Dragnet at the Bowling Alley

This is the city: Los Angeles.

The suspects: Five housewives.

The crime: Gambling.

The pot: $15.50.

The Police Department vice squad’s dragnet reached into a Thursday morning Dawnbreakers bowling league this week to nab five women.

It wasn’t pretty.

These housewives were bowling for dollars.

Acting on a tip, two vice officers secretly watched Thursday’s games at Granada Lanes in Granada Hills. That included putting an undercover female officer near the score table, close enough to ask innocent questions about the side pots the bowlers had riding on games.

Two hours later, when the last pin had dropped, the police rounded up the violators--all five were cited for misdemeanor gambling.

“They stopped me when I was packing my bowling bag and flashed a badge in my face like I was a criminal,” said Pamela Waizenegger, 33, of Panorama City, a member of the 10-for-10s team. She had won one of the league’s side pots after finishing with a 204 score. “This is what they busted me for: $7.50--boy, that’s big.”

Sandy Scholnick, 35, of Northridge; Anne Barnette, 34, Sepulveda, and Esther Martinez, 48, and Ollie Shores, 62, both of Chatsworth, had an $8 poker-style pot riding on one of their Bowl Weevils team games.

All five women were released at the bowling alley, while more than a dozen other angry Dawnbreakers looked on.

“We were humiliated,” Waizenegger said. “It was ridiculous and petty.”

And it didn’t last long. Capt. Mark Stevens, commander of the Devonshire Division, said shortly after the two vice officers involved reported back to the station that police officials decided that citing the women was extreme. On Thursday night, officers went to the women’s homes and took back the citations.

Stevens said the officers did not technically make a mistake; the women were gambling and it is illegal. But he said issuing warnings instead of citations was the “better way” to go.

“We think the best thing to do is ask those ladies to go back to their league and shut down the gambling,” he said.

But Waizenegger said that small wagers are standard in bowling leagues across the country. She noted that on Thursday, more than a dozen other league members had contributed $1 each into side pots but were not caught.

“Sure, it might have been technically illegal, but don’t the police have something better to do with their time?” she asked.

The bowling busts came on the same day police announced an 8.2% rise in crime in the San Fernando Valley.

Stevens said questioning the validity of the investigation was a “cheap shot,” and he noted that the vice squad routinely works gang-infested streets and other dangerous assignments. He said the officers were only at the bowling alley Thursday because they had to check out the tip.

Stevens said the officers do small-scale gambling investigations like this one infrequently.

But, he added, “when we get a complaint, we have to act on it.”

“It would almost be corruption on the Police Department to turn aside. They didn’t say, ‘Let’s go over to the bowling alley and find some old ladies gambling.’ We received a complaint, and we had to respond.”