Thefts From City Offices Test Depleted Security Force

The troubling thefts at Van Nuys started in early December when intruders broke into the City of Los Angeles’ eight-story building, pried open corridor doors with a screwdriver and walked off with an electric typewriter and $100 cash from the city attorney’s district office.

Two weeks later, burglars shattered a glass door in the same complex and entered the ground-floor offices of City Councilmen Ernani Bernardi and Joel Wachs. Two electric typewriters, a word processor and a portable copying machine were taken.

Then, the weekend of Jan. 10, in the same Van Nuys building, thieves smashed the window on a basement fire door and made their way to the third-floor offices of the Bureau of Street Maintenance and to Mayor Tom Bradley’s field office one floor above. Missing after that break-in was office equipment that included a $4,000 word processor.

“It’s almost as if they brought their shopping list with them,” said Carolyn Loria, a field deputy for Councilman Bernardi. “They seemed to know exactly what they wanted to take.”

While Los Angeles police detectives try to piece together clues that may connect the Van Nuys burglaries, there are equally disturbing accounts of thefts at downtown City Hall offices that are patrolled by security guards and protected by sensory alarms and electronic surveillance.

After moving into her new office last month, Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores arrived one morning at City Hall and discovered that a $350 videocassette recorder had been removed from a locked room. A few days later, Susan Prichard, an aide to Flores, went to pick up her city car from the underground parking garage, only to find that it, too, had vanished.

Although there is no evidence linking the incidents in Van Nuys and at City Hall, they convey the same troubling message to worried city officials.

“I am getting concerned that things are disappearing from locked offices, and that despite our security, things are happening inside City Hall and we don’t know how to really control it,” Flores said.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who has been in office for more than a decade, said he has been spared any recent thefts but realizes that the city has a growing security problem. “It hasn’t gotten any better,” Yaroslavsky said. “In fact, it’s gotten a lot worse.”

Responsibility for city security services--and its lapses--falls on the General Services Department, a sprawling agency with a $163-million budget. But even the agency’s detractors acknowledge that the department faces a staggering task in trying to protect 1,000 city buildings, 20,000 employees and 10 million square feet of city property with only 55 security guards and whatever technical wizardry it can afford. Two former police officers serve as security consultants.

The security force--which has been steadily shrinking over the last seven years--has no sworn city police officers, although Los Angeles Police Department officers guard the mayor and, during the working day, City Council chambers.

Fighting crime on city property has been a frustrating battle with no victory in sight.

Sylvia Cunliffe, General Services Department’s general manager, refused to grant a formal interview to The Times to talk about the problem. However, in a brief telephone interview, Cunliffe said crime persists despite her department’s efforts.

She blamed the shortage of security guards and funds at her disposal.

“I feel we are doing as good a job (as we can) with the limited resources we have,” she said, adding that she has regularly requested more funds to increase the security staff.

In a recent audit by the city administrative officer, Cunliffe expressed concern that “security has become a weak link” in her department’s services. And the report suggested that the mayor and City Council “be fully advised of the present security situation so they can make an informed judgment on acceptable risk factors and overall staffing adequacy.”

That risk factor is already well known to some city officials, including Cunliffe, who, two months ago, arrived at work to find that someone had slipped inside her locked office overnight and had stolen a personal stereo and video recorder.

Such occurrences, it turns out, are not uncommon around City Hall:

- Chuck Fuentes, chief administrative officer for City Atty. James Hahn, told The Times that thieves last year spirited away a video recorder used to train new lawyers and a color television from City Hall East. Seven weeks ago, $5,000 worth of computer equipment was also taken from the city attorney’s office, he said.

“We even had two industrial-strength vacuum cleaners lifted when I was with the city controller’s office,” Fuentes added, “and one vacuum cleaner from this office.”

- Terri Siegel, supervising attorney at the Hill Street branch of the city attorney’s office, said someone entered there during a weekend last May and took a carton of legal files that involved traffic cases.

- In the city clerk’s tax and permit division, employees were so distressed to discover personal items, including a radio, missing from their desks that City Clerk Elias Martinez wrote a letter to Cunliffe in November saying that security is “not at an acceptable level” and asked that guards keep a closer eye on the office.

- A few days after reassuring a reporter that no burglaries had plagued her office, Cheryle Grace, an aide in the 10th Council District office, said someone kicked in the doors to the field office in southwest Los Angeles and left with an IBM computer terminal.

- Last July, police in Grand Junction, Colo., stopped a 26-year-old man wanted in Wisconsin on robbery charges and discovered that he was driving a new Chevrolet Chevette owned by the Los Angeles City Bureau of Engineering. The car had been purchased only a few weeks before and apparently had been stolen from an underground city parking garage, according to an LAPD report.

- Although City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie said that there have been no recent thefts in his office, he ruefully recalled walking in more than a year ago to find that his television set--which was connected to a closed-circuit security system--had disappeared. Left inside the cabinet was a card that had been taken from Comrie’s desk. Inscribed on the card was the message: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

- Aides to Councilman Gilbert Lindsay recall the time 15 months ago when police officers were summoned to their field office and arrested a man who had broken into the building and was walking away with food that Lindsay kept in an office freezer. The burglar’s haul was three frozen turkeys intended for needy constituents.

