Eugene Police say they’ve arrested seven people suspected of burglarizing an Asian American community member’s home in the Bethel area.
Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner said at a Friday press conference that his department is still investigating whether these suspects are linked to nearly two dozen similar burglaries targeting local Asian American business owners over the last year.
Those crimes, including roughly 17 burglaries in Eugene and Springfield in late 2024 and early 2025 and several more over the summer, targeted Asian businesses owners’ homes while they were at work.
“We honestly think it's the same kind of parent organization that’s perpetrating this crime and these are different actors within that,” Skinner said.
Asian American community leaders previously raised concerns about the break-ins and police response, saying law enforcement didn’t alert them that they were being targeted until it was too late.
Since then, EPD has held a public safety forum with Asian American leaders. Another event is scheduled on Oct. 23.
Skinner said one of the suspects in Monday’s burglary in the Bethel neighborhood was caught on camera posing as a pizza delivery driver to approach the home. That footage helped police track the group to Salem, where police are investigating a similar burglary this week, as well as to Corvallis, Keizer, and eventually to a vacation rental in Eugene.
Skinner said the group used multiple vehicles, license plates, surveillance and other more sophisticated than usual tactics.
"This is not seven people in our community doing smash and grab burglaries that we just couldn't find,” Skinner said. “Trust me, we would have been well ahead of the game if that was the case."
The seven people arrested are facing charges of burglary, and conspiracy to commit burglary.
Skinner says Flock, the automatic license place reader system Eugene has contracted with, was essential to resolving this case.
Specifically, officers entered a vehicle description from that footage into the automatic license plate reader system instead of plates. Flock, which uses AI-machine learning to create “digital fingerprints” of vehicles in its database, had captured an image of the vehicle.
The Eugene City Council requested Wednesday the cameras be temporarily turned off over concerns about privacy, digital security and federal overreach after the Trump Administration’s attempts to send troops to Portland.
Several council members also raised concerns that federal officials could, as they have in other states, get access to the system for the purpose of immigration enforcement.
City Manager Sarah Medary, who ultimately decides whether the cameras get turned off, said Wednesday she was determining the operational, contractual, and public safety implications of the decision.
Skinner said he plans to meet with Medary on Monday to discuss temporarily shutting down the cameras. He said his department has reached out to Flock, which owns the cameras, to ask how to turn them off, and the company told him it may take 24 to 48 hours to do so once the city manager makes a decision.
