CHATSWORTH : Business Watches to Respond to Crime

The Chatsworth Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Police Department have launched a new offensive against car thefts and graffiti. Officers and volunteers are working to set up 20 business watches in the industrial areas of the northwest San Fernando Valley.

“It’s all about hardening targets,” said Dick Pearson, head of the chamber’s crime and graffiti committee. The business watches will also “provide observation and reporting, funding and education for their employees,” he said.

A subcommittee is recruiting business owners to organize watch groups in each of about 20 reporting areas, defined as patrol areas by the Devonshire Division, Pearson said.

Besides recruitment, the chamber will organize monthly meetings of all the business watch leaders and circulate newsletters. Although only a handful of business watches have begun meeting so far, it is hoped that by the end of the year there will be about as many business watch groups in the Chatsworth area as there are neighborhood watch groups, said Jim Dellinger, senior lead officer for the Devonshire Division.

Mary Geving, human resources manager of Hexcel Resins Group, said Hexcel’s recent decision to start one of the first new business watches in Chatsworth stemmed from a rash of car thefts in the area.

Geving said she has been meeting with other business representatives in the neighborhood around the intersection of DeSoto Avenue and Nordhoff Street, and found many with similar problems. The group has started to compare notes on where crimes happen and is considering sharing security guards, she said.