Rent-a-Rambos : Hired Guns Defending Pawnshop Looted Last Year in South-Central Gird for an Urban War That Never Comes

During last year’s riots, the Westside Loan pawnshop in South-Central Los Angeles was a bone to be chewed by dogged looters.

As a Korean-owned liquor store burned next door, looters kicked in the pawnshop’s back door, pried off the two metal grates shielding the front windows and stole everything--including nearly 1,000 guns. Los Angeles police officers, aware that Westside Loan was laden with deadly weapons and ammo, parked two blocks away and watched, according to the shop’s owner, Joel Mendelsohn.

This time, the Mendelsohns were ready.

The back door was fortified. Where there were two grates on the front windows, there were now three. And instead of running and relying on the police, the Mendelsohns secured their own squad of veritable gunslingers. They included a former bounty hunter, a self-described ex-Navy commando and a one-time furniture maker with diamonds embedded in his front teeth--all bent on defending Westside Loan as if it were the Alamo.

“It’s gonna be a whole different story this time,” assistant manager Bruce Mendelsohn, Joel’s cousin, promised before the verdicts were announced Saturday morning in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

How right he was.

As it turned out, his rent-a-Rambos girded for a war that never came, and Westside Loan remained open throughout the day. About the closest it got to “lock and load” time was when a carload of youths cruised past on Jefferson Boulevard shortly before noon, glimpsed all the heavily-armed guys hanging around out front and began taunting them. “You ain’t tough!” the driver shouted. “We’ll be back!”

The gunslingers, all licensed security guards, narrowed their eyes like Clint Eastwood but could only bristle as the car turned south on Arlington Avenue and disappeared.

The day dawned cool and foggy--fine weather for urban combat.

Bob Bantleon, 34, came dressed for the worst in SWAT cap, Desert Storm fatigues and camouflaged flak vest. Slung under one arm was a semiautomatic, 9-millimeter pistol. Cradled in the other was a pistol-grip shotgun appropriated from the pawnshop’s shelves.

“Just like the old days,” Bantleon, 34, beamed as he lovingly pumped 12-gauge shells into the shotgun.

Bantleon, a military veteran who said he served with the Navy’s elite SEAL teams, is usually employed as a guard at Westside Loan, along with Inglewood native Darnell Turner, 29, and Joseph Leath, 32, a former furniture maker from Miami who sports a ponytail, two diamond-studded teeth and a modestly sized handgun on his beefy hip.

But given the intensity of last year’s uprising, the Mendelsohns feared that they would need a small army to defend their fort. One of their regular customers, Mike Clement, agreed to help. A soft-spoken, weightlifting security guard at Hollywood Park, Clement rounded up other hired guns from the racetrack: gum-chewing Hector Guerrero, 35; ex-bounty hunter Frank Kinney, 34; former LAPD Officer Larry Hogan, 30; K.C. Smith, 27, a boyhood acquaintance of the suspects in the Reginald O. Denny beating case, and John Gibson, 30, an honorary member of the Girl Scouts who grew up just down the street from the pawnshop.

The men arrived before sunup with their side arms--revolvers mostly. But several figured they would need heavier artillery as the verdicts loomed. They borrowed from Westside Loan’s plentiful supply, which customers quickly replenished after the 1992 riots. Guerrero went with a sawed-off shotgun. Clement chose a Chinese-made assault rifle. Gibson picked a nasty-looking TEC-9 submachine gun facsimile.

Anticipating an Alamo-like siege, the men laid in a supply of water and food on the rooftop: applesauce, crackers, granola bars, Spam. They installed an emergency generator, secured a cellular phone, strategically positioned fire extinguishers, cinched up their bullet resistant vests, checked and rechecked their weapons, and did everything else they could possibly think of to prepare for Armageddon.

As Saturday’s verdicts were broadcast, the hired guns watched intently while history unfolded on a bank of mortgaged color televisions.

“I can live with that,” Kinney said.

“Right is right and wrong is wrong,” Smith declared with each pronouncement of guilt and innocence. Others nodded their head in agreement with the jury’s decision.

Then it was time to go to work.

Bantleon and others took up positions on the roof, some near the front door, others on the perimeter. No one knew what might lay in store, whether the public would be pacified or whether there would be chaos for the hell of it.

The answer soon became clear.

By midmorning, the gunslingers were bored. Several decided it was time to dip into the Mendelsohns’ stash of fresh bagels and whipped cream cheese. Two others split to a fast-food joint across the way for some pastrami burritos.

All of their weaponry, all of the defensive posturing, somehow began to seem out of place.

There were no rioters within sight on Jefferson Boulevard, only joggers, kids riding their bikes--and two neighborhood drug dealers hanging out in front of a barbershop across the street. Instead of looters, there was a steady, albeit smaller than normal, stream of customers doing business inside the Mendelsohns’ shop.

“You got enough artillery here to start World War III,” an old man remarked as he strolled past.

The hired guns smiled knowingly.

And so it went.

Nothing happened.

The only tumult during the day inside Westside Loan came when a flooring crew showed up as scheduled and began tearing up old linoleum to replace it with new maroon-and-gray tile. The place was soon filled with noise and dust. “Could be worse,” Joel Mendelsohn said over the din. “We’ve seen worse.”

Outside the shop, the men hired to prevent a repeat of the 1992 unrest vowed to remain at their posts--just in case. Their contract calls for them to stay round-the-clock through Monday.

By nightfall Saturday, with all quiet on the post-verdict front, some tried to catch a little shut-eye. Others whiled away the time chewing the fat--just another Saturday night.

“A gun is like a tool,” said the ever-vigilant Bantleon as he scanned the peaceful streets below his rooftop perch. “You need it when you need it.”