Market Looks to Shelve Troublemaking

OXNARD —  The disheveled young man staggered into the Rose Avenue Circle K, tucked a 12-pack of beer under his arm and ran.

Officers waiting outside easily tackled the thief as he cursed, screamed “police brutality” and shouted the name of a local gang.

It’s a typical Friday night at the Oxnard Circle K--a convenience store in the heart of La Colonia that serves as the area’s main market.

It is the corner store mothers walk to for milk. Where children are sent to pick up a loaf of bread, sometimes armed with enough cash for a cherry slush and a jerky stick.

But it’s also a store that police say is a problem.

On warm summer nights, it’s a popular loitering spot for local gang members. Racial tensions run high here. And beer thefts, also known as beer runs, are frequent.

In a 14-month period, police responded to the Circle K strip mall 306 times, including 72 for fights and 57 for thefts, according to a study on police calls. Many of the remaining calls were traffic related.

“My children are not allowed down there,” said one resident who declined to give her name, saying she was afraid of gang retaliation. She and her two children live about a block from the store. “We’re just always hearing bad things, fights, stuff like that. I go there; I have to. But not my kids.”

Another woman who lives nearby recalled leaving the store once a few years ago with her 8-year-old grandson when someone yelled, “Duck!”

“I saw one man in a car with a gun,” said the woman, who did not want her name used. “We ran into the bakery and asked the owner if we could stay there because some guys outside had a gun. When we finally walked outside again, someone had been shot in the parking lot.”

Circle K officials say they inherited the store’s problems when they took over the market in 1994.

“A lot of issues with the store began when it was under different ownership,” said Julie Igo, spokeswoman for the mini-market chain. “We’ve come into a situation where a store had a previous reputation and we acquired that along with the store. But we’re willing to work with the community and take steps to improve it.”

Circle K officials are planning to meet with community activists and police to hear their grievances and decide what store management can do to curb some of the mayhem.

The primary concern of police and neighbors is the high volume of alcohol sold at the Circle K market.

Authorities say the Oxnard store has the highest beer sales of any Circle K in the state and ranks among the top 10 in the nation. Circle K officials would not confirm the statistic, but they note the branch store has among the highest sales statewide for all goods because it serves as the area’s main grocery store.

Still, on weekend nights, most customers stroll out of the store with a six-pack or two.

“I’ve been there on surveillance at different times,” said Oxnard Senior Officer Bob Camarillo, beat coordinator for the La Colonia neighborhood. “And I can’t believe the amount of alcohol purchased there. It’s unbelievable.”

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Then there’s the alcohol that’s stolen.

Usually the perpetrators are under-age boys. They walk in the front door, casually pick up a case from the cooler or the tall stacks in the rear, then bolt out the door.

During one bold theft several weeks ago, five young men ran off with 10 cases of beer in the middle of the afternoon.

Circle K officials said they don’t keep statistics on how much beer is stolen, but police say most of the 57 theft calls last year were for beer runs. A high point came one week in 1997, when police recorded a beer run for seven consecutive days.

Purchased or stolen, the volume of alcohol coming from the tiny market is a major concern, authorities say, because its consumption bleeds into many other problems police and residents are trying to battle, such as domestic violence, assaults, drunk driving and thefts.

Observes Camarillo, “Do my calls for service go up immediately after a large amount of beer is stolen? Yeah, they go out and get drunk and then start raising havoc.”

Vicki Gonzales, coordinator for the Coalition for Community Development in the Latino-dominated La Colonia area, says the store should bear at least some of the responsibility for such problems because of the amount of alcohol sold.

“A lot of these businesses come into our neighborhoods and target the Latino population,” said Gonzales, who works out of the La Colonia police storefront. “Here we are already over-saturated with alcohol-related advertising, and some stores wallpaper with it.”

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The 36-member coalition, formed in 1993, was created to reduce alcohol and drug abuse in La Colonia. Since 1997, an annual federal grant has funded the group’s work. .

The group is not against the sale of alcohol, Gonzales stressed.

“We’re just trying to promote the responsible sale of alcohol,” she said. “We are not prohibitionists. We just ask that the merchants selling it act responsibly.”

The coalition, backed by police, is now widening its attention to include about a dozen convenience stores in the area.

According to a study funded by the coalition, more than 9% of all alcohol-related crimes in La Colonia occur at convenience stores.

“One of our strategies was to focus on Circle K because of the number of complaints from neighbors around the Circle K,” Gonzales said, “complaints about drunk driving, assaults, beer runs, a lot of loitering in front of the market.”

Among the coalition’s most active members is Camarillo, who sees his involvement as one way police and community members can join forces to address local concerns.

“Law enforcement is not just about throwing people in jail,” he said. “We also want to look at a community, see what is the root problem and go after that. And right now, Circle K is part of that root problem.”

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Exactly why the store has become ground zero for so many crimes is difficult to pinpoint.

But authorities say it doesn’t help that the market is sandwiched between two densely populated residential areas, Rose Park and La Colonia. Both are lower-income pockets with a heavy field-laborer population, and outlets for entertainment are few, so hanging out at the all-night Circle K suffices for some.

La Colonia is also home to the county’s biggest active gang, boasting 1,300 of the county’s 6,000 gang members. “So yeah, we have a lot of gang members who are going to that store,” Camarillo said.

Residents and authorities acknowledge that the store is a victim, too. Management would prefer not to have beer stolen, serve gang members or have loiterers gather in the parking lot.

But whether the problems are the result of doing business in a low-income community or the result of poor store management is a tough call.

“I just don’t know,” Igo said.

Store officials say they have taken some steps to protect themselves, such as installing turnstiles at the entrance of the store to create a barrier for beer runners.

Gonzales and her group, however, say a store that earns so much money from the community can and should do more to weed out trouble-makers and increase safety.

In 1998 the store was forced to comply with 13 stipulations spelled out by the Oxnard Police Department before the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control would renew its liquor license.

Among the requirements: no floor displays of alcoholic beverages within 20 feet of the front door, a minimum of three employees must be on duty from dusk until 2 a.m., no alcohol can be consumed on site or on property adjacent to the store, parking lots must be well lighted and alcohol coolers must be locked after 2 a.m.

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Ed Macias of the ABC noted his office gets periodic complaints from residents about the store. But he said the market has never had any violations significant enough to prompt penalties or license revocation.

“When you say Circle K, we know it, we know that store,” Macias said. “It’s one area where some problems have gone on for years and years and years. Maybe it’s time to change.”

“Solving the problems at this store,” Camarillo said, “would help, definitely, bring some of the calls for service down. Calls for thefts would diminish. It would improve the quality of the neighborhood.”

At a future meeting with store officials, Gonzales and Camarillo hope to lay out more ideas for store managers.

Some options include installing higher-quality surveillance cameras that will produce clearer pictures of customers, removing “beer mountains”--the stacks of beer cases piled several feet high in the back of the store, adding buzzers to beer-cooler doors, reducing alcohol advertisements and hiring a security guard for evening hours.

One resident suggested a reduction in hours. Coalition members and authorities also want clerks to attend classes on responsible beverage sales and service training, including tips on how to remember suspects and better relay information to officers.

Gonzales said it has been difficult trying to negotiate with the big chain store. The group is often referred to an off-site district manager who then refers the group to another corporate office. But she is hopeful the store will listen with open ears during the meeting, which hasn’t been scheduled.

Igo said the store is willing to do whatever it can to work with the community.

“We are certainly trying,” Igo said. “We want to sit down, we want to listen to them and do what we can to help. We might be a little slower [to respond], but we are getting there, and we are making progress.”