Police Mini-Mall Office Opens : Law enforcement: Department uses space in King’s Plaza Shopping Center in community-based program.

At the King’s Plaza Shopping Center, you can rent a videotape, order a pizza, buy Chinese food, have your hair and nails done and now, in the center’s newest store, you can chat with a cop.

There, between Francis Beauty Salon and the Donut-Ice Cream Store is the Pomona Police Community Center, the first of what officials say could become a series of storefront police offices in the city of 131,000.

The office, at Holt Avenue and Fairplex Drive, is being used as a base for a three-officer burglary team, a two-officer, two-dog canine patrol, and a graffiti suppression officer.

Capt. Jim Harding said that the public is invited to come in and talk to officers but that there will be no regular office hours, at first.

The department is recruiting civilian volunteers to staff the office, to provide information and limited services, he said. When enough volunteers have signed up, office hours will be established.

Harding said officers will use the office to make phone calls, pick up messages and plan police operations. The captain said the office is part of a trend toward community-based policing--an effort to make law enforcement a cooperative effort by the public and police. It is also designed to prevent crime at the shopping center.

Property owner Neal Sprik said that when he acquired the shopping center four years ago, the area was a hangout for gangs and drug dealers. He took out the pay phones that were providing “an office” for undesirables and built some commercial buildings.

“We cleaned up this corner,” he said.

Sprik, who is not charging the Police Department for 550 square feet of office space, said the frequent presence of police officers and patrol cars “will give us a little added deterrence to crime.”

Drugstore owner Larry Clayton said he moved to the center in November from three blocks away to be in a place where his customers could feel safer.

“The old location was getting rough,” he said. “I’d fill a few prescriptions and then I’d run outside” to make sure customers were not being hassled.

Although he has had no problems at King’s Plaza, Clayton said, he welcomes police as neighbors.

“The presence of a police substation will make it better,” he said.

City Councilwoman Nell Soto, who has long advocated the establishment of neighborhood offices for the 172-member police force, said she hopes this will be the first in a series.

“One of my goals has been to get something that will serve as a deterrent to crime in Pomona,” she said. “This is an example of what a community can do.”

The Police Department is negotiating for space in the shopping center next to Grossman’s building supply store on Mission Boulevard. Harding said the space would be used by the department’s training unit.

Besides increasing the police presence, neighborhood offices can ease the crowding at police headquarters, Harding said. Currently, the captain said, the briefing room is so crowded that officers sometimes have to take notes standing up and that rooms designed as closets are being used as offices.

City officials are also looking at the possibility of opening two fully staffed police substations, though that could be costly. City Administrator Julio Fuentes recently told the City Council that a substation program is being developed for consideration by the lawmakers during upcoming budget sessions.