Del Amo Mall May Press Parents in Youth Vandalism : Crime: Shopping center owners are suing seven boys suspected of etching graffiti into windows and mirrors. If the teen-agers lose, the state civil code makes their parents liable for damages.

The owners of Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance could not rub out, paint over or ignore the graffiti that teen-agers etched into windows and mirrors at the giant mall this winter.

But they think they can make the suspected vandals pay. Literally.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Torrance Superior Court, the owners of the mall are demanding that seven teen-age boys pay a total of $50,000 in damages for defacing the mall’s windows and mirrors.

A lawyer for The Torrance Co., which owns the shopping center, said he will try to collect damages from the boys’ parents, invoking a portion of the state civil code that says parents can be held liable for their children’s misdeeds. Each family could be liable for up to $10,000, said the company’s lawyer, Daniel B. Diederich.

Police say that Del Amo is just one of several South Bay malls that teen-agers have “tagged,” or scrawled, with their nicknames. The Galleria at South Bay in Redondo Beach and the Hawthorne Plaza mall have also been hit by the vandals, who are not gang members, police and mall managers say.

The practice of tagging has become more costly lately because the vandals have forsaken spray paint for glass cutters in an attempt to leave more permanent markings, said Ken Poole of The Torrance Co.

“They are just telling their friends that they have been by,” Poole said. “It’s an expensive way to do that and we would certainly hope they would find a better way to do it.”

The company has already spent more than $10,000 replacing some of the mall’s exterior glass walls and inside mirrors, Poole said.

A mall security guard caught one of the teen-agers in December scratching his nickname into bathroom mirrors at the mall’s Aladdin Arcade, a popular hangout for young people, Torrance police Sgt. Ron Traber said.

The teen-ager identified several other youths who had been leaving their marks around the mall. One particularly prevalent mark was “DIS,” apparently standing for “Dissidents in Society,” Torrance police said.

Seven boys, ages 15 to 17, are named in the lawsuit. Three youths also face criminal charges filed by the Torrance Police Department.

The criminal charges and increased patrols by mall security officers have eliminated the vandalism almost entirely, Poole said. Most of the damaged glass and mirrors have been replaced.

Duane Bishop, manager of the Galleria at South Bay, said the Redondo Beach mall suffered about $2,000 in damage this winter to bathroom mirrors. Bishop said the string of mirror etchings ended when mall security officers increased patrols and confronted teen-age mall employees suspected of the vandalism.

The J. C. Penney department store at Hawthorne Plaza suffered repeated damage to its exterior glass walls last year, mall manager Bill Demarest said. But the problem ended when the store replaced several panes of glass with wood paneling.

Bishop said the Del Amo mall’s lawsuit should serve as an additional deterrent.

“The message is out there now,” Bishop said, “that if you are caught, not only will the individual be in trouble, but we’ll go after the parents too.”