LAX Insecurity

The Tokyo tourist with the tiny yellow purse isn’t two minutes off her plane before committing her first fast-lane faux pas: Standing at a telephone in the international terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, she turns her back on her loosely stacked luggage cart and that prized yellow handbag.

Like a street cat, brown eyes open wide for prey, Joaquin Mendez sees the woman, sees the purse just sitting there.

His criminal mind clicking, he nudges his partner, a stubby little character wearing sneakers and a loud orange dress shirt, the sort you see pacing the first tee at some low-rent public golf course.

Then Mendez leans in close, not taking his eyes off the prize.

“Easy pickings,” he whispers.

Mendez know his game, can easily spot the priciest Chanel and Louis Vuitton handbags, the nicest Samsonite luggage sets. If he only wanted, thousands of briefcases, cell phones and personal computers could be his for the taking--from airport men’s rooms, phone banks, baggage checks and passenger waiting areas.

But Mendez and his sidekick aren’t crooks. They’re cops--two undercover veterans with years of experience eyeballing the sleights of hand and now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t distraction thefts staged around the clock at one of the world’s busiest airports.

For six years now, Mendez, a member of the city’s Airport Police Bureau, has cruised the various terminals of the sprawling, horseshoe-shaped airport, often teamed with Los Angeles Police Department Det. Terry Marshall, looking for the out-of-place and the just-noticed-missing.

Together, they’re on the prowl for the shoulder surfers and bogus skycap handlers--sundry con men and women who will peer over your shoulder at a pay phone to snatch your credit card number or don a phony uniform to make off with your suitcase.

They’re watching for X-ray machine scammers, airline pilot impersonators and cargo area cruisers. But most of all, they’re searching for the organized teams of fast-working South American thieves who make a regular circuit of large American airports, using ruses from spilling mustard to wielding razor blades to separate a passenger from his possessions, often following people right onto their plane.

Even savvy international travelers have become victims of airport crime--once they check their luggage.

In 1995, after a two-month investigation that involved video surveillance, police arrested a ring of airport luggage handlers they said had routinely stolen items from baggage.

“The ‘artist’ in con artist was invented at this airport,” said the 28-year-old Mendez. “Just when you’ve gotten a handle on all the scams, they come up with a new one to make you shake your head and laugh. There’s no way to stay a step ahead of these people.”

For pickpockets and petty thieves, LAX is indeed the land of opportunity. Call it Con Airport: a 7 1/2-square-mile metropolis of often-bleary-eyed pedestrians ripe for millions of dollars in rip-offs each year.

Nowhere is a more likely target for larceny than the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

It’s a place teeming with vacationers and foreign jet-setters with their guard down and their pockets full of cash, their bags loaded with valuables--many weary families who have not slept in 20 hours after a trans-Pacific flight.

Others, from Japan, China and Korea, are more trusting of strangers and less likely to report a crime once it’s committed, police say. And even if they do, few foreign victims will return to Los Angeles to testify.

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All of which is convenient for the crooks.

“Thieves flock to LAX because it’s the first stop from the Orient,” said Sgt. Vince Garcia, who is in charge of the Airport Police Bureau’s nine-man undercover unit. “Asian passengers are vulnerable to these rip-offs. Leave your bag unguarded in the Tokyo airport, and it’ll still be there 20 minutes later. Leave that same bag here, it’s being sold on the local black market in 10 minutes flat.”

Officials urge perspective, citing the airport’s rate of one crime for every 33,000 passengers. But with 150,000 daily travelers--and an additional 50,000 employees and countless “meeters and greeters,” giving it roughly the population of Bakersfield--LAX faces a crime picture similar to a mid-size city.

This year through April, there were 37 assaults, three robberies, 123 burglaries, 42 stolen vehicles and 780 cases of property theft reported, according to airport police statistics.

Officials say crime has dropped after a high in the early 1990s and cite a recent survey that ranks LAX’s crime rate as ninth among airports worldwide. New York’s Kennedy Airport ranked first, followed by airports in Philadelphia, Zurich, Switzerland, and Newark, N.J.

Still, baggage theft for the first half of 1997 is up over last year. And the busiest summer months are still to come, a time when daily passenger numbers can rise by 30% or more.

Every day, cops like Mendez and Marshall make their rounds--monitoring 184 surveillance cameras, trading bulletins on various thieves with airport cops nationwide.

Mostly, they get into the act, posing as tourists with flashy clothing and empty duffel bags. Or they’re curbside chauffeurs. Or baggage handlers.

They know full well the crooks are going undercover too--some even toting young children as extra cover.

One thief coined it all a cat-and-mouse game. “He said he was the mouse going after the tourist cheese,” Mendez said. “And us cops are the cats.”

To catch a thief at LAX, Mendez says, takes patience, skill and luck. Mostly luck.

Like the time professionals followed a jewelry salesman to the airport from his downtown office, casing him through the terminal, following him right onto the plane.

Then, just as the unwitting diamond peddler got comfy in his seat, surrounded by dozens of milling passengers, the thieves struck, snatching his briefcase from the overhead compartment.

A chase ensued, with the salesman running though the airport in his stocking feet. A bulletin went out as the crooks--two men and a woman--hopped into a cab.

Hearing the call, Mendez made the collar as he sat in his car scouting outgoing car traffic. “We recovered a cool $212,000 in cash and jewelry,” he recounted.

Mendez is a youthful-looking man with a Marine-style haircut who still gets a boyish kick out of being around an airport all day. Something about the planes coming in and taking off that gives him the rush of going on vacation.

Marshall is the Jeff of the Mutt-and-Jeff duo, a 54-year-old who dresses like he’s taking the kids to Disneyland but who carries a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson in his fanny pack.

