NEWS ANALYSIS : Westminster Shooting Echoes Through Malls

Keith Foxe calls it the Alfred Hitchcock Syndrome.

Near the end of Hitchcock’s classic movie “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” audiences gasp at a murder at the opera because it is out of place, unexpected. Such is the reaction of shocked suburbanites, said Foxe, a shopping industry spokesman, whenever violent crime invades the safe haven of the local mall.

But with the shootings earlier this week of a 13-year-old girl in the Westminster Mall and two young brothers playing outside their Anaheim apartment, a double-murder Thursday in a quiet Fountain Valley business park, and the shooting Friday night of three teen-agers in a busy miniature golf and games arcade, again in Fountain Valley, out-of-place violence is becoming startlingly familiar.

But perhaps the sanctuaries where violence has been most unexpected has been Southern California’s malls, where many go to escape the urban plagues of gangs and guns.

“You can’t stop crime. You can minimize it, you can mitigate it, but you can’t stop it,” said Jonathan Alpert, general manager of the Laguna Hills Mall. “There’s danger going to the market, there’s danger driving your car on the street. . . . What are we going to do, live in a bubble? Unfortunately, that’s just the society we live in today.”

Kim Fracas, spokeswoman for the 175-store Westminster Mall where shots rang out this week and where a gang-related stabbing and an armed robbery occurred six months ago, remarked that “the mall is changing.” Then, correcting herself, she said, “the world is changing. This incident could have happened anywhere.”

Still, perhaps none is more jarring than violence in a shopping mall, the icon of suburban tranquillity.

Since the first enclosed mall opened in Minnesota in 1956, large shopping centers have become the ultimate symbol of suburbia, places where the parking hassles and crime worries of downtown are replaced with flowing fountains, artificial flowers and soothing Muzak.

While malls remain safer than the neighborhoods that surround them, they are no longer oases of peace. In addition to the three recent incidents in Westminster Mall, there have been about a dozen violent outbursts in Southland malls over the past few years.

Two shoppers were abducted from the Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry and then murdered in August, 1990; a 17-year-old boy was killed and a woman critically injured when a gunman opened fire in the same mall’s movie theater two years later.

Lakewood Center Mall was the site of a carjacking-turned-homicide in March, 1992, the same month that an employee was killed as he opened a video arcade in the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance. A movie usher had been killed at Del Amo a year earlier.

In 1989, a 12-year-old girl was shot accidentally by a classmate in the Mall of Orange.

According to Foxe, spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, crime and violence are the No. 1 concern for general managers at the 1,800 enclosed shopping malls across the country. No one keeps track of violence at malls, Foxe said, but anecdotal evidence indicates that it is on the rise.

“Crime is not something we can stop at the property line. It left downtown when the businesses left downtown. . . . Crime follows people,” said Ken Lokiec of the Debartolo Corp., which owns 66 U.S. shopping centers, including the Mission Viejo Mall.

“For us to believe . . . that (malls) are perfectly safe is erroneous,” said Lokiec, who was chairman at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ first annual security conference in Chicago in November. He added that the mall “is a very safe place. It is safer than a downtown setting, but it is certainly not heaven on earth.”

Spokespersons for most Orange County malls, including Westminster, refused to discuss the size or price tag of their security operations.

But Jim Charter, general manager of the 176-store Brea Mall, said he has doubled his spending on security in the past five years. With about 20 to 25 guards, depending upon the season, Charter said security now costs $500,000 a year, which is about 25% of the mall’s operating budget.

“What you see in the mall (is what) you see in the neighborhood. (Crime is) in the neighborhood. It’s in society, and we’re part of society,” Charter said.

The Westminster Mall is also increasing its security efforts, with plans to install this fall a substation of the Westminster Police Department--like the police substations already in place at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza, MainPlace/Santa Ana and Mission Viejo Mall. Because of last week’s shooting, Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith said the opening of the substation would be moved up to Aug. 1.

According to a 1991 survey, 80% of the enclosed malls nationwide have full-time security personnel--12% of those security guards are off-duty police officers and an average-sized regional center spends $500,000 a year to keep its premises safe.

As crime has increased in recent years, Foxe said, many malls have replaced their security guards’ blazers and neckties with police-style uniforms. Others have increased the number of guards on duty, added police substations and installed more security cameras--a move Huntington Beach Mall is taking this summer during its renovation.

Though security is a top priority and violent outbreaks at malls always make headlines, Foxe and several local mall managers said shoppers have not been deterred by the incidents. The morning after the Westminster Mall shooting, traffic was about the same as normal, Fracas said.

“You can’t be a prisoner in your own house,” said Norma Garza, 41, as she strolled through Westminster Mall in search of a wedding present Thursday. “I think the mall is as safe as any place today. Nowhere is really safe--even your own neighborhood. The criminals are everywhere.”

Gang activity--which police blame for the shooting in Westminster Mall last week and the stabbing there last November--is a key concern that occupied a full session at last year’s International Council of Shopping Centers security conference. While managers are loathe to let gangs establish turf in their malls, they are hesitant to crack down too hard because teen-agers are a key market for many retailers.

With crowds of teens, including gang members, hanging out there everyday, Fracas said a crucial part of Westminster Mall’s security effort is breaking up groups of loitering young people. In fact, she said, a guard was encouraging the band of teens to move on when a gunman opened fire on the group Wednesday. An 18-year-old high school student was arrested on suspicion of being the shooter.

Witold Rybczynski, a McGill University architecture professor who is writing a book about the evolution of the American city, believes the increase in violence is inevitable as malls replace the old downtown.

Originally conceived as convenient, climate-controlled shopping centers, malls have become much more. With movie theaters, food courts and indoor courtyards, malls have become suburban community centers.

“That’s where people go for leisure. That’s where people go to meet people. Increasingly, there are non-commercial functions in malls,” Rybczynski said. “The fact that they now have to deal with things like crime is a sign of how successful they’ve become. It simply shows that . . . they’re not in fact artificial environments that are separate from the city. They are part of the city and are going to have the same problems.”

As he strolled through the Mall at Orange on Thursday with his wife, 63-year-old Earl White proclaimed this sociological evolution “a mighty shame.” Orange County residents for 24 years, the Whites used to shop in downtown Santa Ana but fled for the mall because they were afraid.

“Now this happens and you wonder where it’s safe to go,” White lamented. “You kind of feel like you just should stay in your house all day, like you’re at risk when you walk outside. It never used to be that way.”

* ALLEGED GUNMAN IN COURT: High school student is charged with attempted murder in Westminster Mall shooting. B1