Valley Commentary : Blaming the Victims : The city’s policy of suing crime-plagued businesses, forcing them to police public areas around their stores, puts a misplaced law enforcement burden on merchants and leads to fortress-like shops. And it does little to deter lawbreakers.

Suppose you run a business and you see drug-peddling or prostitution outside your store. What should you do? Call the police as a good citizen should?

You had better think twice these days if you live in the Valley. As crazy as it sounds, you might get sued by the city if you do that.

Criminal activity has blighted areas around Van Nuys and Sepulveda boulevards. Convenience and doughnut shops that make their living by staying open around the clock are particularly hard hit. Night-owl criminals hang around those businesses--after all, they need their hit of caffeine the same as anyone else.

Note that the merchants aren’t the lawbreakers. They are no hot-pillow motel operators. They are just people trying to make a lawful living under difficult circumstances. You would think that their responsibility in such matters would begin and end by calling the cops, reporting the crime and waiting for help. In some of these cases, there have been hundreds of calls to the police. When the cops come and make arrests, the effect is zero--the druggies and hookers are back in business the next day. In some cases there have been hundreds of arrests, with nothing to show for it in the long run.

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But instead of going after the criminals effectively, the city has been increasingly responding to large-scale complaints by threatening to sue the merchants. City bureaucrats say it is the merchants’ responsibility to clean up the public areas around their stores. Makes you wonder what we pay all those taxes for, doesn’t it?

So if your block is overrun by thugs and you call 911 a lot, don’t expect Dirty Harry to ride to the rescue. You may get a city attorney with a summons directed at you. All this provides a frightening insight into how the bureaucratic mind works. The city says all those cries for help only prove that your business is the problem. It’s up to you to get out there, confront the hookers, pimps, gang members and druggies and get rid of them.

Fall down on the job and the city will shut down your business during late hours. That’s “the law” says the city attorney, which illustrates that when Charles Dickens opined a hundred years ago that the law is an ass, he spoke for the ages.

Reflect on a case reported about a year ago, in which Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne ordered a Los Angeles restaurant owner to chase drug dealers away, post a sign announcing the restaurant was under police surveillance and search the restaurant for drugs before opening and closing.

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This is no isolated incident. Last year, a Van Nuys mini-mall was ordered by Judge Raymond Cardenas to close from midnight to 4 a.m., hire security guards, surround the mall with a fence and install high-powered floodlights. Sounds more like Fort Apache than a mini-mall. Would you go shopping in a place that looks like an armed camp? Neither would others; many of the stores in such malls are now vacant.

Then there was the case of Jae Joo Kim, who, like a good citizen, reported crime, attended neighborhood meetings and testified against gang members arrested in his parking lot. For his trouble he found his store windows shattered by bullets and--you guessed it--he was sued by the city. Others were not so lucky. Donald Aragon, a Van Nuys apartment owner who was active in helping the police rid his neighborhood of gangs, was killed in retaliation.

So there you have it. These days, when you decide to open a restaurant or a convenience store, you may wind up conscripted into the police, without police training, authority or resources.

We are used, of course, to bureaucrats’ bungling, but it makes you wonder what goes through the minds of judges when they make such orders. Aren’t they supposed to consider the legitimate interests of both sides? Who do they think runs L.A.’s doughnut shops? Wyatt Earp?

Of course if you actually do try to clean up Dodge City, that can get you in hot water too. Two years ago, a private security service using armed operatives was hired by some landlords and started cracking down on criminals effectively. It promptly became the object of a Police Commission investigation because its methods were too tough.

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The latest such controversy has gone where no bureaucrat has gone before, into the realm of out-and-out absurdity. In Van Nuys a woman named Mary Lou Holte has taken it upon herself to get rid of prostitutes by patrolling her area, taking notes on criminal activity and reporting it to the cops. This is a commendable activity, for which Ms. Holte has received accolades. The problem, however, is that maintaining street surveillance is hard work, so Ms. Holte periodically takes a load off her feet late at night at a Van Nuys doughnut shop, whence she calls the police to report the bad guys. Naturally, those calls are received by the cops from the shop.

The Los Angeles Police Department, apparently unhappy with all the extra work, has gone after--you guessed it--the doughnut shop owners. The LAPD says that its primary concern is the presence of criminals near businesses. Evidently the fact that the affected business owners are not criminals doesn’t count; it’s up to them to play cop and keep the local prostitutes out. Faced with that, Zuita and Ulysses Contador, the hapless owners, capitulated and will shut down from midnight to 5 a.m. just to keep Holte from using their shop as her command post. The cops’ reaction? “We’ve won,” Capt. James McMurray of the Van Nuys police station told a reporter.

They’ve what? The hookers and dopers are still there. They haven’t been arrested. They can now move to some other local corner and harass some other innocent merchants. Excuse me, guys, but is that what you call a law enforcement “victory”?

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And it isn’t just the LAPD and the city attorney. The Los Angeles zoning administrator marches in lock step with the other bureaucrats and orders store owners to curtail business hours, put up fences, hire guards and remove electronic game machines, all in the name of suppressing crime. Good thing the zoning administrator does not regulate banks, or he might order them closed next time there is a wave of bank robberies.

There are economic consequences to all this. Somebody has to pay for all that private security and for the business lost when store operations are curtailed. The “fine” is imposed not on the criminals but on innocent bystanders. In the long run the costs are passed on to customers through higher prices.

People who have to live in economically marginal areas have little money as it is. It is outrageous that they should have to pay more for goods and services because their society has grown so inept, so incapable of assuring public safety, that it has to force mom-and-pop merchants to do the job the police are no longer capable of doing.