Stakeout Nets 2 Suspects in Market Robberies : Law enforcement: Police watched grocery stores for a month. Last weekend, the wait paid off.

Pasadena police, who spent a month staking out supermarkets to halt a string of brazen armed robberies, believe they hit pay dirt last weekend.

Officers arrested two men they say are responsible for at least a dozen supermarket holdups in the west San Gabriel Valley and northeast Los Angeles.

Lt. Van Anthony, who set up the extra surveillance in Pasadena, said he was happy it yielded results because “it just about killed my overtime budget.”

The suspects, Anthony Keith Turner, 27, of Altadena and Mitchell Larue Boyd, 28, of Pasadena were charged Tuesday in Pasadena Municipal Court.

Boyd, who police say robbed cashiers at gunpoint in at least three stores, faces 10 counts of robbery. Turner, believed to have driven the getaway car, was charged with seven counts of robbery.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James R. Simpson said witnesses to eight other holdups will view the suspects in a lineup next week. He said additional charges against them could be filed afterward.

Anthony said Turner and Boyd were identified by acquaintances as half-brothers, but he said early this week that investigators had not confirmed the relationship.

Turner told police that he was employed by a Pasadena moving company, but a company spokesman said Turner worked there only one day. Boyd listed no employer.

Police say the robberies began June 21 and included nine incidents in Pasadena, one in San Marino, one in Highland Park and one in Arcadia.

In each case, Anthony said, a man would display a gun and walk up to one cashier after another demanding cash. The typical loss was about $1,000 per incident, he said. The robber was particularly bold, the lieutenant said, in hitting stores during busy hours and sometimes holding up cashiers as they were waiting on customers. No was injured in the robberies.

Turner and Boyd were arrested Saturday night after a Pasadena officer spotted a red Nissan Sentra seen during the robbery of a Hughes Market in Arcadia earlier in the evening. The men were also linked to a second Hughes holdup that night in Pasadena.

In the car, and during a search of Turner’s house, investigators found cash, clothing, a handgun and a police scanner radio, all tied to the robberies, authorities said.

A Hughes spokesman declined to comment on the robberies.

Charles I. Miller, a security expert with the Food Marketing Institute in Washington, said that, as a source of loss for grocery chains, holdups rank far below shoplifting and employee theft.

“We don’t perceive the supermarket industry as having a big robbery problem.” he said. “It’s much easier to rob a (small) convenience store than it is to rob a supermarket. The typical supermarket is not an easy mark.”

Miller, whose organization represents more than 19,000 stores worldwide, said many markets employ uniformed guards and install closed circuit television and alarm systems to discourage robbers.

His group’s recent survey of about 4,000 supermarkets in the United States found that only one out of every 10 was robbed in 1990.

Despite the low number, Miller said supermarkets are concerned about such crimes because robbers are usually armed and capable of injuring an employee or customer. He said employees are typically trained to cooperate with a gunman and also to remember details about the robber’s appearance that can be given to police.