Police Have ‘Holiday Surprise’ for Thieves

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, while stores were brimming with holiday shoppers looking for bargains, one young man appeared more eager to find a steal.

After a brief trip into a Tower Records store, the young man stopped beside a white Lexus sedan and took a long look through an open window at presents piled high in the back seat.

He tested the door. Then, perhaps overcome by a sense of fear or guilt, he withdrew--narrowly avoiding a holiday surprise, courtesy of local law enforcement officials.

The trap, called “Holiday Surprise,” was developed in 1994 to stem a surge in auto-related burglaries that were scaring away shoppers and cutting into holiday business across the San Fernando Valley.

“We started going out and basically doing what the victims were doing,” said Det. Bob Graybill, who heads a special LAPD unit devoted to vehicle crimes. Most of the time, he said, members of the unit park an unlocked car loaded with nicely wrapped goodies and feign a trip to a store.

The surveillance team--made up of officials from the Department of Motor Vehicles, California Highway Patrol, and the Los Angeles Police Department--appears to be making many thieves think before they act, officers and merchants said Saturday.

“It’s a benefit for any retailer,” said Northridge Tower Records Manager Roger Carter. “Crime here seems to have been pretty mild compared to previous years. It’s helping.”

No one took the bait during detectives’ brief stakeout outside the Tower Records store Saturday. But nine arrests were made at other locations, including strip malls in Van Nuys and the East Valley, said LAPD Det. Ken Belt.

The team targets areas that have been hit by similar crimes in prior days. After a decoy is set up--typically a late-model car complete with boxes of magazines dolled up to look like presents--detectives sit back in nearby undercover cars and wait.

Typically, Belt said, would-be thieves cruise parking lots looking for unattended vehicles. Then, often in front of oblivious passersby, they will empty the contents from one car into another, Belt said.

“We have arrested old men, young men, gang bangers, narcotics dealers. You name it,” Belt said.

“We’ll send a kid home with a slap on the wrist and call Mommy and Daddy,” added Graybill. “What we’re really looking out for are the bigger operators.”

Graybill contended that the heightened police presence has accounted for a sharp drop in mall-area holiday crime, including auto burglaries, car thefts, purse snatchings, shoplifting and even narcotics activity. Officers asserted that their efforts led to a 70% decline in crime along a stretch of Ventura Boulevard for two weeks in December 1995.

Down nearby Tampa Avenue, where the team had just finished surveillance outside Sportmart, one of the managers praised the team’s efforts. “We appreciate everything they are doing to clean up the neighborhood,” he said.

“It’s all about prevention, Graybill said. “The whole idea is to let people know we are out there.”