Watching O’er Flocks : Malls Openly Discuss a Taboo Topic--Security During Holidays

If it weren’t for the police and security officers hanging around, Anna Hernandez could pass for a bright young assistant at a television network.

Clad in a searing yellow T-shirt and clutching a joystick like the ones used to navigate computer games, she stares intently at a bank of video monitors, zooming in first on one scene, then another.

Hernandez works in the security office of Northridge Fashion Center, and the winking scenes in front of her show the small dramas of everyday life at the mall: a man sorting through a pile of hats, a woman going out to her car.

Hernandez is one of a legion of security officers, police and support workers who flood area shopping malls this time of year. They help lost children find their parents, lost grown-ups find their cars, and--oh yes--try to catch criminals.

Nationwide, shopping malls spend $5 billion a year on security, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, nearly twice what was spent just four years ago. A third of that cost is incurred during the six-week holiday shopping season. In Southern California, security officers ride bicycles through parking lots, patrol malls on foot and make use of fancy radio and video technology to keep an eye on mall traffic. At Fallbrook Mall in Woodland Hills, where three people have been murdered in the past two years, horse patrols assist regular security personnel.

Most malls for years refused to discuss security at all. But others have begun to promote their security setups, banking on their high-tech surveillance techniques to lure increasingly crime-wary customers.

“We’re getting a lot of positive responses from our customers,” said Annette Bethers, director of marketing for Northridge Fashion Center. She is conducting an aggressive campaign at Northridge designed to lure back customers who shopped elsewhere for the 18 months the mall was closed for earthquake repairs.

Just inside the main entrance is the mall’s extremely high-profile security office, its upscale facade augmented by a bank of color video screens. Each screen displays a portion of the mall and its occupants. Security and information personnel distribute a brochure titled “Safe, Secure Shopping,” and a sign advertises the presence of a police substation in the mall.

“For years, nobody talked about security at all,” said Mark Schoifet, spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers. “Now we live in a society where crime is much more on people’s minds, and the consumers are demanding a more visible security presence.”

The business organization, whose members include most of the 2,000 enclosed malls in the United States and about 30,000 shopping centers worldwide, began to hold annual conferences on security four years ago. Since then, Schoifet said, most malls have doubled their annual expenditures on security.

This year, he said, the shopping center council for the first time published a pamphlet on consumer safety for its members to distribute.

“Some people tend to get caught up in the fantasy feeling of a mall, with the Christmas music and the tree and Santa Claus and the fountains,” Schoifet said. “But they should be aware, as any place where people gather, that the Christmas season brings out the best in some people, but for a certain criminal element brings out the worst.”

Those malls with particularly aggressive marketing approaches, Schoifet said, are the ones promoting their security systems.

By contrast, the Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles has not made security part of its advertising or marketing efforts, said Pam Smith, the mall’s marketing director. Like many malls, the Westside Pavilion prefers “not to focus on injury,” she said.

Still, whether they talk about it or not, most malls and shopping centers have increased security significantly for the holiday season. This time of year, police say, there are larger-than-usual crowds of shoppers, many of whom are carrying large amounts of money and many purchases.

At the Glendale Galleria, where local police have a substation on the premises, arrests increase during the holiday season, from about 50 per month to about 60 per month, said Officer Ernie Garcia.

To meet the need, he said, the mall expands its security force by about a third during the holidays. Like Northridge Fashion Center, Garcia said, the Galleria has a complex system of surveillance cameras that can follow a customer all the way out to the parking lot and read the license plate number on his or her car.

In Santa Monica, where police patrol the outdoor shopping area of the Third Street Promenade, the law enforcement presence is doubled at night, from four officers on bikes, in cars and on foot to eight.

The vast majority of crimes committed at shopping centers during the holidays involve shoplifting, said Sgt. Frank Fabrega and other law enforcement officials.

At the Promenade last December, there were 20 incidents of shoplifting, but no crimes against people. By contrast, the number of shoplifting incidents decreased by half the next month and there was one aggravated assault.

After shoplifting, police say, most crime involves thieves who break into cars. Fraud involving credit cards and stolen or bad checks also increases.

The shopping center council cites a 1993 study by the University of Florida, which found that there were an average of 3.3 customer robberies per mall during the year, compared to 69.3 shoplifting incidents.

Still, shoppers would do well to keep security in mind, said Officer James Cypert of the LAPD’s crime prevention unit.

“Most people, when they go shopping during the holiday season, unzip their skulls and leave their brains at home,” Cypert said.