CHATSWORTH : Business Watch Will Patrol for Crime

Volunteer patrols will soon be prowling the streets of Chatsworth late at night as the area’s first business watch group swings into action.

About 20 representatives from Chatsworth’s business and industrial areas met last week to organize the group, said Dick Pearson, vice president of the crime and graffiti committee of the Chatsworth Chamber of Commerce. The group drew several business people from the Devonshire Street and Topanga Boulevard commercial corridors.

Topping the list of business watch activities will be the nightly patrols, Pearson said.

Volunteers “will be looking for juveniles out after curfew, vehicles in the neighborhood that don’t belong, evidence of crimes,” he said. “They will just be a presence, with volunteer patrol signs on the sides of their cars.”

The business watch, under the direction of Los Angeles police, will also work to instruct local businesses on ways to make their premises crime-proof, put up business watch signs, spread information on suspected criminals in the area and assemble statistics on where and when crimes occur.

The group also plans a campaign to encourage people to install switches that would disable their cars’ engines to foil would-be thieves, Pearson said.

Car thefts and car burglaries were among the concerns of those who attended Tuesday’s meeting. Several complained that employees’ cars have been stolen from company parking lots.

But Pearson said members were most concerned about violent crime.

“The leading question was, ‘What do we do if someone holds a gun at us?’ ” he said.

The business watch activities are scheduled to start in November.