Garage Rapes Worry Patrons of Downtown Shopping Mall : Retailers: Police and private security guards say they have beefed up protection in and around Long Beach Plaza, where businesses were already feeling the recession.

A woman walking alone through the Long Beach Plaza parking garage is an unusual sight these days.

Most leave in pairs or groups or with a male escort. They usually park on the ground floor, avoiding the upper levels of the four-story structure. Even then, they walk quickly to their cars, worried that a rapist who has assaulted two women in the parking garage this month will return and attack again.

“I was actually petrified when I came to work,” said Joyce Martin, a customer service representative at the Farmers & Merchants Bank downtown.

Like her co-workers who park at the Long Beach Plaza, Martin has changed her routine. She doesn’t walk to her car alone. If she eats lunch at the mall, she avoids shortcuts through the parking garage. And she refuses to park on the higher levels designated for bank employees.

“I started parking (on the ground floor). If they want to ticket my car, they can,” Martin said. “We’re all scared to death.”

Women are frightened, men are worried and some merchants fear that customers have stayed away since a rapist attacked two women in the Long Beach Plaza parking garage.

On Nov. 2, about 7 p.m., a man kidnaped a woman at gunpoint from the parking garage, drove her to another site and raped her. Then he demanded her bank card, police said. The victim told her attacker that the card was at her home in Redondo Beach. He drove her there, where she called the police, and the suspect fled.

On Nov. 19, a man fitting the same description attacked another woman at 4:45 p.m. on the second level of the parking garage. The man pointed a handgun at the victim and ordered her to get in her car, where he beat and raped her.

Two Farmers & Merchants Bank employees were on their way home when they saw the attack and began screaming for help, police said. The man ran through downtown Long Beach. A couple of men chased him, but when one caught up with him, the rapist pulled out a gun. “That’s how he got away,” Long Beach Police Sgt. Bob Anderson said.

The man was last seen in the area of 4th Street and Pine Avenue, said Sgt. George Fox, head of the Police Department’s sexual assault unit.

Two other recent daytime abductions that ended in rape have also caused fear among women who live or work downtown.

One attack occurred near the mall, in the 800 block of Long Beach Boulevard. A 30-year-old woman was abducted there about 5:30 p.m. Oct. 13. She was forced into a car, driven to a deserted area near the Long Beach Freeway (710) and 7th Street and attacked by three of her four captors. The second attack occurred on Anaheim Street, near Temple Avenue, about 1 p.m. Oct. 26. The victim, a 22-year-old woman, was kidnaped by three men and attacked by one of them.

Victims in the those attacks described their assailants as Latinos in their mid-20s in a large, white, older-model, four-door sedan with tinted rear windows, police said. All of them were at least 5 feet 10 inches tall. One had a teardrop tattoo near his left eye and a tattoo on his neck. Another had tattoos on his wrist.

Victims in the parking-garage rapes described their attacker as a muscular black man in his late 20s to early 30s. He is about 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 150 pounds and wears small gold hoop earrings. He also has either a gold or silver cap on a front tooth.

Although the recent rapes have attracted public attention, the number of assaults in Long Beach has declined overall this year, police said. Through the end of October, 142 rapes were reported, compared to 239 for the same period last year, police said.

Since the most recent attack in the parking garage, police said they have beefed up patrols in the area but declined to give details. Officials with Pedus Security, which guards the mall, said it too had increased patrols but would not elaborate.

Officials of Long Beach Plaza were not available for comment.

Even with stepped-up security, many mall patrons and employees, and some other downtown workers, are leery of the area.

At the Farmers & Merchants Bank, about 80 employees met with police and Councilman Evan Anderson Braude on Monday to discuss the assaults.

In a small office in the bank building, five female employees at a nonprofit child welfare agency have changed their work hours because of the rapes. The employees of Children’s Home Society of California now leave work at 5 p.m. instead of 6 p.m., Office Manager Lauren Buongiovanni said.

“What’s even scarier is that it can happen anytime, anywhere,” said Buongiovanni, 26. “Women have always been vulnerable to this, but now it can happen even in the middle of the day.”

Men said they too are taking more precautions.

