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GREENSBORO - It's a Friday night in Greensboro, and David Huesser is walking the mall.

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It's the same circle he walks every weekday, up and down the escalators and around the mall's three floors, waving to retailers and security guards as he goes by. At least once a month, Huesser, the 45-year-old general manager of Four Seasons Town Centre, gives up a weekend night at home to walk that route.

This night, he calls a private security guard to fix a stopped escalator. He chats with a security director and points out law enforcement officers and guards dressed in blue standing by mall directories and clustered near teen retailers Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters.

From any point Huesser stands, security is clearly visible. That's not an accident.

Nearly a year after two shootings put Four Seasons in the national spotlight and caused some shoppers to question their safety, it's obvious mall management has made changes.

Officers on bicycles patrol the parking lot during business hours. The number of security workers walking Four Seasons is, on any given day, about 30 percent higher than it was on the same day last year.

But some retailers and shoppers have not forgotten last year's violence — one shooting in the parking lot outside JCPenney on Nov. 21, the other inside Gap Kids on Christmas Eve.

As Four Seasons heads into the holidays, mall management will find out whether shoppers still feel safe at the mall during the busiest shopping season of the year.

"I'm not going to sit here and say we changed security because of what happened," Huesser said in an interview in late October. "I will say we've looked at security on a monthly basis, on a weekly basis, based on incidents and comments from customers. We are constantly reviewing it.

"I will say that every incident that happens here will cause us to evaluate security and make necessary changes."

'Bad stuff can happen anywhere'

On Thursday, mall shoppers said they felt safe at the mall, even during the holiday rush.

"At this mall, I feel like you always see that there's security, and people don't loiter around looking at you," Debra Steffans, 38, said.

Steffans was getting an early start on her Christmas list Thursday night. She said she's never afraid to walk to her car after dark at Four Seasons.

"At some malls, it's a hangout mall or the wrong kind of people are always there," Steffans said. "But I don't feel that way here. It's well lit and there's plenty of security. I feel like it's more dangerous shopping at a Wal-Mart, really."

Todd Harrison, 26, agreed that Four Seasons' good reputation comes from the visibility of its security.

"I think if people wanted to hang out here, just like hang around and bother people, there would be security involved," Harris said. "There would be security or police. It's known that this isn't a place for that. People know that reputation."

Sean Butler, 22, said he cooled on the mall after the violence during the last holiday season, but he returned to Four Seasons when he realized that security had been increased.

"When you hear about a shooting or muggings at someplace, it can make you nervous," Butler said. "But you have to come and see for yourself how someplace responds to something like that.

"Bad stuff can happen anywhere," Butler said. "But I don't feel like this is an actual dangerous place. You can see they've made improvements over the last year."

Code of Conduct

Shopping center owners, even public companies such as Chicago-based General Growth Properties, which bought Four Seasons from local developer Koury Corp. in 2004, won't talk much about security. Huesser would not say how many security guards work at the mall or how much General Growth spends on safety at Four Seasons.

But Huesser and his colleagues were willing to discuss mall safety in general and touch on the response to the problems last year.

"I know that the reaction to incidents that took place was obviously to increase the security focus," said Scott Born, vice president of corporate relations for Valor Security.

Valor, one of four security companies that work with General Growth, has provided the majority of officers patrolling Four Seasons since April 2006. The company is one of the nation's largest security companies, and General Growth is Valor's biggest customer.

Valor's officers at Four Seasons stand out; they're dressed in blue, wearing hats. Other than handcuffs and a type of pepper spray tucked into their belts, they're unarmed.

Each is equipped with a stack of cards showing the mall's "Code of Conduct," a fairly vague set of rules that officers hand to shoppers who are doing something that could get them kicked out. Officers also monitor the mall's security camera system, working from a glassed-in booth near one of the main entrances.

General Growth does not allow these officers to talk to the news media.

The remainder of Four Seasons' security force — about 30 percent — consists of off-duty police or deputies. These officers are armed, with guns or Tasers, and their roles are clearly defined: They handle criminal activity, from commonplace charges of shoplifting to serious reports, including assault, rape and, in November of last year, homicide.

A prominent presence

The role of private security is more nebulous. It's often about low-profile things: keeping large groups of people from blocking busy areas or causing traffic problems, cutting back on loitering and enforcing the mall's conduct code.

The constant visibility of officers, and frequent interactions with shoppers, makes a difference, Huesser said.

"When somebody walks into this mall, they should see security," he said. "When people walk into any mall, they should see security."

