Petty Crimes, Big Headaches

Violent crime may be down nationwide, but the petty variety plagues many small businesses, trapping them in an endless battle with vandals and vagrants and saddling them with costs they can ill afford, according to a survey conducted by The Times and USC’s Marshall School of Business.

Southern California business owners who responded to the survey said opening shop often means facing fresh graffiti, rousting the homeless from doorways or hosing down parking lots that double as toilets. Etched windows, chronic shoplifting and loiterers who scare off potential customers are also among the litany of complaints.

And government officials and community activists say there’s no sign these problems are abating.

Small-business owners surveyed in the six-county region ranked crime low on their list of priorities, citing taxes, regulation and the dearth of skilled labor as more pressing. Still, 42% said graffiti and vandalism were a problem, while 34% complained about drug sales or loitering. Even those reporting only one or two incidents a year found the problems burdensome and costly.

Law enforcement officials generally do not tally nuisance crimes against businesses, but the Southern California Business Climate Survey showed troubles were most pronounced in the city of Los Angeles, followed by Riverside County and the remainder of Los Angeles County.

But the complaints are widespread. Even in areas far from any urban core--from Tujunga in the San Fernando Valley to Lakeside in San Diego County--loiterers and vandals are taking a toll on merchants and manufacturers. Frustrations have prompted some to relocate and others to consider doing so, raising the specter of a domino effect that could accelerate neighborhood degradation.

“In poorer areas, businesses now have so many difficulties,” said USC’s William B. Gartner, who conducted the survey for The Times. “They’re in areas where people have less money to spend. They also have to pay for safety and security equipment like barred doors and fences. They’re paying every way.

“If your communities aren’t safe, business is going to be down,” he said. “And if you don’t have local grocery stores and areas to shop, it really kind of kills the neighborhood.”

Who’s Responsible for Fighting Problem?

The findings underscore a perennial question: What can be done to turn troubled business districts around and whose responsibility is it? Government and law enforcement have responded with a checkerboard of programs, including free graffiti paint-out, donated vines and cactuses, and technical assistance to steer business owners to products such as protective film for windows. But in some pockets of the region, programs are thin or entrepreneurs are oblivious to them. Others complain that efforts are futile: While they regularly summon law enforcement and request graffiti paint-out service, core problems persist.

Police and sheriff’s officials stress they cannot solve them alone. While the survey showed only 11% of respondents had attended community meetings over the last year to discuss crime and safety, that type of involvement is key to the success of community policing, law enforcement officials said.

In fact, government is increasingly encouraging business to take on tasks that the public sector can’t handle, urging entrepreneurs or property owners to form self-assessment districts to pay for private security, street cleaning and more. Five such Business Improvement Districts have been added in Los Angeles since August, bringing the city’s total to 17, and 27 more are on the drawing board.

“Government resources are limited. Police resources are limited,” said Barry Glickman, spokesman for L.A. City Councilman Rudy Svornich, who is working with the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce to form a Business Improvement District there. “In the old days, business owners took responsibility for what happened in front of their businesses.”

But struggling merchants often view the problem differently.

“Most of the owners believe [these services] should be paid for by our tax dollars,” said Ben Rodriguez Jr., who with his father runs El Pollo Lico and the Rodriguez Bar and Pool Hall on Avalon Boulevard.

Rodriguez said trees go untrimmed, trash cans that once dotted streets are gone, and fliers from a nearby supermarket cover the sidewalk. A car lot that recently closed is attracting graffiti and vandalism, and Rodriguez saw a homeless man defecating on the sidewalk last month.

Overall, only 6% of the survey’s 1,670 respondents called graffiti and vandalism “critical” problems, and 5% said so of drugs and loitering. Those numbers shot up in lower-income neighborhoods and are reflected in these statistics: Ten percent of respondents in the city of Los Angeles, 8% in Riverside County and 8% in the rest of Los Angeles County called graffiti and vandalism critical problems.

As for drugs and loitering, 13% in the city of Los Angeles, 10% in Riverside County and 8% in the rest of Los Angeles County called those problems critical. Entrepreneurs in San Diego, Orange and Ventura counties were least likely to call those issues critical.

Minority entrepreneurs were three to four times more likely to call crime a critical problem than white entrepreneurs, and Asian business owners had the greatest concerns of all.