Gregory Henderson, a GTE instructor, bought a shirt at the mall late Monday afternoon. When he realized that it was turning dark, he decided that it was time to leave. “You have to be careful,” he said.

Merchants reported that business has dropped after dark.

Sbarro Manager Jamal Rashid said he used to make $700 a night. “Now, we’re making about $300.”

At Eagle’s Lair Fish & Chips, cashier Yin Cheng said her nightly business has dropped from $200 in sales to $100. Cook Andres Barrera said this is the slowest he has seen business in his five years there.

The same story is repeated across the other mall eateries, such as Mrs. Fields’ cookies and Burgers ‘n Fries. At Salads 2000, Manager Maria Luisa Calles summed up what restaurant workers have found: “At night, it’s dead.”

Most shopkeepers, however, said that although business is down, they are not sure it is linked to the attacks. The recession has hit Long Beach Plaza hard, they said, and sales have been down for months. Even with Christmas one month away, sales have not picked up.

“Business has been down since last year, but especially since October,” said Pedrito Cano, a management trainee at Radio Shack.

“We weren’t doing great before, and (the attacks haven’t) made a difference,” said James Temple, an employee at Sam Goody’s Musicland.

Part of the reason, according to Cano, Temple and others, is the mall’s reputation as a hangout for teen-agers, some of them suspected gang members.

“This mall is crazy,” said Anthony Finley, an assistant manager at Kinney Shoes. “There are so many fights in this mall. I always see security running from one end of the mall to the other.”

Through the first three quarters of this year, there were at least 843 crimes at the mall, police said.

Exact figures for the Long Beach Plaza are hard to come by because the Police Department has two reporting districts that cover the mall. One district--which reported 843 crimes--covers most of the mall and does not include other territory. The second one, which covers only a part of the mall, reported 134 crimes this year. Police cannot say how many of those 134 crimes, if any, occurred at the mall.

For the district that covers most of the mall, 433 of the 843 crimes reported were petty thefts, Sgt. Linda Fierro said. She could not say whether the number of crimes was an increase over previous years. No figures for other area malls were available.

The mall’s reputation, crime record and downtown location have made an impression on shoppers. Long Beach officials have long bemoaned that locals, along with residents in nearby cities, prefer to shop in Cerritos or Lakewood rather than downtown.

Amanda Orozco, 19, and her aunt, Ramona Orozco, 20, are an example. The young women were recently on their way to a mall in Torrance when they got stuck in a traffic jam on the Long Beach Freeway. The got out of the traffic and went to Long Beach Plaza.

“I didn’t want to come here, but we weren’t moving on the freeway,” said Amanda Orozco, who lives in Lynwood. “I told (Ramona) I don’t like coming here because there’s a lot of violence.”

Most mall patrons and downtown workers interviewed complained that the mall does not provide adequate security.

“There should be more security--especially to protect women,” said shopper Jesus Perez of Compton.

“Security is terrible here,” said Manuel Navarro, 22, who recalled an incident earlier this year in which he bluffed his way out of having his car stolen when “four guys walked up to me and one stuck a gun to my side.” Nervous about his girlfriend’s safety, he picks her up whenever she works at Command Performance beauty salon in the mall, he said.

Many merchants interviewed, however, said they were satisfied with the work of the mall’s security guards.

“I’m pretty happy with it,” said Kevin Molle, manager of B. Dalton Bookseller. “They run and they’re here right away.”

“They do their job,” said Finley of Kinney Shoes.

Nonetheless, several said the security staff should be beefed up.

“We need more security in the building. Sometimes, when I come in the morning, I’m afraid to open,” said Manager Jeanne Chao of Burgers ‘n Fries.

Several merchants said they think that a new storefront police center at the mall will help deter crime. Last week, the City Council approved opening a small office in the mall where officers on downtown bike patrol will store their bicycles.

“That will be a big help,” Rashid said.

Burrows, a spokesman for Pedus Security, said his company is meeting with the Police Department to discuss possibly expanding police coverage at the mall. Burrows declined to elaborate.

“Pedus feels comfortable that whatever problems exist, they can be adequately addressed,” Burrows said. “It’s not a situation that’s out of control.”