Robbers Rattle the Palisades

Located 20 miles west of the heart of downtown Los Angeles, and a world away from many of its urban ills, Pacific Palisades has the sorts of village charms that Norman Rockwell might have painted.

But on Thursday, something was definitely wrong with the picture of small-town tranquillity. Posted on the door of the First Federal Bank branch on Sunset Boulevard was a notice: “Closed due to a robbery.”

In fact, it was the fifth bank robbery in the affluent enclave this year. Five bank robberies in five months -- and the armed robbery of popular Mort’s Palisades Deli for the first time in its 32-year history -- have residents and merchants lamenting that something about their community has changed.

“The sound of a helicopter overhead is usually a dead giveaway” that another bank has been hit, said Megan Kaufman, owner of the Nest Egg, a gift shop near several of the eight bank branches in the main commercial district. “If I ever opened another store, I think I’d call it the Sitting Duck.”

The Bank of America branch, which was hit by robbers twice in March, operates with an old-fashioned and welcome openness, without the barriers that many banks have erected at the counter. Here, nothing stands between tellers and customers except a counter and the ocean-misted air.

Community concerns over robberies prompted Kurt G. Toppel, vice chairman of the Pacific Palisades Community Council, to send a letter April 29 to Bank of America executives, urging them to step up security.

Toppel wrote that the installation of more security measures would be “a signal to our community that Bank of America cares and does what it can to enhance the well-being of customers and citizens at large.”

A Bank of America spokeswoman said the bank’s “security team is evaluating all security solutions.”

Two other bank branches in the Palisades recently have installed prominent security measures.

Wells Fargo on Swarthmore Avenue, just off Sunset, put in see-through “bandit barriers” to separate customers from tellers. Such systems generally include a counter reinforced with bullet-resistant fiberglass, with a see-through acrylic or glass “curtain.” Teller stations feature a “deal tray” or door for passing money or checks.

California National, meanwhile, installed “man-trap” doors, consisting of an outer door and an inner door, with a small area in between. If a customer sets off a metal detector embedded in the system, a bank employee can activate a lock that prevents the person from entering through the inner door.

On Thursday afternoon, private security guards also were posted in front of several banks.

For its part, the Los Angeles Police Department has parked an unmanned “dummy” police car along Sunset this week. In case anybody missed that it was empty, the Palisadian-Post newspaper featured a photo of the car and an explanation that it was a “bank robbery suppression decoy car.” Thursday’s heist would suggest that at least one robber was undeterred.

Many Palisades residents said they favor the idea of stepped-up security, even if the measures might whittle away at the friendly ambience. Long gone, they realize, are the days when a beat cop patrolled the area on foot and every customer knew the local bank presidents by name.

This year, robbers -- one of whom the FBI has dubbed the Blue Pouch Bandit for the bag that carries his “demand note” -- have hit not just First Federal and Bank of America, but also Citibank and California National Bank.

Bank of America was robbed twice within one week in March; in the latter incident a man wearing a mask attached what he described as an explosive device to a teller. It later proved to be fake.

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For Palisades veterans, the robberies are a further sign that their breezy coastal pocket, founded by Methodists in the 1920s, is more touched by everyday crime than its quiet charms might suggest.

The Wild West notion of bank robberies belies Pacific Palisades’ beginnings. The founders pictured it as “a Chautauqua community, a wonderful religious bedroom community where every summer they would put on an assembly that thousands of people from across the state would attend,” said Randy Young, a local historian.

The Chautauqua movement soon died out. In 1950, the House of Lee Chinese restaurant secured the town’s first liquor license, and “there went the neighborhood,” Young quipped. “The floodgates were open for the nonreligious hoi polloi.”

Today, Pacific Palisades has some of the priciest neighborhoods in Los Angeles and has attracted movie stars lured by the casual feel and proximity to the beach. Still, it’s far from worry-free.

“I think it’s been an illusion that we’re out of the crime path over here,” said Gail Wirth, who from her daughter’s bedroom window can see Mort’s deli, which was hit in March.

Wirth said she now has a “raised awareness” when she does her banking. The last time she visited her safe-deposit box, “I caught myself playing through a scenario,” she said. “Where would I hide if somebody came in here to rob the bank? Would it be smart to hide in the vault, or is that where they’d be coming?”

Pacific Palisades has recorded the same number of bank robberies in the first five months of this year as it did for all of 2004.

Overall, the city of Los Angeles has experienced 55 bank robberies this year, most of them downtown or in western portions such as Westwood and the Palisades, said Det. John Wong of the bank robbery section of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division. That’s “just above average,” he said.

As to why robbers would choose an area so far from freeway access, Wong noted that robbers do have several escape routes from the Palisades, including canyon roads, Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset. Residents said they blame in part the lack of significant and consistent police presence in the area.

The LAPD does assign a unit to patrol the area, but that car sometimes gets pulled off to go elsewhere.

Residents figure that more security at bank branches would help.

“We want these criminals to decide that it’s too much trouble to come here,” said Norman Kulla, a longtime resident. “We’re fighting like the dickens to preserve the small-town friendly atmosphere.... It ain’t easy.”