New York has dozens of career criminals that steal, sell drugs, assault people, get arrested, and with a couple of hours back on the street, to return to their life of crime. Why? No cash bail.
Now, L.A. has gone that way—and the businesses on the Westside are suffering—and some, like in NY, San Fran, Chicago will be closed.
“In recent months, Westside restaurants and food-related businesses including The Venice Whaler and Lincoln Fine Wines as well as West Hollywood’s La Boheme have been dealing with dwindling patronage as a direct result of an increase in crime.
“Bottom line is that the tourism count is down significantly,” said Darrell Preston, the Operations Manager of The Venice Whaler and Baja Cantina in Marina Del Rey. “We simply don’t have the tourist traffic. It hasn’t been safe, graffiti is everywhere, and there are still two businesses on the block unoccupied post Covid. We estimate that business is down in our area nearly 40% from our number in 2019.”
The first responsibility of government is to protect its citizens. In L.A., the first responsibilities appears to be to protect the criminal—watch as people catch on and flee to a Free and Safe State.
Westside Businesses Struggling To Survive In a Zero-Bail City
By Magnolia Lafleur, Westside Current, 7/18/23 https://www.westsidecurrent.com/news/westside-businesses-struggling-to-survive-in-a-zero-bail-city/article_ff0ba4ae-2488-11ee-82dd-ff31cbc87833.html
In recent months, Westside restaurants and food-related businesses including The Venice Whaler and Lincoln Fine Wines as well as West Hollywood’s La Boheme have been dealing with dwindling patronage as a direct result of an increase in crime.
“Bottom line is that the tourism count is down significantly,” said Darrell Preston, the Operations Manager of The Venice Whaler and Baja Cantina in Marina Del Rey. “We simply don’t have the tourist traffic. It hasn’t been safe, graffiti is everywhere, and there are still two businesses on the block unoccupied post Covid. We estimate that business is down in our area nearly 40% from our number in 2019.”
Preston told the Current that since last year he has been plagued by a string of robberies that have caused a decrease in business and an increase of security expenditures. This year alone, Preston said he spent in excess of $10,000 per location on security measures and to cover property damages following multiple burglaries in Oct. and Apr. of 2022.
Despite the added measures businesses are taking to protect their properties, there is a sense of helplessness when it comes to the average customer and their reluctance to venture out.
“The late night crowd simply doesn’t feel safe,” Preston said. “LAX traffic is at record levels yet our numbers are down significantly. Common sense dictates that the visitors to our area are clearly reducing time spent or removing Venice entirely from their vacation plans.”
Preston said that the latest burglary at Lincoln Fine Wines on June 29, has only underlined his concern for safety at his own establishments. The wine shop burglary was captured on security cameras showing a masked thief scrupulously picking through and stealing over 600 bottles of wine. The burglar got away with more than half a million dollars worth of wine including their entire inventory of French Burgundy and Bordeaux.
Wine Buyer at Lincoln Fine Wines, Nick Martinelli, told the Current that theft is not a victimless crime adding that “so much goes into one bottle.”
“This is people’s blood sweat and tears,” Martinelli said, “from the farmers to Haque [the owner] who has been building this cellar for over 15 years so many lives are connected to this. And to suddenly have a lot of stuff just taken in a flash is absolutely ridiculous.”
The increase in crime and lack of accountability has been so concerning amongst restaurant owners that the proprietor of La Boheme, Lucian Tudor, and his entire staff closed their restaurant on June 26 in order to attend a city council meeting to voice their concerns.
A representative at La Boheme read an email to the council that stated: “After the gun robbery last month at La Boheme we have been vandalized five times,” “The city is getting extremely unsafe, staff are afraid to come to work and we need the city’s help.”
On June 26, La Boheme owner Lucian Tudor closed the popular West Hollywood restaurant for the night so he and his staff could attend a City Council meeting and voice their anger.
Photo: KCAL News (via YouTube)
Preston believes that the current predicament that restaurant owners are facing did not start overnight, saying that the past city council’s office headed by Mike Bonin made political decisions that have negatively affected everyone’s livelihood.
“These policies go back years, the biggest of which was the decision to suspend law enforcement due to covid,” Preston said. “LAPD was literally directed to stand down. This was a huge mistake and a drastic measure that has negatively impacted everyone.”
In addition, Preston said that he is very concerned over the recent reinstatement of the zero-bail policy that was first initiated during the Covid-19 pandemic and expired on July 1, 2022. The policy went back into effect on May 24 with the Los Angeles County Deputy DA John McKinney stating that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department will cease detaining suspects over crimes like shoplifting, theft, drug use, vandalism, batteries and other nonviolent crimes.
“I feel zero bail is just another, in a line of misguided decisions, meant to lower the consequences for illegal behavior,” Preston said. “It defies common sense that we would remove barriers for robbery, assaults and vagrant behavior.”
The excess of crime and shoplifting that business owners are experiencing stands in stark contrast to the most recent Police Department data released in June indicating that crime in Los Angeles is down. The data reflected that violent crimes in May dropped 10% compared to last May, with property crimes down by around 1% and arrests up by 4.4%.
The Current reached out to the LAPD media relations and asked them to provide details on how they’re determining crime rate as business owners are concerned that the no-bail policy could be a contributing factor to creating an illusion of low crime rate statistics.
Officer Drake Madison responded back to the Current stating that, “Rates are determined by the crime committed, as well as the crime arrests.”
Preston attributes the reported low crime rates to business owners and neighbors realizing that the 911 “response time and/or outcome…will not lead to any action.”
“We are left to handle many of these often violent threats alone,” Preston explained. “We have private security, camera surveillance, and procedures in place to make our staff less vulnerable. The LAPD does the best job they are enabled to do. The fact that we refuse to keep dangerous people incarcerated is not the fault of the arresting officers but rather the DA’s office’s failure to prosecute. The bad guys know all too well that crime does pay here on the Westside and elsewhere throughout LA.”
Prosecutor and 2024 District Attorney Candidate Jonathan Hatami expressed his dismay over the plight restaurant owners are having to go through. Hatami said his heart goes out to Lincoln Fine Wines and all the businesses that have suffered break-ins adding that he believes the current predicament is due to “failed policies established by Gascon in Dec. 7, 2020.”
“He [Gascon] instituted 66 blanket directives and they really have caused a major issue in Los Angeles as they have promoted lawlessness and a lack of accountability,” Hatami told the Current. “He also instituted zero-bail, so what you have is a large amount of people committing crime, like these smash and grab burglaries. And what compounded that is that George Gascon didn’t charge a lot of cases that were normally being charged, so the police became demoralized. These are all classic examples of how his [Gascon’s] policies have affected innocent people in Los Angeles. The DA is supposed to fight for justice, supposed to make sure we’re doing the right thing, to stand up for victims, survivors and innocent individuals who can’t fight for themselves and right now they are not doing that.”
