THIEVES’ MARKET : Unguarded Booths at Fair Being Hit Hard by Bold, Busy Looters

Some of the busiest shoppers at this year’s Los Angeles County Fair are avoiding long lines, pushy salesmen and high prices.

They are sneaking into outdoor sales booths after closing time to turn a popular exhibit area at the center of the fairgrounds into a thieves’ market, angry vendors have charged.

Unguarded booths have been looted of thousands of dollars worth of goods by clandestine burglars gutsy and choosy enough to browse through storage boxes to find loot to suit them, merchants said.

Apparent confusion over the way some of the crime reports are being handled has added to the ire of merchants, who are paying $100 a day to the fair to rent booth space. Vendors thought security guards were reporting the thefts to police, but security guards thought the booth operators were doing it.

Vendors Grumble

Some vendors grumbled because their theft complaints were not being passed on to fair officials or to the Pomona Police Department, which operates a small station at the fair and helps patrol the 487-acre fairgrounds.

Police and fair operators said they were unaware until Wednesday of the theft problem at this year’s exposition, and they have no way of knowing how widespread it is. Police officials said only a handful of incidents involving merchants had reached them.

Fair security operators said the outbreak of thefts at the open-air Miller Sports Plaza area has prompted them to beef up nighttime patrols for the fair’s remaining three days.

Next year, they said, they will change the procedure that vendors are told to use when notifying officials of thefts.

The break-ins have apparently been centered in the sports plaza, a commercial sales area near the Fairplex Race Track and the fair’s carnival midway. Many of the merchants who rent space there are not covered by theft insurance.

“We were completely cleaned out,” said sunglasses seller Anna Darrah of Huntington Beach, who reported to police that her uninsured booth was stripped of $10,000 worth of designer glasses early Tuesday morning.

“Every night there are a few more gone,” said nearby T-shirt vendor Tom Raftery of Buena Park, who quit counting after about $1,000 worth of shirts disappeared.

Next to Raftery, a cellular telephone sales booth lost a pair of $200 non-working display phones to thieves who inadvertently destroyed a real mobile phone when they broke into the display.

“The dummies took our dummy phones,” said telephone salesman Robert Browning of Pomona.

Sportswear salesman Dion Harkness of Ontario said thieves apparently patiently rifled boxes searching for specific items one night before walking off with $2,000 worth of athletic jackets.

“They’re doing selective stealing,” said Harkness.

He said booth operator Duane Adams of San Jose purchased an alarm after the first break-in. The next night, it was triggered when thieves apparently returned.

Vendors complain that fair security officers will not permit them to stay overnight in booths to guard their merchandise, which is being sold from 1,500 rented spaces through Sunday, when the 18-day fair ends.

Although some merchants remove or lock their goods in safes at night, others merely cover their stock with tarpaulins. Private guards hired by the Los Angeles County Fair Assn. patrol outdoor sales areas to keep people out.

“A few owners are sneaking in and sleeping here to watch their stuff,” Harkness said. “That’s technically wrong. But security can’t protect you. They’ve either got to get better security, or let owners sleep in here, or fence this whole area off.”

Pomona Police Lt. Ernie Allsup, whose officers sweep through the carnival to remove stragglers when the fair closes each night, said booth operators must leave too for security reasons.

“You let owners in and you have people milling around everywhere,” said Allsup, who met with fair security chief Doug Robinson after learning of vendors’ complaints. When the pair reviewed police incident reports, they found only one involving a nighttime booth theft, Allsup said.

Robinson said he has no way of knowing how large the problem is because his security company does not keep records of thefts reported by vendors. Instead, he said, he has assumed that all victims were contacting police directly.

He said his 160 fair guards will be told to remind vendors to notify police directly when thefts occur. In the meantime, foot patrols in the sports plaza area will be redeployed and increased.

According to Robinson, he discovered Thursday that instructions issued this year by the fair advised booth operators to “report missing items to security,” without mentioning the need to call Pomona police. Those instructions will be revised next year, Robinson said.

He said he believes that there are sufficient guards on duty at the fair and that theft problems have decreased since his company began handling security four years ago.

The new procedure will come too late to comfort some vendors.

A jewelry booth operator who reported the loss of a $4,625 tray of rings to a thief on Sunday said police did not arrive for two hours, even though he asked a security guard to call them immediately after the theft.

Finally, out of frustration, he called police himself and they showed up quickly. But they were too late to catch the thief, said the jeweler, who asked not to be identified.

Boat salesman Bob Sepulveda, who said his booth has lost a color television and a video recorder to thieves, said he became alarmed Wednesday when he noticed several people closely inspecting stereo systems in watercraft on display.

“I pulled them out last night and took them home,” Sepulveda said. “I’m not leaving anything in this booth that can walk. We’ve been at this fair for four years. But I’ve told them we’re not coming back.”