That's why, after the past holiday season, Huesser never cut mall security staffing back to preholiday levels. It's why he boosted security for N.C. A&T's recent homecoming weekend, a major shopping event, and why he plans to keep holiday security higher this year than in 2006 — an estimated 20 percent more, at times.

"I've noticed a lot more security," said Brenna Miller, the 25-year-old manager at Charlotte Russe. "Walking around the mall on a weekend night, it's like 'Wow!'"

Miller, who started working at Four Seasons in May, said friends questioned whether she would be safe. She and her young, female employees often leave the store in pairs at night, and they're not totally comfortable with the mall's back halls, which are closed to shoppers but open for tenants to take out trash and receive deliveries.

Still, Miller said the enhanced security at the mall leaves her confident it's a relatively safe place. Retailers are responsible for their own security, but officers check in with them.

"If I ever need anything from security, I know it's not a problem," Miller said.

Several retailers who complained about the mall management's response to the Christmas Eve shooting have said in recent months that security has improved. Few were willing to talk publicly about the issue, though.

Is Four Seasons safer?

Whether the increased security at Four Seasons has affected incidents is hard to measure. Police reports from retail centers throughout the Triad have risen in recent years, but much of that is because of thefts, which make up the bulk of crimes.

"It's difficult to measure what doesn't happen," said Valor's Born. "I would liken it to the Department of Homeland Security trying to talk about all of the terrorism events that they've prevented because of the measures they've taken."

Of 703 incidents reported at the mall between Oct. 23, 2006, and Oct. 23 of this year, the majority were shoplifting, according to data from the Greensboro Police Department. Many other reports related to theft, embezzlement or fraud. About 2 percent of reported crimes could be considered serious: aggravated assaults, robberies and homicide.

Compare that rap sheet to the one for Hanes Mall, the Winston-Salem shopping mall that most parallels Four Seasons.

The Winston-Salem Police Department recorded reports of 925 crimes at Hanes during the same period.

Aggravated assaults and robberies comprised less than 1 percent of those reports; there were no reported homicides at Hanes, which is about 463,800 square feet larger than Four Seasons. Police at Hanes did record nearly two dozen more simple assaults, misdemeanors in North Carolina, than police at Four Seasons did.

Police reports, though, are somewhat subjective, depending on how officers classify incidents.

"(Security's) presence is a lot more known here, and even the people that they hire, just working from Hanes to here, there's a difference," said Miller, who worked at Hanes Mall for more than two years before moving to Four Seasons.

Police reports also show only a fraction of what goes on at malls. General Growth and Valor keep up-to-the-minute records of every incident that involves security, whether or not an incident is a crime.

Officials with the company declined to share those records, which are filed through a reporting system called Web Inc.

Steve Crumrine, director of corporate security for General Growth, said the reporting system shows no identifiable security trends at Four Seasons. Shoplifting is a major concern throughout the retail industry, but Four Seasons has not seen a boom in large-scale, organized retail crime or other industry trends Crumrine has noted.

'Isolated incidents'

Mall and law enforcement officials still believe that the two shootings last year were "isolated incidents," where the people involved knew each other and happened to be at the mall.

That may be why Four Seasons has not taken measures beyond adding security officers, introducing officers on bikes in addition to its van patrols of the parking lot and hosting round-table talks between mall management and retailers.

Huesser shies away from the idea of putting in metal detectors or using other measures to screen or restrict shoppers. General Growth is testing a curfew, what Crumrine calls a "parental guidance required" policy, at a few of its malls.

That's a step Huesser describes as "aggressive," and it's not one he wants to take at Four Seasons, where teen shoppers support some of the top retailers and represent a growing market.

"It's an option that we'll consider at properties if we find that the youth that come there won't obey our rules," Crumrine said of the curfew. "But we haven't really found that to be the case at all at Four Seasons."

"I'm not looking to change my customer," said Huesser, who has brought in some more upscale teen retailers, including Charlotte Russe and Forever 21, in the past year.

Still, the mall has put an emphasis on bringing in families in the past year, hiring an outside public relations firm to spread the message that Four Seasons is "family-friendly" and launching programs such as a children's activity club and support for youth sports teams.

Anytime Huesser walks the mall, even during the busiest hours on Friday and Saturday nights, he sees parents with children.

On a recent Friday, his route took him past Gap Kids, the store where a man was shot last Christmas Eve.

It was nearly 8 p.m., and mothers with babies chatted and picked through racks of pint-size clothing under the store's bright lights.

Going into the holidays, the mall was business as usual.

Staff writer Joe Killian contributed to this report.