‘Maybe there are just too many people and too much congestion.’ : Taps for a Haven

They call it Pellet Alley.

It stretches along Ventura Boulevard from Woodland Hills to Studio City. By one estimate, 400 store windows have been shot out by vandals in the past month or so.

The weapons are pellet guns, BB guns and slingshot-propelled ball bearings.

Plate glass windows have exploded in the night at businesses ranging from gift shops to banks. The losses have amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.

No one has been hurt, because the stores have been closed when the attacks have occurred. But the merchants wonder what’s going to happen if someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The assaults are random and unpredictable. One store owner said he was told that 40 windows were destroyed in one night. His was one of them.

The operator of a window-boarding company said he was awake all night answering calls.

“Maybe,” someone said with appropriate irony, “they’re the ones doing it.”

“How do we defend against a thing like that?” a store owner asked. “Do we post a guard? Do we start shooting back?”

Another said simply, “What in the hell is happening to us?”

I heard about it from a friend, Jack Hawn.

He telephoned one day to say that a store called the Chocolate Giraffe had a piece of plywood up where a plate glass window had been, and someone had written on the plywood:

“You can’t see the inside of our beautiful children’s store because vandals shot out the window.”

‘ “A children’s store, for God’s sake,” Jack said. “Maybe you can do something with that.”

It was owner Kathy Soulek who made me aware of the magnitude of the problem. Her plate glass window was shot out two weeks ago.

“I discovered it when I opened one day,” she said. “The window simply wasn’t there.”

She called police and was told it was happening all around her. They were investigating, but there was little they could do. No one came out to look. They took the report by phone.

“I come to work every morning wondering if my windows will still be there,” she said. “I’m frightened, sure, but I’m mad too. A thing like this isn’t going to force me out.”

When I started to leave, she said, “Something’s happening in the Valley. Something very disturbing . . . “

Boards still cover the windows of Bangles, a jewelry shop a couple of doors away, and the Freelander Mortgage Co. at the corner.

Most feel the shootings are the works of kids.

“Maybe they’re just striking out at business,” Doug Ross said. “Maybe it’s alcohol and drugs. Maybe there are just too many people and too much congestion, like we’re in a swirling pit of people. Who knows?”

Ross owns Rafflesport, a clothing store across the street from Chocolate Giraffe. He’s been hit twice.

“I’m trying to figure out what to do, but there’s no answer,” he said. “The attacks are so random that, if you did post a guard, he’d have to be there every night of the year and that’s impossible.”

The first of his windows shot out cost $2,000 to replace, the second $1,500.

“I’m 40 years old and I’ve lived in the Valley since I was 5,” Ross said. “I’ve been in business for 17 years. I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before. It makes you think twice about a store on the boulevard. Maybe we all ought to be in malls . . . .”

John Fregeau, who manages Freelander, sat in the shadow of a boarded-up window and speculated that it wouldn’t take much to push one of the boards in.

“They’re not very secure,” he said, “Just quarter-inch ply. Anyone could give ‘em a shove and down they’d come. They couldn’t get much here. Some office equipment, maybe. But they could get real merchandise at other places.”

Two windows were shot out at Freelander five days apart. Total loss: $1,500.

“The customers ask about them,” Fregeau said, “but no one seems worried. At least not yet.”

Police Detective Tim Yost isn’t all that certain the shooters are kids.

“We don’t have a shred of evidence to support this,” he said, “but it could be a glass company or a window-boarder. It’s happened before. We just can’t prove anything.”

There have been so many windows shot out, merchants say, that they don’t call the police anymore. They call their insurance companies.

Yost says he doesn’t know whether the figure of 400 windows is accurate.

“I have a report from Flower Fair, hit three times. Chick’s Restaurant, five times, and 16 other reports, many of them multiple. It could be 400, I suppose, if most of them aren’t being reported.”

I asked what the police were doing about it.

“There’s not much we can do,” he said. “We’ve got nothing to go on. Our only hope is that someone will get a license number.”

It was Doug Ross who asked, What’s happening to us?

Kathy Soulek answered him: Something very disturbing.

The Valley was a haven once from things that go bang in the night. But look around you, friend.

It isn’t anymore.