Phoenix Police Step Up Mall Patrol For The Holiday

By Dennis Lambert
Published: Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 1:13pm
Updated: Thursday, November 28, 2013 - 1:15pm

Phoenix police are hoping to make your holiday trip to the mall a little safer this year. They will be patrolling a number of malls beginning Thursday night.

 Officers will be on patrol at places like Metrocenter over the holidays. Lieutenant Ben Loychner outlined their plan of action.

“We’re increasing our high-visibility patrols around our shopping centers. You’re gonna see a lot more enforcement going on with a lot of visibility of our marked patrol cars," Loychner said.

And, Loychner said marked units will not be their only presence at the mall. He said there will also be highly-visible uniformed officers inside.

“We’ll also have our net officers or our plainclothes officers that are doing surveillance in the area, so hopefully we’ll actually deter some activities with that as well," said Loychner.

Metrocenter will also use police on bikes and what mall officials said is a very sophisticated camera system to help protect you, but Loychner said the best things you can do are to shop in groups and keep your purchases out of sight in your vehicle.