The two have teamed up for the past 18 months as part of an arrangement between the 230-member Airport Police Bureau and the three dozen LAPD officers assigned to cut airport crime.

Mendez and Marshall work out of a trailer that serves as the LAPD’s airport substation, doing long-term investigations of repeat thefts, consulting a wall of about 600 mug shots of known airport thieves and scam artists.

Mendez has traveled as far as Florida and Mexico City in search of witness testimony and other tips. One day each week, he works on routine stings with another longtime partner, Det. Claudio Cruz of the Airport Police Bureau’s undercover unit.

Their biggest challenge is tracking the organized teams of South American thieves who make regular stops at LAX. Through arrests at low levels of the crime chain, Mendez and Marshall have pieced together the puzzle of how the scammers work.

Staying at local safe houses, visiting thieves are ushered to the airport by guides, often loaned ill-fitting suits to pose as traveling businessmen, and duffel bags to store their loot. If caught, they’re bailed out within hours and ushered to the next city.

“Man, they’re slippery,” Marshall said. “Many walk right through our hands.”

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Airport crime is a tribute to the criminal imagination. And chutzpah.

Working in two- or three-person teams, one thief will steal items from the X-ray machine conveyor belt while a second distracts the victim. Or they will make the regular rounds at baggage claim carousels, knowing which airlines fail to require identification for claimed bags, snatching as many suitcases as they can carry. Most are later fenced at resale drop-off points as close by as Inglewood.

Last year, police trailing two thieves found more than 700 bags at a local hotel room.

Other crooks are loners.

Like the thief with the phony Delta Air Lines pilot’s uniform who lifted sets of golf clubs from first-class lounges at various terminals. Or the fired security guard who regularly returned to the airport--wearing his old uniform--to make spontaneous luggage grabs.

There are the shameless crooks who strike inside bathroom stalls, reaching under a wall to grab a purse or wallet--with victims literally caught with their pants down. One androgynous German thief worked the women’s rooms, then changed her clothes and hit the men’s side.

Other travelers have been hit by thieves who “accidentally” spill mustard or catsup on them and take their money while helping them clean up.

Some petty criminals use razor blades to cut purse straps. Others take random flights just so they can rifles purses or bags left under the seat in front of them after their victims have fallen asleep, police say.

But most thefts come on the ground.

Like the melody-minded con artist who greeted arriving Latino musicians with a promise to get them playing gigs--only later to make off with both their money and their instruments.

Or the guy who approaches Asian tourists and asks to borrow money, promising to return the cash needed to get his belongings from U.S. Customs. On his arrest, police found a book with the names and addresses of 500 tourists no doubt still waiting for their money.

“He was making $800 a day,” Garcia said. “One victim at a time.”

Outside the terminals, thieves in rented vans will cruise out-of-the-way loading docks and cargo areas looking to make an opportunistic snatch, police say. Or posing as skycaps, they’ll offer arriving passengers help in loading luggage into car trunks, only to make off with a bag or two when the owner isn’t looking.

“The [bogus] skycaps are the toughest to collar,” Marshall said. “Even if we catch them with the goods, they’ll say they were on the way to lost and found to turn it in.”

With 26,000 spaces, LAX also boasts one of the largest parking lots on the planet.

Recently, police broke up theft rings targeting scores of Saturn cars and Porsche side mirrors. Even parking funds aren’t safe. Several years ago, police arrested 30 airport parking lot attendants for stealing about $2 million in fees.

Cruising the busy airport ring road in an unmarked car, Airport Police Det. Cruz said such thievery can change your outlook on human nature. “It makes you a pessimist,” he said.

“You look around this airport and everything is a scam. Everybody’s out after the almighty dollar, the quick buck. And very few of them are doing it legally.”

The man with cerebral palsy is tugging at Joaquin Mendez’s sleeve.

Eyes wide, making several plaintive-sounding grunts, he takes the officer by the hand through the crowded terminal, to a nearby ticket counter where, unable to speak coherently, he types his story into a computer for Mendez to read:

He’s been robbed of several hundred dollars by a pickpocket who snatched his money and then roughed him up.

Feeling helpless, Mendez listens quietly and--after calling for backup to take a report--finally hands the man a business card with instructions to get in touch if he sees the thief again.

For Mendez, the plight of the near-helpless victim enhances the bad taste left in his mouth by too many heartless LAX thieves.

To stem their profits, he needs the help of airport travelers. For one, he says, passengers should keep their eyes and ears open while traveling. And never take your eyes off your luggage, not even to make a telephone call.

“Up to 90% of these thefts could be avoided if only the victim was more aware,” he said.

Police say they can’t always rely solely on luck, like the day the man called to turn in his bag-nabbing nephew--angry the youngster had become sloppy in the thefts he had worked so hard to teach him to perform.

So Mendez will stay on his guard. He’ll keep an eye out for the bogus baggage boys or self-made pilots who never leave the ground.

“My biggest thrill is making the on-the-spot bust,” he said. “Because nothing beats catching a thief in the middle of a well-planned distraction theft. And I mean nothing.”

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Thwarting Airport Thieves

Some suggested safety tips for carrying luggage through LAX:

* Never leave your bags unattended.

* Never turn your back on your luggage, even momentarily.

* Never pull airport luggage Smart Carts; always push them.

* Store large amounts of cash in different places. Don’t keep valuables such as your identification, passport or cash all in one bag.

* Be aware of your surroundings at all times.

* When traveling alone, wait until the X-ray machine at security checkpoints is the least crowded and try to reclaim your bag as quickly as possible after it passes through the machine.

* Remember, not everyone at the airport is either traveling or waiting to pick someone up.