Merchants Offer Reward in Battle With Vandals

Ventura Boulevard merchants offered a $1,500 reward Wednesday in a running struggle with roving vandals, apparently armed with air guns or slingshots, who have shot out nearly 250 shop windows in the western San Fernando Valley since midsummer.

Twenty-two windows were shattered in the latest string of attacks last weekend, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

Shopkeepers along Ventura Boulevard between Topanga Canyon and Balboa boulevards have been victimized for the past four months by the vandals, who sometimes shoot as many as 10 windows a night, Police Lt. William Gaida said.

“We consider this a very serious crime problem,” Gaida said. He said the average window costs $400 to $500 to replace, and some cost as much as $1,000.

Gaida said there are no solid leads in the investigation, but detectives believe the vandals are simply thrill-seeking youths who like to watch glass shatter. Police have staked out locations along Ventura Boulevard in a hunt for the vandals, with no luck, he said.

Gaida said the windows apparently were shattered by a small projectile, such as a pellet from an air gun or a ball bearing fired from a slingshot, perhaps from a passing car. No projectiles have been found, however, he said.

The chambers of commerce of Tarzana, Encino and Woodland Hills offered $1,500 in rewards Wednesday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals.

Merchants are frustrated and angry.

Douglas Baldwin, a salesman at Colton Piano & Organ Supermart in Tarzana, said the store has had its windows smashed an average of once every 10 days, and sometimes as often as twice a week.

The most recent attack Saturday night sent jagged bits of glass raining upon a $24,000 Schimmel grand piano in the front window. Tiny shards wedged themselves in the keys of the piano, the most expensive in the showroom, rendering them inoperable. Its buffed mahogany finish was scarred by flying glass.

Employees at Gordon’s Service in Tarzana consider themselves lucky. The Cadillac repair shop has been targeted only twice, most recently Saturday night when a pane about 10 feet square was smashed.

This is not the first time merchants along the Ventura Boulevard strip have been tormented by vandals. Two years ago, three teen-agers used ball bearings fired from slingshots to shoot out dozens of car and shop windows.

Jeffrey S. Buice, 19, of Woodland Hills was sentenced in June, 1989, to 90 days in county jail and ordered to pay $18,000 in damages. Another teen-ager received probation. Charges against the third were dropped on a technicality.

More recently, police in October arrested Guy Valiando, a 24-year-old transient, on suspicion of burglary in connection with a series of window-smashings along the boulevard. Police believe Valiando smashed the windows to gain entry to the shops and steal merchandise.

Bill Rust, owner of Budget Board-Ups of Sylmar, complained that although the broken windows are a boon to his business, they make him the target of suspicion.

“We get blamed for it,” he said, but he took it philosophically. “If glass doesn’t break, we don’t make a living.”