Many Korean retailers, for example, operate small markets and dry cleaners in areas ignored by chain stores, working 14-hour days alone, “so crime is on their mind all the time,” said Harrison Kim, executive director of the Korean American Chamber of Commerce.

Kyu Choi has felt the impact. He said his Grog Shop Liquor store in Long Beach loses about $1,000 a month to shoplifters and he must deal with a steady parade of vagrants outside.

Crime and Punishment

Hundreds of minority merchants in Los Angeles have even found themselves punished for the crime around them, said Van Nuys attorney Harriet Bilford. She said many of her clients have been unfairly denied liquor licenses or required to implement costly security measures under a controversial nuisance-abatement program.

Neighborhoods further decline as entrepreneurs flee.

Graffiti was so bad at Maria Tariche’s former South Gate location that after a decade, she bailed out last year, leaving an already near-vacant strip mall with one less tenant. Her travel agency, MET Travel, is now situated within a block of the South Gate police station.

“People would tell me, ‘Oh my God, Maria, how can you stay here? It’s so dirty.’ There were gang names along the back wall. [The city] would paint it out and it would show up again the next day.”

Hollywood Realtor Randy Sprout is considering moving his Century 21 Hollywood west after two decades.

“It’s just getting worse and worse,” Sprout said. “I’m tired of kicking people off my doorstep in the morning. They’re urinating, defecating and scratching slogans on the glass window.”

The problems scare away customers and come with other costs.

Sprout, for example, just lost his top agent of nine years. “She just cried and cried and cried, but she said, ‘My husband doesn’t want me to work in Hollywood anymore,’ ” Sprout said.

Advocates say small battles have been won in the campaign to house the region’s homeless, but overall, the problem has worsened in recent years, with more women and children on the streets and more single men cut from government assistance. Graffiti, too, has remained steady at best.

“The consensus is there is the same amount of graffiti as there always has been, it’s just getting painted out faster,” said California Highway Patrol Officer Randy Campbell, who tracks abatement efforts for the Multi-Agency Graffiti Intervention Committee (MAGIC), a regional task force that promotes cleanup, education and prosecution of perpetrators.

Many frustrated entrepreneurs blame government and law enforcement.

“You do have to get more police out there, period,” said Charles Rim of Charles A. Rim Accountancy Corp. in Lomita, whose windows are etched and building is regularly marked with graffiti. “In Torrance, they have a graffiti prevention program and they come and clean it for you,” he said. “In Lomita, they write you a nasty letter and ask you to clean it up yourself. It’s time-consuming. It’s troublesome.”

Government officials concede they are fighting an uphill battle. The majority of 75 Southland agencies responding to a recent MAGIC survey said graffiti was either increasing or staying the same, but they nevertheless anticipated steep budget cuts next year.

For now, many private businesses in Los Angeles County are eligible for free graffiti cleanup and can also pick up free paint, said Valerie Hill, graffiti abatement program manager at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and head of MAGIC.

Chipping Away at Nuisance Crime

In the city of Los Angeles, all businesses are eligible for free paint-out, although in heavily tagged areas crews sometimes take 72 hours to get there, said Delphia Jones, director of Operation Clean Sweep, the city’s anti-graffiti program. Business owners who prefer not to wait will be supplied with free paint and rollers, along with free vines, cactuses and help in saw-cutting sidewalks to make room for vegetation, she said. A technical advisor can also help businesses assess their sites for other deterrents.

Many smaller municipalities also offer programs. Carson, for example, spends more than $4.50 per resident annually to paint out graffiti, often hitting the same sites four days a week, said Wally Tomita, building maintenance supervisor and head of the city’s graffiti abatement crew.

Law enforcement, too, is chipping away at nuisance crime. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has targeted 44 areas in the last two years with its High-Impact Cops program, which polls residents and business owners about problems and works with them to craft solutions, said Lt. Charles Schultz of the Community Law Enforcement Partnership Programs Unit.

Two full-time deputies track graffiti vandals and many stations have specially trained deputies who can help business owners arrange landscaping, add lighting, and take other measures to ensure safety, such as installing a tape measure near the door to gauge the height of suspects.

