Police Offer Tips on Crime Prevention : Universal City: Gas station and convenience store owners and managers learn at seminar what they can do to minimize problems.

A gun-toting robber walks into an AM-PM Mini-Market and demands money from the cash register. He flees, but police are able to arrest him moments later thanks to quick thinking by the store owner.

It’s a happy ending, but it’s only a simulation.

The video dramatization, “A Robbery at Ernie’s Place,” was shown to about 175 owners and managers of gas stations and convenience stores who gathered at the Universal City Hilton on Thursday to pick up crime prevention tips from police.

For Naren Jhala, owner and manager of an AM-PM Mini-Market in Mission Hills, the video seemed too true to life. In 1990, he was the victim of a holdup at his convenience store in which the gunman fled with $150.

“You cannot think, it happened so fast,” Jhala said. “The guy who does it to you is more frightened than you, so you don’t want to make him nervous.

“No matter how much security you have, there’s always something that’s going to happen.”

Police offered a number of safety tips: Keep money in the cash register to a minimum, make sure that all outdoor lights are on at night, stay alert for loiterers and take down any posters or displays that block the view from outside so that police and passersby can spot a robbery attempt.

Also during the seminar, salespeople from companies specializing in crime prevention displayed such products as door alarms, surveillance cameras and monitors.

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In the last 12 months, there have been two homicides reported in Los Angeles involving employees of gas stations and convenience stores, according to police.

That’s less than the number of liquor store employees killed on the job during the same time period, but that statistic is of little solace to this group.

“The stats are meaningless when someone has a gun stuffed in your face,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Chris West of the crime prevention section.

The seminar was sponsored by Arco and the Los Angeles Police Department.