Suspected Robbers Nabbed, Thanks to Sharp-Eyed Officer

Two armed robbers were preying on pedestrians at night around the Del Norte BART station.

The series of robberies earlier this month left residents and BART patrons afraid, and they stymied police. A special police surveillance and tracking operation failed to nab the pair.

The holdups were particularly distressing because robberies in that area earlier had been substantially reduced, in large part because of the police department's bike patrol.

And then on Friday afternoon, Aug. 20, El Cerrito Detective Sergeant Scott Cliatt heard on his police radio that a pair of robbers in Richmond had just held up an ice cream vendor and stolen about $50 at gunpoint. Police reported that the suspects' car was a Buick with a paper license plate saying "Got Milk."

Cliatt was paused on San Pablo Avenue and Cutting Boulevard around 2:30 p.m. when he saw a Buick with a "Got Milk" plate.

"I was stuck in traffic there, and the car drove by me," Cliatt said in an interview.

It wasn't long before he and a swarm of El Cerrito and Richmond police officers stopped the car on San Pablo near Solano Avenue.

The two Richmond men in the car, Jevon Calvin Demery, 28, and Jermaine Marcus Hall, 26, were arrested without resisting, according to police. A pellet gun was found in the car, said Richmond police Sergeant Bisa French.

After several days of detective work by Cliatt, El Cerrito Detective Jeffrey Doty and Detective Corporal Susan Garman, the pair were linked to three armed robberies at Del Norte on Aug. 10, Aug. 12 and Aug. 17, police said.

The suspects, who were held at the Martinez Detention Facility, have been charged with three counts of robbery for the El Cerrito crimes and one count of robbery for the Richmond holdup, police said.

"Sometimes it's just a matter of luck that you can make an arrest like," Cliatt said. "You keep your eyes open too."

The arrest following the ice cream vendor holdup, however, didn't necessarily point to the Del Norte robberies.

"It was the hard follow-up investigative work that made the case," Cliatt said.