Mini-Mall in Cross-Fire of Drug Dealers and the Law : Courts: A city suit contends the Van Nuys shopping center and a store are public nuisances and demands the owners help clean up the problem.

A bullet hole mars the Diet Coke ad on a sign in Jae Joo Kim’s store, a 24-hour Donut King anchoring a troubled Van Nuys mini-mall.

Another bullet hole has punctured another part of the sign, distorting the red plastic letters announcing that small drinks cost 55 cents. There is yet another bullet hole just outside, in the black metal molding that frames one of the plate-glass windows.

Those front windows have been shattered so many times that Kim has lost count of how many costly panes he has replaced. The inside walls are riddled with plaster splotches, patches filling the holes made by fists punching through drywall.

“Every day, it’s dangerous here,” Kim said Tuesday, pointing out the violence his store has endured since rock cocaine dealers set up shop in the mini-mall parking lot at the corner of Roscoe and Sepulveda boulevards.

“The whole parking lot. But no one does anything about it. And now, the city, they blame me for all of this? I’m really angry and confused.”

Under an obscure law, the city of Los Angeles has sued both the Donut King and the owners of the mall, contending that the store and the shopping center have become public nuisances. The suit demands that the landlord--and even tenants such as Kim--clean it up.

The case, set for a hearing next Wednesday in Superior Court downtown marks an intriguing test of community responsibility in an era of dwindling government resources. It also signals a tacit admission that police patrols at the site were not enough.

In effect, the law seeks to shift the burden of providing public safety from police to private property owners, said Joseph Trenk, the Van Nuys lawyer representing the husband-and-wife owners of the mall, Maurice and Mojdeh Mehrban.

Trenk is unsure that shift is workable, he said Tuesday. “It’s very difficult to effect any real change,” he said. “It’s like trying to stop running water. Every time you put your hand in, you make a dent. But then, sometimes no matter what you do, it fills right in again.

“I think that all you can ask of a private property owner is to take steps to deter crime,” Trenk said. “The final policing effect has to come from the city. They have that power. Landlords don’t.”

But, said Deputy Los Angeles City Atty. Asha Saund Greenberg, the police can’t do it all, especially with California’s cities and counties strapped for cash. Everyone needs to pitch in, she said.

“I think the law is a recognition that police enforcement isn’t enough,” Greenberg said. “That’s why we have this law. It puts the onus on the property owner to some extent. But in today’s world, that’s a necessity. The police can’t do it alone.”

Over the past couple years, Greenberg said, the city attorney’s office has used the law with regularity to roust drug dealers from apartment houses and other residential property. Updated in 1986, the law is based on the principle long used to stop property owners from running houses of prostitution or gambling halls.

Last week, a Superior Court judge found that constant drug dealing on the premises had turned a restaurant on West Pico Boulevard into a nuisance. Judge Diane Wayne ordered the owner to chase drug dealers away, to post a sign announcing the restaurant was under police surveillance and to search the restaurant for drugs before opening and closing.

The mall case, Greenberg said, underscores prosecutors’ intent to bring the law to bear on commercial property--and in the San Fernando Valley.

According to a legal brief filed by the city attorney’s office, police arrested 126 people at the Roscoe and Sepulveda mini-mall from June, 1991, to June, 1992.

Of those 126 arrests, 84 were for felonies, including 46 for drug sales. In addition, police made 37 arrests of would-be drug buyers.

During the same 12 months, 33 arrests took place just off the mall--of which 32 were drug-related.

Many of the stores in the corner mall now lie vacant. A small grocery store just folded a few weeks ago, tenants said. A beauty salon has closed. Several tenants said Tuesday they would flee the site if they could afford to get out of their leases.

The Mehrbans could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

“There have been days where I’ve had to walk through 15 or 20 drug dealers just to get to the door,” Louis Watson, the manager of a check-cashing store, said Tuesday as teen-agers threw gang signs and held whispered conversations with motorists in the parking lot.

Business at his store was down 35% in January from the same month the year before, Watson said. “I’m angry and I’m scared,” he said.

Nick Moinzadeh, 30, of North Hills, a $6.25-per-hour security guard hired by the owners to patrol the parking lot most days from 2 to 10 p.m., said vials of crack routinely change hands right before his eyes. But it would be foolish, he said, for an unarmed security guard to interfere with the drug dealers.

“As long as you don’t bother them, they don’t bother you,” Moinzadeh said Tuesday. He said the drug dealers “have told us not to get involved, not to report what we see.”

Of the 126 arrests made on mall property, 15 took place at the Donut King, the city attorney’s legal papers said.

Gang members running the drug deals seem to prefer both the 24-hour convenience of Kim’s shop and the video machines in the front corner, Greenberg said.

But Kim’s lawyer, Tony Kim, said Tuesday that something seems amiss.

Jae Joo Kim invested $72,000 in his business and has made regular police reports about drug activity in the parking lot, the attorney said. He held neighborhood meetings. He testified in court against gang members arrested in the parking lot. Perhaps in retaliation, Tony Kim said, Jae Joo Kim became the target of drug-related violence, exemplified by the bullet holes in his sign.

Now, Tony Kim said, Jae Joo Kim is being singled out in the lawsuit because of video games--which bring in a needed $1,400 a month--and because the store is open 24 hours a day. None of the remaining handful of tenants are named in the lawsuit.

“In this instance, the law is being applied wrongly,” Tony Kim said. “It’s not doing anything to deter the crime in the first place. And rather than picking Mr. Kim as citizen of the year, the city is bringing a lawsuit against him.

“I feel he’s been victimized twice,” Tony Kim said. “Once by the criminals. And now by the system.”