Vigilante’s War on Real Estate Placards Shows Signs of Victory

Winston Salser swears that his days as a sign-stealing vigilante are over. As long as the real estate companies stop placing their placards illegally on public property, he says, he will stop carting them off to parts unknown.

Salser, a highly respected biology professor at UCLA during the week, has spent his weekends of late as a self-appointed foot soldier in the war against illegally planted real estate signs, armed with a camera, a car trunk and a copy of the city Municipal Code.

But he has finally agreed to a cease-fire after a month of negotiations.

This weekend he is returning three dozen or so “Open House” and “For Sale” signs--Salser is reluctant to discuss the exact size of his stash--to Fred Sands, Coldwell Banker and other such firms in return for a pledge that they will not put their signs on public property, in violation of a city ordinance.

But he said he cannot account for the hundreds of other signs that real estate officials say vanished after Salser called on his neighbors to toss them in the nearest trash can.

“I think I’ve gotten the message across,” Salser said. “I commend all the people who decided to fight back. I felt we accomplished something.”

Salser launched his campaign two months ago, after he became fed up with the proliferation of signs near his home in Pacific Palisades, prime real estate territory where the average house sold for $660,499 during a recent six-month period. He began distributing flyers at shopping malls urging other residents to pick up and dispose of any illegally placed signs they saw. Then he sat back and waited.

The complaints poured in. Signs were disappearing in droves. The real estate companies were furious. Salser was pleased.

“It’s a Reaganesque approach to government,” he said. “It would be a wasted effort to have a government agency take the time and money to come in and remove the signs. It’s much more efficient if the citizens do it themselves.”

It reached a point where the manager of the local Jon Douglas Co. office instructed workers hired to place the signs on weekends to “stay out of the Palisades.”

Although it’s legal to place advertising signs or posters on private property if the owner gives permission, many firms ignore the city ordinance and put them on public property as well.

To Salser, the illegally placed signs became symbols of big business polluting the environment. On some corners, as many as half a dozen signs would be erected, notifying anxious home buyers of properties for sale. “What these people don’t realize is that they’re fouling their own nest,” he said.

So he decided to clean it up for them.

Citizen’s Arrest

For awhile, he would sit and wait for the agents to erect their sandwich-board signs on the sidewalk. Then he would jump out of his car, take their picture and inform them that he could place them under citizen’s arrest for breaking the law. Their reaction was usually unprintable. Then Salser would wait for them to leave, toss the signs in his trunk and move on to the next corner.

Soon afterward, Salser decided to try a new tactic.

He wrote a letter to the real estate companies, saying he would return the signs for $20. Salser insisted that he was not holding the signs ransom--the money was a “storage fee” to cover his time and expenses, he said, and would be donated to charity or a political cause.

Others soon joined the campaign started by Salser, a longtime community activist who received an award from the city of Los Angeles in 1981, citing his “meritorious contributions to humanitarian progress” for leading a campaign that prompted the acquisition of a 10-square-mile tract of land for Topanga State Park. The Brentwood Homeowners Assn. wrote a letter to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, complaining that city officials were neglecting their duty to enforce the sign laws.

City officials admit that they are ill-equipped to handle the problem. The city took down 48,500 signs of all types last year and warned 635 people that their signs were illegally posted, according to William Bradford, chief inspector for the bureau of street maintenance in the Department of Public Works.

Yet that barely makes a dent in the city’s burgeoning sign population, he said, noting that the city does not have the time, the money or the manpower to adequately deal with the problem.

The law says people can be cited for illegally placing signs only if they are caught in the act, making enforcement difficult--indeed, inspectors only catch two or three culprits a year. Most of the real estate signs go up Friday night and stay up until Sunday night, when city offices are closed.

Encino Incident

Salser is not the first person to do battle against the signs vigilante-style. An Encino homeowners group caught a Canoga Park man illegally putting up signs in 1986 and placed him under citizen’s arrest. David P. Laubacher was later fined $171 for his action by a Van Nuys Municipal Court judge.

In a more official policing action, the San Fernando Valley Board of Realtors last year placed Mike Glickman Realty Inc. on one-year probation because of the firm’s excessive use of “Open House” signs.

Since the agreement with the real estate industry was reached, Salser said, the sidewalks of Pacific Palisades have been almost entirely clear of illegally placed signs. Now the “Open House” signs are being placed on private lawns and driveways. Salser said that on a recent drive he noticed only one illegally placed sign. He was so pleased, he left it alone.

Salser plans to sit back and see what happens after he returns his collection of signs. But if he needs to renew the campaign, he notes, it’s only a car trunk away.