Woodland Hills Alert : Shopkeepers to Put TV Eye on Intruders

The main topic of conversation among shopkeepers at a small neighborhood shopping center in Woodland Hills this week was not the crime caper being filmed in front of their stores as a television movie-of-the-week.

Instead, merchants were buzzing over their own plans to use television cameras to film real-life crimes--a rash of burglaries that is plaguing their cluster of stores at the intersection of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Dumetz Road.

Angry shop owners said they plan to focus closed-circuit TV cameras on the stores at night and transmit the pictures to their home television sets and video recorders.

The system they expect to have in place today will allow them, when they see a break-in on their home screens, to switch on the video recorders. Then they will call police.

Police Kept Busy

Los Angeles police have been kept busy answering burglary calls at the 25-year-old shopping area.

Grocer Gary Thomas’ market has been hit twice. Thieves forced open his front door March 24 and again last Sunday, carting off cases of cigarettes both times.

Jerry Radowick, owner of a TV satellite dish shop, was burglarized last Saturday by intruders who smashed a door and grabbed goods valued at $5,000.

Michael Miller’s insurance office was struck early Tuesday morning by thieves who pried open a rear door and toted away office equipment valued at $6,500.

The television surveillance idea was Radowick’s. He said the plan is not far-fetched because he and several other shopkeepers live close to their stores.

‘Start With Four Cameras’

“I’ve got cameras and transmitters.” Radowick said. “We’re going to start with four cameras. . . . We’ll cover the whole shopping center. We’ll be set to watch from home on Channel 27.”

When the merchants are not tuned in, their equipment will be left running so that it records intruders and registers the date and time of the break-in on tape, he said.

Radowick is taking no chances. He said he installed security bars for his store’s doors, matching the ones already behind his plate-glass windows.

“My store’s going to be like a jail, with bars everywhere,” he said. The security bars are necessary because of the shopping area’s isolation, he said. It is about a mile south of Woodland Hills’ main commercial core on Ventura Boulevard.

Druggist Ed Walike, who said his Dumetz Pharmacy has been robbed 13 times and burglarized 12 times in the last 10 years, said he was quick to join the video venture, which will use equipment of Radowick’s worth about $5,000.

“I’ll be very happy to contribute to the TV. Just about everyone in the area has been broken into,” said Walike, a Woodland Hills resident who has operated the drugstore since 1961.

Called Mayor Bradley

Walike said he telephoned Mayor Tom Bradley for help after a series of break-ins five years ago. The mayor arranged for stepped-up police patrols for three months, which cured the problem at that time, he said.

It was the police who notified insurance man Miller about his break-in Tuesday morning.

A passing garbage-truck driver noticed that Miller’s office door was smashed and called authorities. Officers found his home phone number on an office Rolodex--something the thieves left behind, Miller said.

Patrols Stepped Up

Los Angeles Police Detective Frank Spangler, who investigates commercial burglaries in the West San Fernando Valley, said the burglary rate at the shopping center had not been unusually high in the past. But he said the frequency of the recent burglaries in the Dumetz-Topanga area “merits a look” by a special anti-burglary task force. Wednesday night, officers began stepping up patrols around the shops.

Spangler said he welcomes the merchants’ unusual television surveillance effort.

“I’ll take any help I can get,” he said.