The Mall Crawl--With a Gun and Badge

They march side-by-side, blue uniforms pressed, patent-leather shoes shined, with nightsticks that shimmer in fluorescent light.

Their walk, heavy steps on Italian porcelain, is familiar; their faces and footsteps are known.

Move over Robinsons-May, your neighbor is the law.

This is the fifth week since Ventura’s newest police storefront opened at Pacific View Mall. As you might expect, business for the outpost’s two officers is hardly fever-pitched.

Although a mound of paperwork about midtown property crimes always awaits, Cpl. John Snowling and Officer Sam Arroyo took a break from the tedium. It was 4:45 p.m.--time to patrol.

As the walk began, there was nothing resembling the nervous tension of patrolling a tough neighborhood. The officers exchanged jokes and took time to greet an elderly man, a young girl and some teens. Minutes later, they explained their light mood.

“This isn’t L.A., where we have shootings and stabbings,” Snowling said, smiling. “It’s a pretty safe mall.”

Flanking their position was Robinsons-May. Department stores, the officers explained, often have their own security teams, which report to a mall’s private security force when they need assistance. Sworn officers provide an added layer of protection.

Snowling and Arroyo monitor mall security radio frequencies, but still consult the mall’s security guards while on their rounds. Often, the officers’ stop at the mall security desk proves most fruitful. Monitors at the desk can display each of the mall’s more than 75 surveillance cameras.

Those cameras were used earlier this month to identify a man who had exposed himself to shoppers, Arroyo said. The man was issued a warning and asked not to come back, but was cited for lewd conduct on a return trip over the weekend.

The presence of Ventura police at the mall, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, has already paid dividends.

“We saw a guy over on the pay phone who had a felony warrant out for burglary, so we arrested him,” Snowling said with a grin. “He sure was surprised to see us.”

Snowling said the mall beat occasionally gets dangerous. What started this month as a routine pursuit of a shoplifter led to the man’s fleeing to the parking garage. When he reached his vehicle, the shoplifter pulled a handgun on mall security officers, Snowling said. The suspect got away but was tracked and arrested in Oxnard.

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More often, though, there is precious little action for the officers at Pacific View.

Attending to property-crime paperwork consumes more than half of each day the officers work the storefront, evidenced by the 2-inch stack sitting on a back desk. Snowling and Arroyo split the work week between them.

The aims of the storefront detail are simple: safety, education and improved response time to area crimes. Rent for the space is free, said Cayse Osterlund, manager of Pacific View, which he considers a small price for the crime deterrence of an on-site police presence.

“It’s great,” Osterlund said, citing a recent retail survey that researched why people patronize certain malls over others. “The feeling of security is paramount to where [people] choose to spend their money.”

The Police Department, via civilian crime-prevention officers, offers monthly informational meetings for merchants--seminars on everything from credit card fraud to shoplifting to the recent arrival and scrutiny of redesigned money with larger presidential images.

Those crime-prevention officers, two of whom are stationed at the storefront along with Snowling and Arroyo, assist the police by taking reports, talking to the public and handling Neighborhood Watch, but only patrol officers deal with crime suspects.

Considering that Pacific View is one of the city’s largest single sources of sales tax revenue, the mall posts are important, said Sgt. Skip Young, who supervises the department’s four storefronts in Ventura.

“The storefronts have been extremely effective in areas of high traffic, whether it be pedestrian traffic or [vehicle] traffic,” Young said. “With the closing of The Esplanade [mall in Oxnard], we are seeing a higher concentration of gang types, because we closed one of their hangouts.”

The storefront officers’ intent is to minimize the ability of gangs to operate in and around the mall, Arroyo said--a goal that has largely been met. He said the officers patrol the shopping center more often in the afternoons--when kids are out of school--and evenings, after dinner, when overall mall traffic increases.

“Over Christmas, we got one to two calls a day regarding gang members,” Arroyo said. “Since January, we’ve been [patrolling] here on a daily basis and there have been no problems.”

Police receive about two calls per day from Pacific View, Snowling said. Most of them are easily handled by the storefront officers.

In 1999, the Oxnard Police Department also answered about two calls per day at or near The Esplanade, said Linda Gray, a statistician with the Oxnard police. But rather than having to dispatch a police unit, the officers in Ventura are already on scene.

Still, the Oxnard mall is not unusual in being without a police presence, said Patrice Selleck, a spokeswoman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade association in New York. Few malls have the luxury of police as tenants, she said.

Young, the storefront supervisor, said having a permanent police presence at the mall is less likely to frighten shoppers than the frequent arrival of cruisers.

“If they have a continual presence,” he said, “I think it is less intrusive to most people.”

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Being a storefront officer at the mall is not the most exciting job, Arroyo said, but within the department the Pacific View beat is respected.

“Some have actually said it’s a great position,” he said. “And, you know, the air conditioning doesn’t hurt.”