3 Suspects, Cocaine Seized by Mall Officers

Several off-duty Los Angeles police officers working a security detail at a Sherman Oaks shopping mall arrested three men and confiscated nearly 14 pounds of cocaine Thursday afternoon after watching what they at first thought might be a car-theft operation, police said Friday.

Police seized cocaine valued at $300,000 wholesale, and more than $2 million on the street, from a shoulder bag dropped by one of the men at a gas station across from Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, a police narcotics spokesman said.

The arrests occurred after the security guards saw one man let another out of a car at the shopping center. The man waited 15 minutes at a telephone booth, received a telephone call, then walked to a car in the mall parking lot. He drove the car across the street to a gas station, where he was met by two men in another car, one of whom took a shoulder bag containing the cocaine. The man dropped the bag on the sidewalk and began to walk away when the security officers approached, the spokesman said.

The officers flagged down a patrol car, and the arrests were made, said the spokesman, who refused to give his name.

Police did not release the names of those arrested.