A week ago, my fellow blogger Dominique dared me to go to the mall on a Friday night. Today, I took her up on it, sort of. I arrived at about 5:15 and walked around for close to an hour.
There were a number of people that I would be scared to run into in a dark alley, but almost all of them would be excluded by the policy because they were older than 17. In fact, I was hard-pressed to find any significant number of teenagers that would be effected by the new policy. And any that I saw were in groups of 4 or less, so no packs of animals, as Dom had suggested.
I took the opportunity to talk to some of the people that work there. Overall, the security guards were pretty much “Talk to the Mall,” but one told me that things weren’t really that bad at the mall. I asked why they were implementing the new policy then. The guard indicated that it was a management decision. I am a little concerned for that guard’s job, because it can’t be too hard to narrow down who it was that spoke to me. There appeared to only be 4 guards on duty.
I then spoke to someone at a food court establishment. I asked her what she thought the impact would be on business for her place. She told me that they would likely be hurt by the change, as one of the things that the kids did buy was food. “Have you ever seen bad things happen here?” “Well, there was a food fight here 6 months ago, but other than that, not really.”
OK, so I went over to the Apple Store, which had about 30 people working to serve 7 customers. Everyone was pleasant. I struck up a conversation with one of the people there and asked if they thought they would be impacted. She was unsure, but she didn’t think weekends were too bad. I gotta get me a new iPhone, BTW.
I then stopped to see how a slightly more upscale place thought about this. I stopped at one of the kiosk jewelry stores and struck up a conversation with two of the employees. One of them was very open and told me that the mall was really just being cheap. He sees a security guard pass by every 45 minutes. If they had more guards, or some police presence, things wouldn’t be unpleasant at all. The other employee told me of a time that a group of kids raced through the mall yelling and running at top speed, bearing down on her. Shopkeepers started closing their gates. “But that was just that one time.”
I pressed her for more info, because she seemed to have a good deal of Friday and Saturday experience. She said that one big issue was that kids would walk through the mall shouting obscenities and invariably a Mother would exclaim that this is why she swore that she wouldn’t come to the mall on the weekend anymore. I asked why they didn’t just toss out the kid shouting the obscenities. Sometimes they did, but it was rare, and there wasn’t enough security to keep them from coming back.
Her co-worker reiterated that if they had guards coming down the mall every 5 minutes or so, these problems would be gone. But there was no way that the mall would hire more guards, that costs money. The other employee nodded in agreement.
I tried to hit up another guard to her their view, but was directed to the mall office behind Arby’s. But by the time I got there, they were closed. They actually close at 5PM. I wonder if they will stay late on the 11th.
So I decided that I would hit the road and get to Costco, which was my cover with Mrs. Geek. As I approached the JC Penny court, I ended up behind a 15 year old African-American Male, who started shouting, “I got a big dick, all the girls wanna deep throat it” or something like that. I looked around, but there was no security as the kid walked out the door of the mall.
I was reminded of a quote from my hero Hunter S. Thompson, “The weakest link in any civil rights case is usually the defendant.”(Generation of Swine)
I plan to go back to see what this policy means to the mall and how it is implemented (will they be kicked out of JC Penny’s, or stopped as they leave the big stores?). Hopefully, I’ll get some video next time and perhaps talk to mall management. Also, let me say that I know that 5PM is not the height of the Friday night scene. It is pretty much the only time I could get over there.