Police Quietly Disbanding South L.A. Anti-Drug Unit

The Los Angeles Police Department’s successful anti-drug task force in the south part of the city is being quietly disbanded and a new special team is being formed to combat the narcotics and gang activity in the Newton Division.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, in confirming the shifting of manpower, said:

“I know a lot of law-abiding citizens who have been plagued by dope dealers in the South-Central area are going to be upset, but the task force approach is always a temporary brush-fighting tactic to fight a given problem. We now have to help other parts of the city.”

But the Rev. Charles Mims, who has been active in the South-Central community’s effort to diminish the activities of street dealers, said: “No one denies that other parts of the city need help too, but it seems illogical to move this task force from what most everybody grants is the most active ‘rock’ cocaine area on Earth. I am saddened and quite fearful about this move.”

Termed Epidemic

Mims described the use of “rock,” which is commonly called “crack,” as an “epidemic the likes of which we have never seen before.”

Meanwhile, community leaders in the Newton area hailed the forming of a task force for their area. Typical of the responses was that of Mary Jacobs, who is director of the Pueblo del Rio Housing Project, who said:

“With this increased police presence, we will feel much more comfortable. This has been a community in transition, and we are fighting to keep it from becoming more dangerous every day. The more police around, the safer it is going to be.”

Gates said he wanted to assure citizens in the south part of the city they were not being “abandoned” to the dope dealers, because conventional anti-drug enforcement efforts will continue there, but minus the 32-member task force’s daily sweeps against street sellers of rock cocaine.

Borrowed Officers

Officers who made up the South Bureau Task Force had been borrowed from other duties and will now return to their former assignments.

The South Bureau Task Force covered four police divisions and an area of 55 square miles made up mainly of residential communities stretching from USC and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on the north to San Pedro Harbor on the south.

Newton Division, 10 square miles in area, encompasses a combined industrial and residential area that includes the city’s produce and trucking centers. It is generally bounded by 7th Street in downtown on the north, Florence Avenue on the south, the Harbor Freeway on the west and the City of Vernon on the east.

The new Newton team will have more manpower--80 officers--than the South Bureau effort. The team will draw personnel from the field enforcement section of the administrative narcotics unit and will use the so-called “buy-bust” undercover teams that were so successful in the South Bureau.

Undercover Agents

The buy-bust approach calls for undercover agents to make buys from dealers who have been singled out by people in the neighborhood at specific locations. It allows for laying a strong foundation of evidence because the undercover officer has the dope in hand and usually is able to retrieve the marked money involved in the transaction.

“It is a far superior method to other arrests made by buying from cars or using search warrants,” a deputy district attorney said.

“On the buy-bust arrest we file charges almost 100% of the time as opposed to 68% on other type narcotics cases. We also have a much higher guilty plea and conviction rate on buy-bust arrests,” she added.