Police Drama Briefly Upstages Market
A touch of drama right out of a Keystone Kops caper punctuated Los Angeles Market Week when calls about a possible bank robbery in progress sent a passel of police officers to the Fashion District.
“We got a call coming in about a robbery in progress at 11:53 a.m.,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Bryce Spafford of the June 14 incident. “We got a second call at 11:55 a.m. by a male advising us that two men armed with guns were trying to rob a bank across the street from him [at Ninth and Los Angeles streets].”
Two police officers were dispatched immediately to the scene. What happened next was pure drama.
About eight more police officers in the vicinity joined the first two police officers. A police helicopter flew overhead.
At one time, there were as many as seven officers standing at the corner of Ninth and Los Angeles streets outside The New Mart with guns drawn.
Officers suspected the robbery was happening at the new Hatch and 10 Eleven showrooms, which recently took over the former Manufacturers Bank space on the ground floor of The New Mart. The Manufacturers Bank sign still hangs on the building’s exterior.
Officers entered the former bank space to verify if a robbery was in progress but soon left when they discovered the bank had been converted to showrooms. “They did poke their noses through our front doors along with their guns and panicked the crap out of everyone,” said Ethan Eller, The New Mart’s manager.
The New Mart security guard locked the building’s front doors for 15 minutes. Also, one individual ran around on The New Mart’s second and third floors advising everyone to lie down on the ground for their safety, Eller said.
After entering The New Mart, officers crossed the street to the California Market Center to check the banks there. At one point, several officers, with weapons drawn, huddled outside the CMC elevators before approaching the Bank of America branch in building C.
No robbers were found and the whole incident was declared a false alarm, Spafford said.
The sight of armed police officers roaming the Fashion District brought business in the area briefly to a halt. The area was particularly crowded because of the Fall II/Holiday 2004 market week, which ended June 15. Buyers and sales reps in the buildings surrounding the Ninth and Los Angeles intersection watched the drama unfold from the showroom windows. “It’s not a good image when you have gangs of black-booted thugs, even if they are L.A.’s finest, brandishing weapons,” Eller said.
Said Kent Smith, executive director of the Los Angeles Fashion District: “It was quite a commotion they created. I wouldn’t want this to happen every day.” —D.B.
