Violence Mars Malls’ Image as Safe Places to Shop, Relax : Commerce: Fear increases because shootouts such as the one in West Covina are unexpected, sociologist says.

Within the old marketplaces of the Near East, where blood feuds are as ancient as the tribes that fight them, there is a custom called “market peace.”

It dictates that the market is neutral ground; weapons are left outside. To violate the market peace in traditional societies, says a man who has studied it, “is considered outrageous.”

And yet in Los Angeles, the modern urban marketplace--the mall--has not fully reached that accommodation. A couple of gangs rumbling at a West Covina mall let loose with a blast of gunfire last week, and once again one of the few shared public places in Southern California finds some of its benign neutrality chipped away--in image if not in fact.

“That’s how this country was built; in the old Western days, you’d leave your guns at the door. Other countries copied that. (Now) we’re going backward and they’re going forward,” said Rodger Carey, 59, a retired oil field worker who indulged in his share of fistfights as a kid. “But never with weapons, and never in public places like this one.”

Carey comes to the Glendale Galleria three times a week, for morning coffee and some quiet people-watching. The Galleria, like most local malls, has had no such violent episodes; the odds of being wounded in a shopping center are probably not as high as being struck by lightning.

Yet the fear is often out of proportion to its cause, said USC associate sociology professor Marcus Felson. “People tend to be afraid of things that are highly unlikely to happen to them,” he said, “and unafraid of things that are likely to happen,” in part because news reports highlight the exceptional, like a mall shooting, more than the ordinary, like a drive-by killing.

But the inviolate feel of a mall, as something between a living room and a park, makes any violent disruption seem more shocking than a murderous drive-by shooting in some more exposed spot.

For all of Southern California’s embracing climate, the womb-like malls are among the few common areas where people from different neighborhoods and classes cross paths willingly.

Violence “would be exactly what you would not expect in malls,” said G. Alexander Moore, a USC anthropology professor who has studied ancient and modern marketplaces. “Their major design is safety, to provide strangers with a safe place to exchange goods. It’s very much a symbolic ground for safe space,” and a violent transgression on it “is a collective violation.”

Aside from home, work or school, people spend more time at malls than anywhere else, a 1990 poll by the International Council of Shopping Centers found. Nearly one person in three described mall-going as “a recreational pastime.”

Karen Robinson of Pasadena was pushing 10-month-old Jack--John Arthur Hale--in his carriage through the Glendale Galleria, as she does a couple of times a week, “just to cruise, meet other mommies for lunch. It’s cheaper than going to museums--sometimes,” she said, glancing meaningfully at a display of spring shoes.

Here, she feels she can put Jack down to test his new walking skills, “and I know he won’t get run over by a car. Plus he likes all the people. It gets him to be more gregarious for when he goes to school.”

She comes here--her friends come here--because “you feel a sense of security--maybe it’s a false sense of security, but it’s a non-threatening place, less threatening than the movies in a lot of ways.”

In the most recent case of mall violence Monday night, two people were injured and more than 50 shoppers were forced to run for cover after shooting broke out between rival gangs in West Covina’s Plaza. One gang member has been arrested and another was being sought by police.

Violent incidents, like this one, shatter the sense of security, said anthropologist Moore. “When someone violates your home, it’s a personal, private invasion and it’s terrible and you’re upset, but it’s not the same as if a public space you share on a personal level is being violated.”

Some rare but notable violations:

* The “mall murders,” the random killings of several people running errands at malls, terrified the San Gabriel Valley last summer.

* This month, a man was sentenced to life in prison for his part in abducting a woman on her way to her car in a Pasadena mall in 1988. She was raped, robbed and shot in the head.

* A teen-age Christmas shopper was shot to death by mistake in 1988 as a gang member fired at a rival he had chased into a crowded Panorama City mall.

* In January, about 50 young people gathered outside Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills Plaza after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, and bolted inside the mall, shouting, running and scaring shoppers, reportedly as police cars neared.

* In 1986, a woman walked into a Pennsylvania mall on Halloween Eve and opened fire, killing three and shooting at seven others.

Although not all of these incidents involved youths, many adults and mall operators have come to see them as the problem. In the 1990 shopping center poll, 37% agreed that “the presence of large groups of teen-agers in a (shopping) center bothers me.”

That raises a quandary for shoppers and for shopkeepers--are these potential customers or potential troublemakers? Business people face some of the same questions about malls that city officials do in seeking to bar gang members from parks, as Los Angeles city officials have recently proposed for the city’s 350 parks--an effort that is being criticized on constitutional grounds.

To keep the malls safe yet public is even more complex because teen-agers could be good mall customers, or they could be trouble, even if the trouble is confined to shoplifting and not mayhem.

At the Sherman Oaks Galleria, said general manager Carrol Beals, security is “proactive” about potential problems. “There are a couple of groups who really come in just to screw around, to be honest. We discourage their return. It’s never as effective as we’d like to be, but the issue is consistency and fairness. They don’t want to feel harassed, we don’t want them to feel harassed. However, this is not a playground.”

Teen-agers “are customers, too, but we don’t want one customer segment to turn away another. Kids aren’t villains, kids aren’t stupid. Not every kid who wears a Raiders jacket and baseball cap turned backward is a gang member, for heaven’s sake,” Beals said.

“Unfortunately what we find happening, every time the consumer sees more than two young men together, they assume it’s a gang, and it’s just a bunch of kids in the mall shopping, eating, whatever.”

Robinson is anxious on both counts. She has her 10-month-old son and a 20-year-old son. He refused to wear his blue graduation robe home from commencement because it might get him pegged as a gang member--yet he has been barred from miniature golf courses when he has gone with his family because he wears a Raiders cap. And doesn’t dare jog on his street lest the police think he’s running from a crime.

“It is a thin line to violation of rights. Is it your hat or your jacket or your tennies? Is it your skin color or where you live?” she wonders.

“He’s a really nice boy but if he wears a Raiders hat he’s liable to get stopped. Then on the other hand you see kids who are awful frightening. So I understand both sides, but I don’t know where you draw the line.”