Drug Users Frustrate, Frighten Merchants in Small Bell Center

Vilma Vergara said she was willing to take a live-and-let-live attitude toward the drug users who routinely buy small packets of white powder in front of her clothing store and brazenly pump the drug into their arms.

Then one of them died.

“I’m moving (my store) as soon as I can,” said Vergara, an East Los Angeles resident who opened the Fashion Warehouse in the one-year-old shopping complex at Gage and Corona avenues. She believed that her store would be more profitable in Bell than in her home neighborhood.

Less than two weeks ago, the body of a 16-year-old girl was found in a narrow alley behind the small shopping center. The alley is well-known to residents and local police as a hangout for drug users and dealers, police and city officials said.

“The police have done nothing,” Vergara complained. “These (drug abusers) are dangerous. They don’t care about anything.”

Karen Marie Avery, a known heroin addict, died Jan. 11 of a drug overdose, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators. Police found her body next to an overflowing dumpster behind the shopping center about 1 p.m., Deputy Detta Roberts said. The Sheriff’s Department investigates fatalities under a contract with the Bell-Cudahy Police Department.

It was the first drug-related fatality at that location, said sheriff’s officers, who confirm that they have been unable to stem the rampant drug abuse in the area. They say, however, that they have made numerous arrests at that center after hearing complaints about illegal drug activity.

The death came as no surprise to residents and store owners last week. Vergara said it was the latest in a series of incidents that has left her and her fellow store owners often frustrated and frightened.

“They say my neighborhood is bad,” Vergara said. “But this is terrible.”

Vergara and other proprietors interviewed last week at the six-store shopping complex complained that their businesses have suffered financially since the street dealers moved into the retail center during the summer and began supplying drugs to local users.

“I’m losing a lot of money now,” said Frank Ruvalcaba, a 16-year Bell resident who owns a small jewelry and variety shop next to the Fashion Warehouse. “It’s ruining my business.”

Ruvalcaba said that he and other store owners have repeatedly called the police, but have not seen anyone arrested since they began complaining to authorities. “I never seen it this bad since I came here (from Guadalajara.)

“They come here in the morning, in the nighttime,” Ruvalcaba said as he stood next to the dumpster where the teen-age girl’s body was discovered. Cheap wine bottles lay nearby and the smell of urine permeated the air.

“Things are going downhill there,” said mall owner Jim D’Avila, a Downey resident who also owns shopping centers in Bell Gardens, Inglewood and Lennox. “The other places, I have no problem with.”

He confirmed that his tenants have complained to him about steady revenue losses at the shopping center, and said he has contacted officials of the Bell-Cudahy Police Department and asked them to add police patrols in that area.

Chief Manuel Ortega confirmed that the area is known to law enforcement authorities as a “shooting gallery,” a place where drug dealers and users meet on a daily basis. Police say the center attracts users and dealers because of its close proximity to stores, a park and a crowded neighborhood where many known drug addicts live.

He said he sent investigators to that corner in the fall after hearing complaints from residents and store owners who were worried that they were not being protected. But, he admitted, the small Police Department has not been successful in driving the drug dealers away from the busy street corner.

‘Putting Out Little Fires’

“It’s like shoveling sand against the tide,” Ortega said. “We make an arrest and others move in to take their place. It’s like putting out little brush fires.”

According to one member of the force’s three-man anti-drug unit, the problem came to police attention about six months ago from tips that small-time dealers, who also sell drugs in the city’s handful of inexpensive motels, found a ready market in that area.

“There are hypes everywhere out there,” the undercover detective said, asking that he not be identified by name. “We do have an epidemic.”

He said users are supplied with illegal drugs--usually heroin--from a small group of street dealers. He said the department has no evidence that the dealers who peddle at that corner are part of a large drug ring.

Using water from a faucet in the parking lot, the drug users prepare the drugs and inject them on the spot. Often, they fall unconscious and lie in the alley behind the stores for hours before waking up, store owners say.

Many Arrests Made

The officer, in a telephone interview, claims that he and his two partners have made more than 75 drug-related arrests at the center in the past six months.

“(The store owners) don’t see it because we are undercover,” he said. Most of the arrests are for under-the-influence charges, he said, but the detectives have arrested a number of drug dealers. He declined to reveal how many dealers have been arrested.

“The other day, I pulled up in a car and one of these guys threw a bag (of heroin) into my lap,” the undercover officer said. “Cops get sold to all the time. That’s how blatant it is.”

But he added, the Gage-Corona Avenue corner is not the only area with a drug problem. Bell and Cudahy have a reputation of high illegal drug activity, he said. And despite working 60 to 70 hours a week, members of the anti-drug unit are unable to adequately cover the 3.9 square miles under their jurisdiction.

Jewelry store owner Ruvalcaba, unlike Vergara, is staying at the shopping center. He says the dealers are the ones who will eventually move away. “I just want to be left alone,” Ruvalcaba said.

Robbed by Two Men

Ruvalcaba’s store was robbed about six months ago by two men who pointed .45 caliber handguns in the face of his store clerk, took $4,500 and fled. They were never caught.

He said that he has since seen the men with local drug dealers. Ortega said that investigation of that robbery is continuing. He could not confirm whether the armed robbers have been seen in Bell since the July incident.

Beyond occasional threats to store owners, however, there have been no other incidents between proprietors and drug dealers. But Ruvalcaba, whose wife and daughter work at the store, said he will not rest easily until police clean up the location.

“I tried once to tell them (drug dealers and users) to go away,” Ruvalcaba said. “They won’t listen. They tell me to shut up or they will hurt me.” He said that when he arrives to open his store in the morning, he often finds as many as two dozen drug users sitting on the curb behind his store, passing needles to each other.

“(Customers) pass by and (drug users) don’t stop (shooting drugs),” Ruvalcaba said. “Nobody wants to come here anymore.”