Police Will Open Shop at Del Amo in Fight Against Car Thieves, ‘Mall Rats’

Torrance’s Del Amo Fashion Center, the largest, single enclosed shopping mall in the nation, presents a glossy image of serene shopping as its 342 shops, department stores and restaurants ring up more than $400 million in retail trade each year.

But a seamier side lies beneath the carefully cultivated appearance of the mall.

Its vast parking lots, arcades, shopping galleries, walkways and restaurants are drawing auto thieves, purse-snatchers and youthful “mall rats” with a penchant for getting into trouble, say mall officials and Torrance police.

It is the kind of trouble that mall officials fear--the kind that ruins the upscale ambiance of their retail center and could drive away customers.

The police say that the mall accounts for almost 20% of the major crimes reported in the city. Although crime there consists almost entirely of nonviolent offenses such as shoplifting, the potential for violence, especially related to youth gangs, is troubling.

“It has gotten pretty heavy,” said Misi Misa, 22, a Torrance resident and mall store employee who once was a mall rat and former member of the South Bay’s Samoan Army gang.

“I used to come here a lot. About a month ago, I almost got jumped by some Crip gang from San Pedro, the Second Street Mob,” Misa said.

To prevent the situation from getting worse, the City Council on Tuesday approved a storefront police substation at the mall, adding a fourth officer to the shopping center detail during the holiday shopping crush. In addition, the Police Department will step up coverage by police reserve officers and make efforts to improve admittedly poor coordination among police and three private security forces operating at the mall.

The Torrance Co., which owns the mall, has agreed to pay $150,000, or 68%, of the salaries of the three officers who will work out of the storefront station. In addition, the mall company is providing the space without rent and stocking it with office equipment worth $15,560. The city receives 1% of the malls sales through sales tax, roughly $4 million this year.

Torrance Co. President James Jones said Wednesday he is enthusiastic about the police presence in the storefront, adding that police “have been super” in recent weeks in responding to mall concerns about security.

A clause in a five-year agreement between the city and the Torrance Co. stipulates that the officers subsidized by the mall work solely for the Police Department and that mall officials have no say in their duties.

The move to put the existing three-officer shopping center detail in a storefront comes more than a year after Jones wrote city officials about a wave of auto thefts from the mall parking lots.

“We need the presence of the city’s Police Department at Del Amo to help us preserve our image and the revenue directed to the city,” Jones wrote city officials in August, 1986.

Thirty-four cars had been stolen from the mall that August--more than one a day. During the first six months of this year, 141 cars were stolen. The pace has improved since police launched a crackdown this summer.

‘Provide a Safe Place’

Auto theft is the most serious crime problem at the mall. Only theft--generally shoplifting--is more common, and that is not the type of crime that chases away customers.

Police officials surveyed police presence at the Glendale Galleria, the Hawthorne Mall, the South Coast Plaza in Orange County and found that all had some sort of storefront operation and a higher concentration of police officers.

“All three of these cities’ shopping areas combined are smaller than just the Del Amo Fashion Center alone and yet they have a combined staff of 10 officers, three sergeants and a services officer,” Police Chief Donald Nash wrote in a recent report to the city manager.

Nash said the Del Amo mall and Torrance’s other shopping areas “have expanded their operations while the level of police service has expanded only minimally. In an effort to provide a safe place for citizens to shop, the Police Department must adjust its level of service to the shopping areas by adding additional personnel and equipment.”

Torrance began a two-member shopping center detail in 1984 to cover Del Amo, the Old Towne Plaza, the Rolling Hills Shopping Center and the downtown business district. On June 30, the department added a third officer.

A storefront operation, Nash said, will permit quicker reaction, establish a higher profile for the police at the mall, assist store and mall security guards making arrests and provide a place for community outreach on crime prevention and police recruiting. Some parts of the storefront operation may be handled by Police Explorer Scouts, Neighborhood Watch members and senior citizen volunteers.

Hone said that the facility will have two holding areas for people who are arrested and that misdemeanor arrests at the mall--many for shoplifting--will be handled entirely at the storefront substation.

The facility will be across from the Carl’s Jr. restaurant in the north part of the mall, close to Aladdin’s Castle video arcade and an adjacent eating area that serves as a weekend hangout for socializing youths known as mall rats.

“A lot of it is kids and the way they dress--5% of the kids giving 95% of the others a bad name,” Jones said. “The best thing about it is they grow up.”

