Business Shouldn’t Have to Foot the Bill for Fighting Crime : Valley liquor store owners are being asked to hire two security guards, in effect making the entrepreneur bear the expense of failed public law enforcement.
If you listen to the latest dispatches from City Hall, Mayor Richard Riordan means to put a stop to the bureaucratic nightmare that has befallen Angeleno business people trying to do just about anything that requires a city permit.
It’s about time. As an urban economist wrote in a recent op-ed article in this paper: “No matter what the nominal development topic may be, virtually every gathering of L.A. company executives degenerates into a bitter discussion of regulatory horrors perpetrated by local officials.”
And if those “regulatory horrors” are a burden to large-company executives with all their economic resources and political clout, imagine what it must be like for mom-and-pop types trying to run a small business. For them, Mayor Riordan’s promised municipal perestroika can’t come a moment too soon.
Out here in the Valley, the latest dispatch from Panorama City suggests that so far nothing has changed.
Jeff and Roy Muchamel’s convenience store was looted and torched in the 1992 riots. They rebuilt. For this, you might think, they would get accolades from those civic-minded Rebuild L.A. cheerleaders. You would be wrong.
The Muchamels are getting hassled because they want to reacquire a liquor license for their store, just as before the riots. Prohibition may be long gone, but the Muchamels have the misfortune of doing business in a tough Valley neighborhood, and that subjects them to a double whammy.
Not only are they exposed to criminal activity, but to add insult to injury, the city has gone after them instead of the criminals. Before they can get their liquor license, says the city, they have to meet 18 conditions, including the hiring of two--count ‘em, two--armed security guards.
The bureaucrats’ twisted reasoning goes something like this: The store attracts customers, and some of them are bad folks who buy liquor. Therefore, it is the grocers’ responsibility to suppress crime by curtailing business hours, limiting the offering of attractive merchandise (individual cans of beer, small bottles of liquor) and hiring security guards. Of course, all that does is reduce the number of customers--good and bad alike--and in effect makes the grocer pay for the city’s failed law enforcement policy.
Mind you, nobody in City Hall seems to care if the criminals shop for their booze elsewhere, as long as they are moved away from the complaining neighbors. Out of sight, out of mind. After the city used similar tactics to prevent the reopening of scores of Korean-owned convenience stores in the inner city, liquor sales in local supermarkets increased. The immutable laws of the marketplace continue operating in disregard of the bureaucrats’ wishes. In short, these regulations victimize small merchants but do nothing to reduce alcohol consumption or suppress crime.
A recent study by three USC professors indicates a correlation between liquor outlets and increased crime rates, but its authors are unable to say whether this is a case of liquor causing crime, or criminally predisposed individuals indulging in alcohol. Even if demon rum is the cause of criminal behavior, shouldn’t the resulting social cost be spread among the manufacturers and distributors of the stuff, as well as the small retailers?
In fairness to the police, suppressing crime these days is not easy. Prevailing rules limiting grounds for arrest make large-scale police sweeps of high-crime areas difficult and ineffective. In some places, scores of police raids and hundreds of arrests have produced few long-term results. To be sure, neighborhood cooperation with law enforcement can help. Keeping business areas well lighted and alerting the police to suspicious activities can help. In the Fairfax area, residents have formed nighttime citizen patrols that are of some help.
But it’s a whole other thing when storekeepers are conscripted as surrogate cops. In the Old West, nobody forced the shopkeepers to join the posse. Today, your friendly Valley grocer isn’t allowed to emulate his Dodge City grandpappy and shoo the bad guys from his parking lot with his trusty shotgun--the authorities would have a conniption fit if he tried. Instead, he’s got to hire guns and thus bear the expense of failed public law enforcement.
The Muchamels were willing to hire one armed guard. But they were ordered to hire two, at a cost they estimated to be $600 per 15-hour day. That comes to more than $200,000 per year. Small wonder folks living in bad parts of town have to pay the most for their groceries and that businesses are leaving Los Angeles.
What we have on our hands is a form of government gridlock. The city is unable or unwilling to commit adequate resources to protecting its citizens, and the citizens aren’t permitted to protect themselves. City Hall won’t face up to the crime problem and present the citizenry with the full bill for needed law enforcement.
Whether faced or not, the problem is there. In a recent speech, Police Chief Willie L. Williams noted that the police do not even have an e-mail system, and that he only got his fax machine a couple of weeks ago. Considering the size of the area and the population it serves, our police force is one of the most understaffed and underfunded in the nation. That must be rectified if the fight against crime is to be waged effectively.
If our elected officials fail to address the crime problem honestly, that will sooner or later inspire a wave of public anger and provide fertile ground for demagoguery. When those who mean to govern us fail to discharge their prime function of protecting the citizens from the criminals, and have to turn to conscripted grocers’ hirelings to do the job instead, something is terribly wrong.
