avenue in Cerritos.
Brian Hews, publisher of the Lamplighter, said that their home-delivery person, Eddie Garcia, leaves the papers at the office at around 4 am in the morning with other business delivery drivers taking those papers between 7 am and 9 am.
“Our Sports Editor Loren Kopff took the Cerritos papers at 7:30 am, and said the Lamplighter papers were in front of the office when he left. Maria Gonzalez, Lamplighter Marketing Consultant, arrived at the office at 8:30 am and saw that the Lamplighter papers were gone, so they were obviously taken between 7:40 and 8:30”, said Hews.
Hews went on to say, “$1,000 papers are worth over $1,000, so this is a big deal. And I am especially angry because this denies our La Mirada readers who get the paper at their business, and who have local residents come in to their business for the paper, in reading this week’s paper. We have a large following at City Hall, the Resource Center, Splash! and the Senior Center they will be especially upset”.
“Yes they could have been taken for recycling”, Hews said, “but why would they leave over 1,000 of the Cerritos newspaper behind? It is very suspicious”.
Hews said that he has filed a report with the LA County Sheriffs and they will follow up with the case. “The investigating officer thought it very suspicious too that other papers were left behind. “She asked if I thought I had any suspects in mind, and I did give them a couple names”, Hews said. He also noted that the the recycle value of the 1200 copies would only be around $3.
If anyone has any information you can call the Lamplighter offices anonymously at 562.407.3873 or email [email protected].
Maybe they forgot the Cerritos ones and figured they would come back to recycle those too?
The are worth $3 at the recycler I don’t think they were stolen for the cash value.
Its 4Pm on a Friday afternoon. I have a ton of things to do before dinner. But that can wait. Tis is important and it must be saiod now. I am just going to share a few thoughts with the readers of this paper and America.
A ‘FREE PRESS” is essential to a free society. What has happened to this community newspaper is unforgiveable and a down right attack on our freedom of speech and as us as Americans! I am not going to sit here and say nothing about this blatant attemp to intimidate, harrass and destroy this community paper. You may sit there quietly and say and do nothing. I will not. I want the authorities to seek these Taliban haters of freedom to be hunted down and jailed for a 1000 years. I will not remain silent while this Nazi group tries to intimidate a free press. HMG has brough a voice to our communities and in an accessable style of news reporting we have not seen in La Mirada for decades. Though I will never 100% agree with it writers and editorials on all things. I will as sure as hell defend their right to publish anything they want. Recently this paper has dominated the news by exposing fraud in the County Assessors office. you bet they have made enemies. I do not know of a good newspaper that does not have enemies. That is the antural course of free speech. We American have always enjoyed our press From TMZ to the Wall Street journal. We read because we want to be infomred and the Hews Media Group is filling a nitch of responsable news reporting to our community and LA County. I cannot express what was so elonquently said over 60 years ago after world war 2. “When they came for the University profesors and took them away. I said nothing. When they came for the businessman and took him away. I said nothing. When they came for the Union leaders and took them away. I again said nothing. When they took the newspaper publishes I again bowed my head down and said nothing. When they came for me….there was no one to help me….. and they took me away.”
I sound like an alarmist…. that’s okay. There is a silent majority that wants to openly say what I am saying. If your one of them. this is the time to say saomething….’cause if you don;t… when they come for your job, your future…. your family… there might not be a free press in our community anymore.