30 June 2003




Crimes at the mall in Victorville, California are up since the kids got out of school.
Most problems relate to kids being left unattended in the mall and other retail stores while parents go do something else, said Ekis and mall officials. Oftentimes, parents will drop off kids to spend the afternoon at the mall and watch a movie in the theater, said Janice Olsen, the mall's general manager.

"Parents should not just drop off kids," Olsen said. "An unattended child anywhere is a recipe for trouble."

At the mall, kids get bored, congregate near the mall's theater entrance and food court areas, and prevent shoppers from moving freely through the mall, said Ekis.

"We don't permit kids to just hang around," Olsen said. "We are a shopping mall."
Don't permit? No, I'm sure it's more like they encourage kids to hang around.

Kids spend money. They buy tons of food, spend money at the movie theater, buy overpriced clothes because they want to look cool (or whatever the current term is), and they purchase all that silly-useless garbage on the carts as you walk thru the mall. I'm sure the mall makes a lot more money than it loses do to the increase in petty crimes (which I'm sure occur).

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