Drug Sweep Nets 138 in Santa Ana

In a 2-day sweep of Santa Ana streets, police arrested 138 people on suspicion of buying or selling small amounts of drugs, and confiscated 40 cars under a controversial federal law.

The sweep--the third since July as part of Police Chief Clyde L. Cronkhite’s “Buyer Beware” anti-drug campaign--took place all day Friday and Saturday in the vicinity of two Santa Ana intersections--McFadden Avenue and Bristol Street, and Walnut Street and Bristol--police said.

Assisting in the arrests was a task force composed of the FBI, the U.S. Marshal’s Office and the Orange County Probation Department.

At least 52 people were arrested on suspicion of having marijuana, which is a misdemeanor when the amount is less than an ounce. At least nine others were arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine, a felony. The rest were arrested on various other charges, including U.S. immigration violations.

Police Lt. Bruce Carlson said arrests occurred after undercover officers made drug buys and placed those streets under surveillance.

Police seized 40 vehicles from the people they arrested. The cars will be auctioned off by the federal government, and the profit will be returned to the Santa Ana Police Department to pay for this and other “Buyer Beware” programs. Cronkhite said all the police officers in the operation were working on their own time and would be paid for the overtime from the profits of the car sales.

Police listed the value of the seized vehicles--which included some expensive makes of late-model cars, trucks and vans--at more than $100,000. Cronkhite said that in recent months police have also confiscated about $500,000 in drug money from local drug dealers, money the Police Department will keep.

Cronkhite and other police officials announced results of the operation in a press conference Saturday in the parking lot of Orange County Jail, where officers set up an outdoor booking area for a parade of suspects, who sat on the asphalt with hands cuffed behind their backs. Their seized vehicles were put on display against a fence.

Cronkhite, noting that 80% of the suspects are from out of town, issued this warning: “If you come to Santa Ana and you do drugs, you’re going to be arrested and you’re going to lose your assets.”

As Cronkhite spoke, a woman whose husband had been arrested said she was “absolutely devastated. I don’t even do drugs.”

The 35-year-old woman, a Mission Viejo clothes designer who did not want her name used, said police seized her 1976 Cadillac Seville even though it was her husband, a 33-year-old mortgage banker, who purchased a $10 bag of marijuana. She said she needs her car to commute from Mission Viejo to her job in Newport Beach.

Cronkhite said police would examine each case to determine whether a vehicle, in fact, should remain police property.

“We try to have a little heart in these operations,” Cronkhite said.

It will be up to the FBI to determine which vehicles will remain under seizure. In the previous two “Buyer Beware” sweeps, all but only a handful of seized vehicles were later sold at auction. The previous two sweeps resulted in 414 arrests and netted 60 vehicles.

Vehicles are seized under the provisions of the Federal Forfeiture Act, which went into effect in June. Under the law, it is illegal to use one’s vehicle to store or transport illegal drugs. Consequently, those vehicles are subject to forfeiture.

Besides the “Buyer Beware” sweeps, Santa Ana police since July have made more than 2,300 arrests in an ongoing crackdown on so-called “quality-of-life crimes”: street narcotics, gang activity, street prostitution, vagrancy and traffic accidents. Officers are also working with some neighborhoods to clean up gang graffiti.

Cronkhite said tangible results can be seen in some of the neighborhoods where police have made their presence known. In the 1100 block of Brook Street, where police started mounted patrols last July to combat the drug problem, “the kids used to play ‘hide the drugs’ (but) now they tell us where the drugs are,” he said.