Jewelry District’s Security Systems Are Not Fail-Safe

In the multimillion-dollar jewelry district of downtown Los Angeles, security precautions can range from armed guards and video cameras to alarms, sensitive electronic entry and exit ways and even bullet-proof glass partitions or security waiting rooms.

But a jeweler or manufacturer who pays top dollar for such protections may never be completely safe, especially if a determined thief is willing to take time to gain their confidence, according to security officials and others who work in the jewelry district, which is concentrated on Hill Street and Broadway.

“You can have cameras, (electronic alarm) buttons, armed guards--even fire escapes that are wired,” said Marcell Mobley, security supervisor for the Von Lewis Security Co., which protects the Los Angeles Jewelry Center in the 600 block of Hill Street.

If a jeweler decides to allow entry to strangers when he has substantial amounts of gold or gems on hand--as the owner of the Rope Mine Jewelry Co. at 610 S. Broadway did Wednesday morning--”then we have no control over it,” Mobley said. “That’s one of the hazards of . . . being open to the public. It’s kind of hard to prevent this sort of thing.”

In the case of Wednesday’s brazen theft of nearly $1 million in 24-karat gold grains and other gold products, the two robbers bound the owner and his employees before they could push alarm buttons, and escaped before they could alert authorities.

“It’s a sad thing to have happen,” said Moussa Hassid, business manager for the Jewelry Center. “For a business owner, it is very difficult to know whether it is a legitimate business person or not.”

Some security company officials expressed confidence in their operations.

“The kind of thing that happened (at the Rope Mine Jewelry Co.) is not going to happen here,” said Clark Wilmoth, who handles security at the California Jewelry Mart, which is home to numerous jewelers and jewelry manufacturers on Hill Street. “We can’t take any more drastic measures--not unless we want to spend a billion dollars and have an aircraft carrier sitting in the street.”

Still, even the best measures are not foolproof, he said.

“Someone can come in and look at a certain diamond, will pass themselves off as someone that knows the language of diamonds. They may come back two or three times before they steal anything so they can gain the store owner’s confidence,” Wilmoth said.

Detective Lou Boozell, who specializes in jewelry thefts for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division, compared security systems to insurance policies: “You can have too little or too much.”

Some places within the jewelry district have very little in the way of security, Boozell said. Others have “alarms, locked doors, double-locked entrances” and security waiting rooms.

But even so, he added, many business owners don’t check for identification. “You’ve got to reach a happy medium between how much security is enough and how much is so much that (it) would scare away the people.”

Nelson Colton, president of A-Mark Precious Metals Inc. in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s leading wholesalers of precious metals, expressed surprise that strangers were allowed entry where so much gold was on hand.

“I’d actually have a bullet-proof window between me and a customer if I had that much (gold). . . . I would not let people in an office of that nature unless I previously had identified them.”

Colton, whose firm usually employs armored security guards to transport precious metals and does not keep valuable material on the premises, added that Wednesday’s gold theft was somewhat unusual in his experience.

“Very rarely are you actually hit for gold,” he said. “Diamonds are robbed and things of this kind. This obviously was well planned.”

If nothing else, the gold theft serves as a reminder for others to be on their guard, security experts said.

“The whole jewelry district is alerted about this now,” Mobley said. “Once word spreads . . . it will be more difficult to gain entry. . . . People will be more cautious. They’ll say, ‘If you’re a regular customer, I’ll let you in. If I don’t know you, I won’t.’ ”