VAN NUYS : Detective Tells How to Prevent Robberies

Avoiding confrontations with shoplifters, remembering what a criminal touched and trusting employees to make deposits can prevent robberies, police told a group of Van Nuys merchants.

At a meeting of the Sepulveda Boulevard Business Watch on Wednesday, Detective Greg Demirjian of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys Division told area merchants that commercial robberies in Van Nuys were down about 10% during the last three months.

Yet the most frequent robberies--of 7-Eleven stores--could have been prevented. Of the 348 robberies reported to the Van Nuys station this year through September, 7-Elevens have been robbed 22 times, Demirjian said.

“More than half of those 7-Eleven incidents were beer shoplifts when an employee tries to stop them and gets assaulted, making it into a robbery,” Demirjian said.

To prevent such incidents, Demirjian suggested closing mini-market doors late at night and installing a cashier’s window that customers must push money through when making purchases.

Unpredictability is another key to preventing robberies, particularly during daily bank deposits.

“When people do get robbed, they say, ‘Gee, I take it to the same bank every day, to the same teller at the same time,’ ” Demirjian said. “That’s a real problem. You become predictable to a criminal. If you have somebody on payroll you can trust to make the deposit, have them do it some of the time.”