While police will be paying attention to the mall rats in an age when the mall has become Main Street, it is not easy to separate teen-age troublemakers from those socializing.

Worried About Crackdown

Lou Monestime, 18, a 1987 graduate of West Torrance High School and now an El Camino College student, sat amid the amplified roar of video space invader attacks, fighter pilot maneuvers and martial arts bouts Tuesday and worried about the crackdown.

“Are they going to close up the arcade?” he said.

Monestime said he sometimes comes to the arcade area to meet girls, adding that problems associated with mall rats are caused “by a few bad apples.”

Torrance Police Capt. Bruce Randall agreed that much of the mall rat phenomenon is harmless. “The street corner of the 1950s and ‘60s--where they were standing on the corner watching all the girls go by--has moved inside,” he said.

But he added, “Sometimes it does lead to criminal activity.”

Misa, who is a stock clerk at Kushin’s shoe store, said there are few places in Torrance where youths can go to get together. “Teen-agers don’t have any place to hang out anymore. They don’t want to stay at home,” he said.

Stacy Frank, who works at Hot Dog on a Stick near the arcade, said crowds of up to 75 youths hang out in the area on weekend nights, many of them “heavy metallers” wearing Mohawk or spike haircuts and “a lot of leather.”

“They are very rude. They make all kind of noise. They are very obnoxious,” she said.

Trouble--typically loud arguments with little violence--can occur without warning, she said. The cause can be as little as if “someone bumps into someone or you looked at him wrong.”

Relations between the heavy metal and Latino youth are frequently tense, she said. “Nice kids, sometimes, they are scared to come down here.”

Off-duty police working for the mall have been enforcing a mall rule that people sitting at tables in a common area between food places must be eating something or leave their seats.

Concern Over Gangs

Although the mall rat phenomenon at Del Amo seems to involve little violence, police worry about a scenario in which one youth gang makes the mall its turf, which Randall said has happened at other malls.

“My wife will not go to certain shopping centers because of the gang activity. . . . One of the purposes (of the Del Amo storefront police operation) is to preclude that from happening,” Randall said.

Police said the mall is not claimed as gang turf by any group.

Jones said he agreed with the police strategy of trying to preempt gang activity. “I sure can’t fault them for anticipating the possibility” of one gang declaring the mall its turf, he said.

Outside the mall, car thieves have been busy in the broad parking lots with their 12,200 spaces. In 1986, 309 cars were stolen there.

From March 16 to June 7, a special task force patrolled the parking lots, arresting 47 and identifying two major auto theft rings. Nash said the task force operation reduced auto-related crime by 30%.

“We have gang members that are involved in that,” Randall said.

Sgt. Emilio Parels, said police have identified five vehicle models most likely to be stolen from a Del Amo parking lot: Toyota and Nissan pickups, Camaro Z-28 IROC, Toyota Celicas and Supras, the two-seater 450 SL and 380 SL Mercedes Benz and 1970s Ford pickups.

Police rarely recover the Fords or four-wheel drive models of the Toyota and Nissan pickup trucks. “Those we feel are going to Mexico,” Parels said.

Four juveniles living in the unincorporated Gardena Park area stole 50 Honda Preludes and Accords from South Bay malls between April and July when they were caught by Torrance police, Parels said. They fenced the seats and stereos, then dumped the cars, he said.

The other group of car thieves identified by police is a more sophisticated gang that specializes in stealing Mercedes, Parels said. The thieves often switch vehicle identification numbers and sell the cars with bogus documents, he said. Other stolen Mercedes are stripped of engines, transmissions and other parts.

Randall said the other types of crime at the mall involve robbery--purse snatching and jewelry ripping--and shoplifting.

There were 45 robberies in 1986 and 10 in 1987 through June 30. Assaults were 38 in 1986 and 17 through June 30. There were two rapes in 1987.

Police statistics showed that thefts account for the largest single category of crime at the mall. In 1986, they totaled 1,012 and were 533 during the first six months of 1987.

Burglaries were 100 in 1986 and 80 during the first half of 1987.

Del Amo Fashion Center

Total crimes in Torrance of 4,000 crimes reported in Torrance for the six months ended June 30, 1987, 783 occurred in the Del Amo Fashion Center. Thefts 533, Auto Theft 141, Burglary 80, Assaults 17, Robbery 10, Rapes 2.