LAPD's art theft unit is a piece of work

Featured on losangelesregister.com

Tibetan artifacts shouldn’t be stashed among a pack of pot-bellied pigs, but that’s how Detective Don Hrycyk found them.

They’d been stolen over a decade earlier by a man who’d befriended the owner, a New York art collector and scholar.

Police received a tip that the culprit, a man who’d gained the trust of the owner, was living in Los Angeles. They paid him a visit. When they entered the Wilshire district home, they found squalor replete with live pigs, hay – and the stolen artifacts. They were chipped and covered in dust, a far cry from how they’d been exhibited with care in their rightful home.

Hrycyk, 63, has made more such discoveries as head and often lone investigator of the country’s only known unit dedicated to full-time investigations of art crimes.

Welcome to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Art Theft Detail.

A SOLO EFFORT

Hrycyk has been with the department for 40 years this past March, and 20 years as the only known full-time art cop in the country. He’s worked without a partner for most of those years and has recovered more than $107 million worth of stolen property since 1994, according to the LAPD.

“These are big cases, multimillion-dollar cases. The problem is that it was never meant for one person, wandering a city of 4 million people and handling these cases alone,” he said.

When it comes to high-profile art, Hrycyk interacts with museum curators, academics and experts to identify fake replicas, appraise values and learn about artists.

The partners Hrycyk has had last only a short while, either getting promotions or moving to other departments. It’s never really enough time for them to get a good handle on the art scene. It took Hrycyk years to learn more about art in Los Angeles. Though he appreciates art more, to him, the job is about business: catching the bad guy.

The unit was created in 1983, the year of a rise in art theft. With galleries, film studios and all kinds of artists, the city became a hub for thieves.

“Some of these things, the losses were large amounts of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars and we weren’t particularly effective in solving those crimes or in finding the property. So that kind of started the idea,” Hrycyk said.

He was tired of seeing dead bodies in the homicide division in South Central Los Angeles, so he applied to the Burglary Auto Theft Division. There, he was informed he’d be working in the newly formed art unit. He didn’t have much art experience, but he learned from Bill Martin, the detective who founded the unit. When Martin retired in 1994, it was up to Hrycyk to carry on the mission.

CHASING DOWN THIEVES

What is considered art? Hrycyk still can’t say for certain. His goal is to catch a thief and recover property for a rightful owner.

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