Shopping Mall Pros and Cons

Right in line with apple pie and baseball is the California mega-mall. Shopping, fast foods, movie theaters and real crime. All the things we can’t live without.

The mega-mall has become a toy box for crime. Shoplifting, auto theft, robbery, and bullets flying all at one convenient location for the criminal and gangs.

The Los Angeles Police Department recently announced it will install a full-time police facility manned by two officers at the Northridge Fashion Center mall. This may help the center with its crime problem, but what steps were taken by the mall to curb crime before the Police Department made such a drastic move?

Will these officers be taken away from our already depleted neighborhood community force?

The mall is not just shopping and glitter. It is traffic congestion, air, noise, and visual pollution. And now they give us real crime problems--all at a cost to the taxpayer.

City Hall should start listening to its citizens when new development is planned. We told them years ago the malls would be a hangout and crime would become a major problem. A poorly planned mega-mall will cost the city money through the problems it brings to a community and the deterioration of the city’s infrastructure.

Wake up, City Hall. You can’t solve our city’s budget deficit by giving the green light to poorly planned development that will wind up costing the city big dollars to maintain.

BOB CARCIA

North Hollywood