Shops Still Show Damage : Window-Breaking Spree Ends Along Ventura Blvd.

As unexpectedly as it began, a rash of window breakings on Ventura Boulevard from Studio City to Woodland Hills has ended, police and merchants report.

Since the end of May, about 90 store windows have been broken by pellets or BBs along the busy office and shopping thoroughfare, police say.

Investigators think that youths “doing it for the fun of it” broke the windows by firing from their vehicles, said Los Angeles Police Detective Tim Yost, but he and other detectives have not ruled out the possibility that a glass company or window-boarding firm did it to generate business.

Because window replacement firms have a backlog of orders, many of the stores have remained boarded for weeks, merchants say.

Evenly Divided

Police say the broken windows are spread evenly along Ventura Boulevard, with about 30 reported in each of the three police divisions that patrol the 17-mile-long street.

Most of the damage occurred after closing when no one was in the stores, police said. The vandalism reached its peak in July, when about half the windows were broken, and ended at the beginning of August.

“It’s been two weeks since I had a report,” Detective Mike Sullivan of the North Hollywood Division said Friday. “Maybe whoever was doing it was sent to jail on another crime, or it was kids who decided it was no longer fun.”

Merchants say the tally of smashed windows could be significantly higher than police reports show because many store owners don’t bother to report the loss to police.

“I lost two front windows in two weeks,” said Doug Ross, owner of Rafflesport, an Encino clothing store, “and I didn’t bother to report either one. What’s the point? And I know others have also not bothered.”

Yost, who is assigned to the West Valley Division, said there appears to be “no pattern to the shootings,” that it appears that the shooters were “just riding up and down the boulevard firing when they saw no one around to turn them in.”

He said that, in the early 1970s, a glass company owner was convicted of breaking store windows to create business. As a result, Yost said, police ask victims if they have been approached by installers or firms that board up broken windows, “but so far, there has been no such activity.”

Jan Sobel, executive director of the Encino Chamber of Commerce, said that Encino merchants are considering setting up a stakeout of stores that have been hit often or offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the vandals.