Only months after installing surveillance cameras along Huntington Park's thriving shopping district, officials this week are adding emergency call boxes to quash crime fears and retain its title as Los Angeles County's busiest Latino shopping district.
Together, the cameras and call boxes on the six-block stretch of Pacific Boulevard are believed to be the most intense use of security measures in an outdoor shopping district in Southern California.
"For us to compete with the malls, we have to provide all kinds of services," said Huntington Park Mayor Rosario Marin.
Business leaders say Pacific Boulevard has surpassed East Los Angeles' Whittier Boulevard and downtown Los Angeles' Broadway as the premier shopping destination for Latinos, in part because of fear of crime on Broadway and Whittier Boulevard.
Last year, Huntington Park installed 43 surveillance cameras on Pacific Boulevard and in nearby alleys and parking lots, which police say helped reduce major crimes by 15% citywide. The cameras are monitored by police at a substation on the boulevard.
Now, the city will install in those same areas five emergency call boxes, like those found on freeways, beaches and college campuses. The first is scheduled to be unveiled at a ceremony today and the rest installed by week's end.
Marin and other city officials have good reason to invest in the boulevard: The 600 merchants on the street generate about $107 million in sales annually, contributing about one-third of all city sales taxes.
Pacific Boulevard hasn't always enjoyed such prosperity. In the early 1960s, it became a near ghost town when the city's white, middle-class population began to move to distant suburbs. But the strip started to come to life in the 1970s when the city's emerging Latino population began to open businesses along the boulevard.
Today, Huntington Park's half-mile of shopping attracts customers from as far away as the San Fernando Valley and Orange County. Until late into the night, the boulevard bounces with the sounds of mariachi, salsa and hip-hop music blaring from record shops and electronics stores.
The air is flavored with the smell of churros, curry and pupusas from the Mexican, Thai and Salvadoran restaurants that do business along the boulevard. The shops sell everything from cowboy hats to wedding dresses to soccer cleats.
