Liquor Store Owners Attack Security Laws

An association of Korean American convenience store owners charged Thursday that they are being unfairly targeted by city laws that require them to provide costly security measures at their shops in South-Central Los Angeles.

About 30 residents and members of the Korean American Grocers Assn. of California gathered outside B & O Liquor on Jefferson Boulevard, saying that city nuisance laws intended to keep markets safe and clean are such a financial burden that their businesses and livelihoods are threatened.

“They’re placing the problem of crime on the doorsteps of these small merchants,” said Ellis Cha, president of the grocers association, who charged that the ordinances discriminate against the mom-and-pop store owners in his organization.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and members of a residents group called the Community Coalition have fought for years against the proliferation of South-Central liquor stores. They said the issue is one of neighborhood safety, not discrimination.

“There are neighborhood people clamoring to have these city ordinances followed,” said Solomon Rivera, a coalition leader. “We work with the residents and see [the liquor stores] comply.”

He said his group takes in residents’ complaints against stores and arranges meetings to educate neighbors on how to use zoning laws to stop activity such as loitering and drug dealing around liquor stores.

Rivera said the coalition has filed more than three dozen complaints against problem stores in South-Central.

For several years, B & O Liquor has been the target of community complaints about trash and loitering problems, according to city documents.

Recent orders by a city zoning board called on B & O and a dozen other South-Central liquor stores to close early, raise fences and hire security guards to prevent illegal activities outside the stores.

Ellis and members of the grocers association say they have tried to comply with the orders.

But Eddie Park, owner of B & O, said he cannot afford the $9-per-hour security guard fee, and is facing closure. Without the $4,000 worth of business his store does each month, he said, he won’t be able to pay off a city loan he obtained after his shop was looted and destroyed in the 1992 riots.

“I’m 60 years old,” Park said. “I have no other choice. I’m going to be homeless if I don’t work.”

According to Ellis, four nearby liquor stores, three of which were owned by Korean Americans, have been forced to close over the last two years because they could not afford to pay for the improvements. An additional 10 to 15 Korean-owned shops have closed in South-Central in recent years.

Robert Janovici, chief zoning administrator, could not confirm how many shops have been closed because of zoning violations.

“We certainly do not discriminate,” Janovici said. “We go to where there’s allegations of nuisance activities.”

Rivera and Che agreed that conditions outside liquor stores have improved.

“After the riots, all of us worked very hard to improve,” Che said, citing his organization’s scholarship program for neighborhood children and a program to repair liquor store buildings.

In the wake of the riots, the number of liquor stores was blamed for degrading neighborhoods and attracting loiterers, drug users and prostitutes. Also, racial tensions had been building between South-Central residents and the Korean American merchants who ran businesses in their neighborhoods.

Park said he has not yet financially recovered from the destruction of his store.

“They emptied the store, they crushed the doors, they burned it,” Park said.

Meanwhile, neighbors of B & O still view the store as a chronic problem.

Lillian Marenco raised three children less than a block away from B & O, and said there are several other liquor stores in the immediate area.

“It was a nightmare,” she said of the crime that the store attracted in the past. She said conditions are better now, but liquor stores remain a problem. “I don’t know why, but criminals gather like flies around those places,” she said.