Bullet-Resistant Street Lights Get Shining Reviews : Crime: Plastic material used to protect bank tellers could reduce drain on city coffers caused by recurring vandalism.

Drug dealers and other nefarious types who take shots at street lights so they can carry out their dirty deeds in the shadows have a new enemy: bullet-resistant street lights.

It’s an idea that Los Angeles’ Bureau of Street Lighting has tested on about a dozen street lights throughout the city to prevent criminals from darkening neighborhoods. So far, the results have been glowing.

On gang-plagued Blythe Street in Panorama City, one street lamp that was regularly taken out of commission by gunshots was fitted with the shield. It has been illuminating the street for weeks.

“It hasn’t been shot down yet so it has helped out,” said Jean Green, the Los Angeles Police Department’s senior lead officer for Blythe Street.

The bullet-resistant shields on street lights--made of the same plastic material used to protect bank tellers--are the latest effort to reduce an annual $166,000 drain on the city’s coffers because of street-lamp vandalism.

Every week, more than 15 street lights in the city are shot out or broken by rocks, said Robert Holden, a street-light supervisor. And almost as often, vandals break concrete light posts to cut the electrical wires, he said. Metal shields now are welded to the post to protect the wires.

Although the inch-thick bullet-resistant shields are expensive--$130 per light--replacing shot-out street lights can cost as much as $500 per light. City officials consider the shields a money-saving alternative.

Green said drug dealers tend to shoot out lights on small residential streets or alleys where they have a regular drug trade, lessening the chance that they will be observed by neighbors or police.

“The darker the street, the more crime that can occur on the street,” she said.

Peter Prats, a city street-lighting engineer, said the problem in certain crime-plagued neighborhoods has been so bad that “on the same day we replace street lights, they shoot them out again.”

The idea for the bullet-resistant shields originated at neighborhood meetings involving police, street-lighting officials and residents of crime-plagued neighborhoods.

“That is when someone said: ‘When are you going to bring in bulletproof street lights?’ ” Prats said.

Although the shields are not completely impenetrable, he said they withstand the blast of most guns.

It would be too expensive to install the shields on all 225,000 street lights citywide. Prats said the shields have only been installed on street lamps that have been shot out five or six times, most of which are located in Downtown Los Angeles.

But as word spreads about their effectiveness, Prats expects an increase in requests for the shields.

“I have a feeling that as time goes on we are going to discover more spots. . . where there is a need to put the shields,” he said.