Council Expected to OK a 10-Year Lease of Mall Police Office

The Los Angeles City Council is expected today to approve a 10-year lease on a small satellite police station that has been operating, complete with a makeshift holding cell, for three months in Topanga Plaza shopping center.

Police officials said Monday that the three-month pilot program, begun with the opening of the two-officer Community Assistance Office, has proved successful and they want to make the operation permanent. The operators of the mall in turn are offering the city a $1-a-year lease on the office, an offer the council is not expected to refuse.

The two officers assigned to the office handle calls--primarily shoplifting arrests--from Topanga Plaza and the nearby Promenade and Fallbrook malls as well as walk foot beats in Topanga Plaza.

“We handle all shoplifters and radio calls right there in the mall,” said Capt. Ronald Bergmann, head of patrol in the West Valley Division. “So we are not tying up patrol cars going back and forth.”

Bergmann said that before the office was opened in the mall, patrol officers had to be sent to pick up shoplifters caught by store security guards. The shoplifters were then transported back to the West Valley station in Reseda, booked and then usually released because most shoplifting offenses are misdemeanors.

The process took patrol officers off the streets for a minimum of two hours for each arrest. But with the in-mall office, shoplifters can be identified, fingerprinted, photographed and released in 15 minutes, said Officer John Artes, who is assigned to the Community Assistance Office.

Artes and his partner, Officer Mike Sterling, process about 50 shoplifting arrests a week, a number sure to grow as the holiday shopping season approaches. The officers also take reports on credit-card and bad-check fraud, and have aided mall security forces by making arrests for car break-ins and other crimes in the parking lots.

The pair also engage in community service programs, instructing shop operators on how to protect their businesses from theft.

Although the police office is now located in the suite of management offices at the mall, plans are under way to provide the department with a storefront location, said Bill Dobner, general manager of Topanga Plaza. Similar police offices have been in operation for years in malls in Glendale and Northridge.

“The immediate response to this has been very good,” Dobner said. “The upside is the contact with the public. It’s kind of a return to the old ways of having the beat cop on Main Street.”