Security Lax at City Hall : Hawthorne Center of Power Proves Pushover for Burglar

A burglar got into the Hawthorne City Hall without a hitch over the weekend, simply climbing through a jammed ground-level window that could not be shut because no one had bothered to fix it.

And it was easy pickings:

- The two police officers who answered a silent alarm Sunday night walked to City Hall, across the street from the police station, checked the doors and found nothing amiss so they did not bother to go inside.

- The deputy city clerk, who was storing personal valuables for herself and a friend in the vault in her office, did not bother to lock the safe when she went home Friday.

“I should have done that,” the clerk, Joan Fitzsimmons, said Monday. She said she would lock the vault in the future.

The city apparently lost nothing, except the smashed glass in doors to the office suites of the city manager, the city treasurer and the city clerk--and a certain amount of its dignity.

“I’m going to beat myself for the rest of my life over this,” Fitzsimmons said. “I made a mistake. What can I say?”

She said she lost a $1,000 Hamilton watch with a solid gold wristband and four diamonds and eight settings of sterling silver flatware worth $2,000. Fitzsimmons’ friend, Gladys Leeman, a retired city employee, lost a $7,000 coin collection that had been stored in the unlocked safe. Asked whether it was proper to store personal valuables in a city vault, Fitzsimmons replied, “No, not really . . . I wouldn’t ask the city to reimburse me for a penny.”

Fitzsimmons said she normally stores only election documents in the vault for fire protection, not safe-keeping. Ballots are kept by Los Angeles County officials.

The theft was discovered when city workers arrived Monday morning and found thousands of glass shards amid papers strewn on the office floors. Officials said it appeared that the intruder or intruders did not take anything except the valuables in the clerk’s vault.

Sgt. Peter Frankel, supervisor of Hawthorne police detectives, declined to release the names of the officers who answered the alarm, which was apparently triggered when the thief tried to break into another safe in the building in the 4400 block of West 126th Street.

The sergeant volunteered that the case was “sensitive.”

“You know, politically, with it being at City Hall, the city fathers are going to want more done,” he said.

Added Lt. Guy McDaniels, commander of the detective bureau: “An unfortunate thing, potentially embarrassing--right across from the Police Department.”

And the open window that the thief used?

“Yeah, we got that window fixed,” said Jim Radek of the city’s Building Maintenance Department.