Equipment Robberies Tear Open an Industry : Crime: Garment makers are victimized by brazen gunmen who make off with valuable industrial sewing machines. Some have been forced out of business.

For years, under the cover of night, thieves have burrowed through walls, smashed windows and cut wrought-iron fences to get their hands on valuable, albeit unglamorous, prizes: industrial sewing machines. Smaller than a loaf of bread, the machines can yield $4,000 on the streets of Los Angeles.

Recently, however, a bolder and potentially deadly method has evolved, worrying store owners and surprising police with its audacity. In groups of as many as 13, gunmen believed to be part of a larger ring have been storming shops in broad daylight while workers are bent over humming sewing equipment. Holding employees at bay, the robbers take money and jewelry before stealing the still-warm machines.

Police Detective Gilbert M. Escontrias, who tracks sewing machine theft, said more than 40 shops throughout central Los Angeles have been robbed at gunpoint, losing $1.5 million in property in the past eight months.

Insik Ho knows the terror firsthand.

Ho, who owns May Fashions in East Los Angeles, was closing his women’s apparel sewing shop one evening two months ago when a woman entered, asking for work.

Before Ho could answer, she pulled a pistol from her purse while three men with rifles stormed the back entrance of his one-room, seven-employee operation. In 15 minutes, they stole money, jewelry and 14 sewing machines valued at a total of $30,000. Like many small garment makers, Ho had no insurance and had to replace the expensive equipment for his 4-year-old company out of his own pocket.

Antonia Jimenez is also struggling to keep her dress business afloat. Three months ago, four robbers forced their way into her

Montecito Heights shop, Antonia’s Fashions, and locked her 12 employees in the bathroom while they stole seven machines valued at $10,000. Without insurance, Jimenez now rents two older, less effective machines to replace the stolen equipment.

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“You can’t understand how badly they hurt us,” Jimenez said. “We are so small. We are just trying to get by and they come here and rob us of everything.”

Although police have met with some success, particularly in South-Central Los Angeles where investigators recently arrested four men believed responsible for 14 robberies, the sheer number of potential targets--about 25,000 sewing businesses in Los Angeles County, Escontrias said--continues to pique the criminal element’s interest.

“The problem is getting so bad that the Police Department considered forming a task force just to handle sewing machines,” said Detective Rosa Moreno, an investigator on the team that made the arrests. A lack of funding and staffing has put that plan on hold, she said.

Detective Bino Herrera, who works in East Los Angeles, said the shop robberies are carried out by a larger illegal ring. “I think there is one head who is operating with a lot of people. Nearly all the crimes have the same (method of operation), and all the suspects arrested so far say the exact same thing: ‘I just came to the U.S. two weeks ago from Mexico.’ They’ve been well coached.”

Escontrias and Herrera said half of the stolen machines are resold locally by mid-sized sewing-machine dealers, some of whom knowingly buy stolen goods with obliterated serial numbers off the street.

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Owning or selling a machine without a serial number is a misdemeanor, typically punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000, a small deterrent in the face of such a huge problem, said Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. James Baker.

Baker said that to “choke the flow of stolen goods,” his office is considering sponsoring state legislation that would make it a felony to possess sewing machines and other valuable property such as televisions, typewriters and calculators on which the serial numbers have been ground off.

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The other stolen machines, detectives said, are exported to Mexico and Central America. But Sheldon Gollin, owner of Empire Sewing Co. in Downtown Los Angeles, believes a higher percentage of stolen goods heads south of the border. Gollin said that many of his sewing machines with the Empire Sewing label on them have been spotted in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Empire Sewing, in its 35-year-old history, has never exported machines, he said.

According to Joe Rodriguez, president of the Garment Contractors Assn. of Southern California, several businesses in his 200-member association fold each year because of equipment theft.

Escontrias and Herrera have met with the local garment industry, hoping to prevent such losses. Speaking last month at an American Chinese Garment Contractors Assn. meeting, the detectives told 100 small-business owners to protect themselves by keeping records of serial numbers and monitoring their stores’ entrances and exits. But they emphasized that owners should never resist armed robbers.