SALINAS – What began as a regular Facebook Marketplace exchange ended with a robbery in Salinas last Sunday, a crime that Sergeant Zachary Dunagan of the Salinas Police Department said is all too common.
The victim had arranged to sell a gold chain to the buyer through Facebook Marketplace in the area of Short Street around 8 p.m.
Upon meeting however, the would-be buyer suddenly grabbed the gold chain and ran.
Moments later, two more suspects approached the victim wearing all black and ski masks, one of them brandishing a firearm at the victim. The three suspects fled on foot down Short Street.
The incident is under active investigation by the Salinas Police Department.
According to Dunagan robberies of this kind happen more often than people think.
“We see it common enough that every time it happens we try to put something out to remind people of how unsafe it could be,” Dunagan said.
While Dunagan said it would be unrealistic to say that no one should use Facebook Marketplace, he noted that there are certain risks inherent to any informal method of exchange, especially for high value items.
“It is generally unsafe because you’re putting yourself out there with a high value item,” Dunagan said. “You truly don’t know who you are meeting nowadays with all these fake social media profiles, all that kind of stuff.”
That risk goes not just for those selling high value items, but also those looking to buy them, with some incidents involving a person selling a fake item, looking to rob the buyer of their cash.
There are, however, ways to reduce the risk of this kind of incident, said Dunagan, who recommends meeting up in high visibility public places like coffee shops or other businesses during open hours and bringing a friend.
“Don’t meet at night…if you have to push the meeting off because you work during the day, do it on a weekend as opposed to trying to knock it out after work, in the dark in some random parking lot.”
Dunagan also said that many police stations, like the Salinas Police Station, have designated “Safe Exchange Zones,” or parking spots surveilled by security cameras, where people can make transactions.
“We get people out there all the time doing it…the likelihood that you are going to get robbed in the parking lot of a police department is probably far less than on some random street.”
Dunagan advised the public to be skeptical if a person says they don’t want to meet up in one of these high profile locations.
“Getting some of that pushback, that should raise red flags for you.”
With increased awareness of the risks, Dunagan hopes that crimes like Sunday’s will become a thing of the past.
“It happens more often than it should in my opinion.”
In the meantime, he encouraged anyone with information on Sunday’s incident to contact the Salinas Police Department.
Chris Hamilton is a California Local News fellow covering Salinas and the Salinas Valley for The Herald.