But entrepreneurs must “take the initiative” and contact local law enforcement to find out what help is available, Schultz said. Within the city of Los Angeles, merchants can join community police advisory boards organized through each division, said Lt. Charlie Beck of the LAPD’s community policing and planning section. Paying extra for services by forming Business Improvement Districts can’t hurt, he added.

“I wish the level and fear of crime was so low that only Los Angeles police had to deal with it, but that’s not the reality,” he said.

While many entrepreneurs are struggling with creeping blight, others are benefiting from it, offering cleanup services and innovative products to government and fellow merchants.

Qstar Technologies of Chatsworth has developed a motion-sensing camera that orders vandals to stop and tells them they are being photographed. The Simi Valley Boys & Girls Club and the city of Compton have purchased them, and Qstar is looking for someone to produce the camera at a cost affordable to small businesses, said project manager Ken Anderson.

Larry DeCrona, too, has found a niche in nuisance abatement. His Santa Ana-based Superior Property Services has won seven contracts painting out graffiti for public agencies, including Los Angeles County. The graffiti contracts have pushed up revenue by 35%.

Said DeCrona: “We had a very good knowledge of what was necessary to keep property owners happy.”

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Crime Fighters

Here is a sampling of some key programs and hotline phone numbers to help business owners combat nuisance crime. Business owners can also call their local government or law enforcement agency for referrals.

* City of Los Angeles: Operation Clean Sweep will paint out graffiti for any business within city limits or provide free paint and rollers. The city will also donate vines and cactuses to businesses to deter vandals and will saw-cut sidewalks to make room for the plants. (800) 611-CITY.

* Los Angeles County: Only businesses in certain areas are eligible for free graffiti paint-out. The county will also provide paint to business owners. (800) 675-4357.

* Carson: Will paint out graffiti. Will also provide free paint and rollers. (310) 830-7600, Ext. 3500.

* Simi Valley: Will paint out graffiti. (805) 583-6444.

* Orange County: Free paint-out services on public property. However, business owners can leave a message on the hotline and staff will return calls with referrals to other paint-out programs. (714) 834-3400. In addition, free paint is sometimes available through the county. (714) 834-4118.

* City of Riverside: Will paint out graffiti and provide free paint. (909) 351-6127.

* Riverside County: Does not have a graffiti-removal program but will refer callers to their area chambers of commerce, some of which offer paint-out. (909) 955-2004.

For more information on regional graffiti abatement efforts, see https://www.nograffiti.com. The site includes the TAGNET (Tagger and Graffiti Network Enforcement Team) database of taggers, with names and phone numbers of law enforcement officers working each case. Business owners and residents can help law enforcement by e-mailing information on taggers to TAGNET’s Wanted Pages.

To get involved in community policing efforts, contact your closest police division or station. Many law enforcement officers can also give businesses environmental design tips and training to maximize safety.

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How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times and USC’s Marshall School of Business mailed out a seven-page questionnaire on June 19 to a random sample of 30,000 businesses in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties. The firms were drawn from Dun & Bradstreet’s database of all businesses in the six-county region, from which companies with fewer than 500 employees were selected, in accordance with the Small Business Administration’s definition of small businesses. About 3,000 questionnaires were returned undeliverable. From the remaining 27,000, 1,670 valid responses were received by the cutoff date of Aug. 8, representing a return rate of 6%, considered good for an unsolicited direct-mail survey. The responses were tabulated under the direction of William Gartner, professor of entrepreneurship at USC’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The results were benchmarked against national figures and regional industry data kept by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. The survey results show that 55% of the responses came from Los Angeles County, 16% each from Orange and San Diego counties, 6% each from Riverside and San Bernardino counties and 1% from Ventura County. The sample also is fairly representative of the industry mix in the region, although there are significantly more manufacturers and somewhat fewer construction firms and food retailers than their actual numbers in the six-county area. The sample tends to favor older, mature firms, reflecting D&B;’s database, which generally is made up of more-established businesses with a credit report. Based on the sample and the results, however, Gartner determined that the survey is representative of the small-business population in Southern California.

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More information on the survey is available online at https://www.latimes.com. The poll results will be discussed at The Times’ Small Business Strategies Conference this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For more information, call (800) 350-3211 or visit https://www.latimes.com/sbsc.