The last customers were waiting to collect their takeout pizza and pasta orders Wednesday night when two masked gunmen slipped in through a back entrance to Barone's Famous Italian Restaurant.
One robber put a gun to the bartender's head and demanded the day's receipts.
Another confronted manager Robin Adams and co-owner Tom Monteleone as they sat in a red leather booth at the 60-year San Fernando Valley institution, which had reopened in Valley Glen just last week.
"They were so calm, so in control," Adams said. "I thought it was the chef screwing around."
In fact, Barone's was just the latest Los Angeles restaurant to be robbed. While crime continues to fall across the city, police are struggling to contain a sharp jump in armed robberies. Authorities are particularly concerned about a series of takeover robberies targeting restaurants. In the San Fernando Valley alone, upward of 200 have been hit in the last two years. Officials in other parts of Southern California also report an increase in the crime.
Detectives say the holdups are the work of several groups of bandits targeting smaller, sit-down eateries, usually as owners are counting cash at closing time.
The upturn comes as bank robberies in Southern California have plunged -- 455 last year compared with 2,600 a year during their peak in the early 1990s. Detectives say assailants are turning to restaurants because they can quickly make off with several thousand dollars without the security barriers of a bank.
"What we are seeing in some respects is displacement," said LAPD Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger. "It's more opportunistic hitting restaurants. They see a mom-and-pop restaurant, and that doesn't come close to being as fortified as a bank. And they take that opportunity, using the same type of aggressive behavior."
The problem has become so severe that Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton and other city officials are supporting state legislation that would give up to two years of extra prison time to robbers who use masks.
"These robbers are more likely to be vicious to their victims because their identities are masked," said Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who represents the Ventura Boulevard shopping corridor where many restaurants have been hit.
Greuel has asked her colleagues to pass a resolution calling for the Legislature to impose the tougher restrictions, adding: "The mask deters the department's ability to apprehend these robbers."
