'High-priced baby-sitters'

Friday night finds Bicycle Officer K.C. Schlader at the corner of Elm and School streets in Lodi. Schlader spends an inordinate amount of his patrol time in this general area due to the high concentration of teens and the frequency of calls from area businesses. (Mitchell W. Podraza/News-Sentinel)

'High-priced baby-sitters'

Officers often called to downtown area near movie theater because of teenagers, police say

By Layla Bohm
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Saturday, August 12, 2006 7:42 AM PDT

Comments (86 comment(s))

Teens seeking a place to gather tend to congregate Friday nights near the movie theater in downtown Lodi, and police say many contribute to the 132 times police were called in the past year to the theater alone.

"The officers have become high-priced baby-sitters," Lodi Police Lt. Chris Piombo said, adding an officer has to spend hours in front of the theater every Friday. "We've almost become victims of our own success. The downtown area does have a reputation for being safe, colorful, a nice place to hang out. But gang members are there, too."

Plus, the 132 calls are only in reference to the theater's address, 109 N. School. When someone calls police from the adjacent Cold Stone Creamery or Starbucks, or merely calls to report an incident at the intersection of School and Pine streets, that's not counted in the calls Piombo analyzed.

Calls included everything from fights to drunken people, vandalism to a gun brandishing.

A Starbucks manager, who declined to give a name due to corporate policy, said teens sometimes swarm into the coffee shop. Many use the bathroom, where the manager said teens have been caught doing drugs and having sex.

The business can't do much about the problem, especially since Starbucks has a "just say yes" policy regarding their treatment of customers, which is well documented on the Internet.

"The number one complaint from nearly everyone is the teenagers," said Bicycle Officer K.C. Schlader, who recently began patrolling downtown and now finds himself parked outside the theater every Friday night.

Friday seems to be the night when teens gather in front of the theater for hours on end, he said. People also complain about transients hanging out in downtown Lodi, but police say they're quieter and cause less trouble than the teenagers.

Recent discussions of the downtown hang-out led to parents and teens alike complaining that there is no other place for their children to go. Parents recall the days when Lodi had a bowling alley and a roller skating rink, both of which are gone.

So now youths flock to the corner of Elm and School streets most Friday nights.

Not all youths cause problems, but one incident especially frustrated police. Two teen girls got into a physical fight, so an officer broke it up, cited the girls and released them to their parents. Within an hour, both girls were back in front of the theater.

"Parents feel it's a safe place to drop their kids off, so they leave them for four hours," Piombo said.

He doesn't blame the downtown shop owners, and said he's talked to adults who take their business elsewhere when they see a swarm of youths taking up the entire area in front of the theater.

Once movie-goers pay for their tickets outside and enter the building, they leave the bustle behind, because the theater only admits those with current movie tickets. The rest just linger outside the theater doors, yelling, talking and generally passing time.

"I sit there and see the adults walking out of the theater and it's like going through a minefield," Schlader said. "And they don't have happy looks on their faces, either."

It's not just a Lodi concern, though.

Six Flags announced earlier this year that it may sell off some of its amusement parks, including Marine World in Concord.

In June, Six Flags' chief executive Mark Shapiro told the Associated Press that Magic Mountain was also possibly on the chopping block. Teens there were driving away families, who pay more money than do youths who caused security problems.

"Once you burn Mom, she is not rushing back," Shapiro said.

News-Sentinel staff writer Kendyce Manguchei contributed to this report.

Contact reporter Layla Bohm at layla@lodinews.com.

First published: Saturday, August 12, 2006

Reader Feedback

ben wrote on Aug 21, 2006 6:07 PM:

" If the "babysitters" werent doing this job what else would they have to do in Lodi except run off the gang members? "

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