Although such thefts may be sporadic, and some may seem petty, their cumulative cost can be immense. In a 1982 City Council report, a check of inventory records showed that 1,186 items registered with the General Services Department and valued at $216,246 were missing. And one agency official told The Times that as many as a third of the thefts from city departments may go unreported.

Automobiles, computer terminals, television sets, video recorders, microwave ovens, tools, telephones, car batteries, tires and office supplies--ranging from reams of paper to bottled water--have disappeared at one time or another.

“The city wouldn’t buy hand-held calculators for employees because of fears they would be easy to steal,” said Barbara Zeidman, director of the Community Development Department’s rent stabilization division. “Now, we find that the big desk calculators are the ones being unplugged and taken.”

Zeidman, meanwhile, said she found that supplies were not the only things being taken freely. At one point, she discovered discrepancies in the recorded mileage of her staff’s city car and launched an investigation. Zeidman later learned that a city worker in another department had obtained keys and borrowed the car from a municipal parking garage for an occasional overnight drive and at least one weekend trip.

Many suspect that city thefts are often the work of insiders, and sometimes they are.

One city official, who asked not to be identified, said that a few years ago a city operating engineer was fired after it was discovered that he had used his master keys to burglarize offices and was responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in losses.

The man was caught after his wife tried to cash some checks stolen from the desk of a city accountant, the official said. Later, it was discovered that the engineer had served time at San Quentin Prison. “We have tried to strengthen our background checks since then,” the official added.

But some victims are not reassured.

In the city attorney’s office, Fuentes said, he had the locks to his private chambers changed and opts to dump his trash and clean his own office rather than allow custodians or other workers inside.

Some typewriters and computers are now bolted to tables. Stern directives to employees, warning them to lock their desks and hide their valuables, are periodically distributed. And more than 100 burglar alarms have been installed in city buildings.

The scope of the theft problem is unclear.

In its December audit, the City Administrative Office asked the General Services Department and its security consultants to determine actual loss from burglaries and other crimes over the last three years and to report the outcome of any investigations into those incidents.

The CAO noted that the department is relying more on security fences, alarm systems, video surveillance cameras and other devices and lauded Cunliffe and her staff for their efforts despite a dwindling number of security guards.

The number of security guards has plummeted 40% over the last seven years because of budget cuts, the report said, and the impact has been keenly felt. Foot patrols in the Civic Center complex have been halved, along with a sharp reduction in vehicle patrols. In 1980, for example, security guards walked each floor of City Hall as part of a routine check. Now there are only limited patrols.

In a separate study of the City Hall security system, the 1985-86 Los Angeles County Grand Jury also concluded that there was “an insufficient number of security personnel” and, among its recommendations, called on city officials to lock the building’s side entrances during the workday and to install surveillance cameras.

Some of those precautions have been taken, but there still are some discomfiting incidents.

Ted Goldstein, who works in the city attorney’s office, said he once encountered a peddler wandering inside a suite of private offices selling meat products and purses. A council deputy said that one day he unlocked a bathroom supposedly limited to city staffers and found a stranger bathing in the sink.

Two custodians working the late shift at City Hall said that transients were found sleeping in stairwells and under office desks after closing hours and using elevators from the underground garage.

While working on weekends, Councilwoman Flores said, she has encountered people who obviously should not be in the building and is so uneasy that she sometimes brings her dog along to help her feel more secure.

Flores added that while she is sympathetic about the limited number and heavy workloads of security guards, she questioned whether security management can be improved and whether some guards are diligent in protecting city buildings.

Late one night, a reporter who sought to sample City Hall security walked up to the City Hall’s Main Street entrance and was told by a guard at the desk to sign in and provide identification. When the reporter complied, he was asked his destination. The reporter gave a room number.

However, once inside the building, the visitor was able to roam freely throughout the main City Hall, ride the elevators to other floors and walk across an enclosed bridge to City Hall East. Most doors were locked, but some offices remained open and accessible. Although he passed custodians and security guards, the reporter was never questioned.

Eventually, the reporter took an empty computer box--complete with a picture of the computer monitor and company markings on the outside--and filled it with papers to take out of the building.

When he emerged from the elevator and went to the front desk, there was no guard to sign him out and the front door to the lobby was ajar. The reporter walked outside, placed the box in his car parked on the street and returned to the Main Street entrance.

Another 10 minutes passed before an officer walked up to the desk, buckling his uniform belt and preparing to start his shift. Asked about his fellow guard, the replacement shook his head and said the man probably departed early. Then, the young guard spied a telephone receiver on the desk placed sideways on its cradle.

“I guess he didn’t want anyone checking on him,” the guard said.

When another, older guard arrived, the reporter asked how someone could walk unchallenged out of City Hall carrying a computer box. But he scoffed at the demonstration. “You could have been stopped and arrested too,” he told the reporter. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

The guard, who like his companion asked not to be identified, bitterly complained that council members and other city employees forget the times that suspects are caught and would-be thieves are discouraged by the guards’ mere presence in City Hall.

Indeed, some security officers--who generally make between $1,600 and $2,000 a month and are usually unarmed as well as being undermanned--feel under siege.

They must guard public buildings that, for most of the day, are open to nearly anyone who enters. They must compensate for careless employees who tempt thieves with unlocked drawers and easy-to-grab valuables. And they are expected to scrutinize and question visitors and city workers alike without being overbearing.

“We are more like custodians instead of guards,” one officer said, “a body without arms or legs. But we just try to do the best we can.”