Upscale Users Attracted to Street-Corner Drug Bazaar

A narcotics “supermarket” operating in a tough two-block stretch of the Pico-Union district has attracted a large clientele of professional and white-collar narcotics users, according to police officials and neighborhood residents.

Only two miles from the downtown financial district and nearby several freeway on-ramps, the sidewalks along Orchard and Magnolia avenues are patrolled by drug dealers who have come to rely on a steady stream of businessmen and women, secretaries and other office workers.

The street-corner drug bazaar, police say, is one of perhaps a score in and around downtown. While “yuppies” and white-collar workers are by no means the only drug buyers on Orchard Avenue, residents and officials say their presence feeds a violent drug trade which scars the community as they pass by on their way to work. The residents are especially angry because some of the drug deals take place across the street from Magnolia Avenue Elementary school.

Like the children who walk to and from the school, the affluent drug buyers pass through, if only momentarily, a rough world inhabited by a small army of small-time drug vendors--unemployed and homeless men, some addicted to heroin and crack cocaine.

“They come here with their Mercedes-Benzes and their little three-piece suits,” said Alma Martinez, who has canvassed the neighborhood as an aide for Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina. “That’s what’s offensive to me personally. Other people’s pleasures come at the expense of crime in the neighborhood.”

The community of mostly immigrant working families is the site of drug turf wars that routinely erupt into gunfire. There is at least one drug-related homicide in the neighborhood each month and scores of robberies and other violent crimes, according to detectives in the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.

A witness to the most recent killing--the shooting of a drug dealer near Orchard Avenue last month--was nearly killed herself by other dealers who tried to run over her with a car as she left a public meeting where the community’s drug problems were discussed, said Sgt. Raul Amescua of Rampart Division’s anti-narcotics unit.

By contrast, a number of cars seen buying drugs recently on Orchard Avenue are registered to owners in affluent communities such as Los Feliz, Alhambra and Encino.

“Here you see everything--working people and a lot of people with money,” said Miguel, a drug dealer and immigrant from Guatemala who waited on a street lined with burned-out homes, large brick tenement buildings and graffiti-scarred walls. “When it comes to vices, we’re all equal.”

Miguel carried small plastic bags of marijuana in the pockets of his jeans. When a sleek, dark green Jaguar pulled off Venice Boulevard onto Orchard Avenue, he descended on it before it even came to a stop.

In a few seconds, Miguel completed a sale to the well-dressed man inside. The drug dealer barely had time to hide the $20 in his socks before a small, yellow sports car appeared and Miguel made his next sale, this time to two young men wearing jeans and polo shirts.

The dealers are usually out in force, except when police mount occasional sweeps of the area. After one recent raid, a drug buyer--who said he was from West Los Angeles--had trouble finding a dealer. When asked why he had come to the corner to buy drugs, the man said: “I’ve got problems, personal problems in my life. I just want to forget for a while.”

The man said he bought marijuana at the street corner often and assumed that the area was safe. When told that the dealers had been chased away by a police sweep, he said he would return another day.

Most police operations in the Pico-Union neighborhood have targeted the sellers, Amescua said. In one week this month, a special anti-narcotics task force made 120 arrests near 15th Street and Orchard Avenue.

“We’ve arrested accountants, attorneys and students, professional people and business executives, housewives, you name it,” Detective Milt Dodge said. “You normally wouldn’t expect that kind of person to be found in that kind of neighborhood. But the lure of the drug is so intense that they’ll put themselves in a risky situation.”

Dodge said that professionals and white-collar workers are not used to contact with the police and do not take well to being arrested.

“A lot of times they’re kind of indignant,” Dodge said. “They’ll say, ‘I’m only a user, I’m not a seller. Why are you hassling me ?.’ They expect to go through life unscathed.”

Buyers who are arrested are not likely to spend much time in jail. Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction roughly equal to a traffic ticket. Possession of any amount of cocaine is a felony, but most first-time offenders avoid prosecution by enrolling in diversion programs designed to relax the burden on the overcrowded court system, said Assistant Dist. Atty. Bob Schirn.

In the Pico-Union district, the busiest hours for drug transactions correspond roughly to the off-hours of the working day--in the morning before 9 a.m., at noon, and after 5 p.m., Amescua said.

“(The buyers) work and on the way home they pick up the dope,” Amescua said. “Sometimes they pick it up on the way to work. The majority of the people we arrest are working.”

One of the worst street-corner drug markets in the city is a few blocks away from Magnolia Avenue, at the intersection of 11th Street and Lake Avenue, Amescua said. While only marijuana was available recently on Magnolia and Orchard avenues, heroin and crack cocaine were for sale on 11th Street.

Pico-Union residents, who can watch drug deals from their living room windows, say they are not surprised by the parade of well-to-do buyers. One woman said she felt compassion for them. “It’s sad to see so many professional people throwing their lives away,” said the 40-year-old woman who lives on Magnolia Avenue. “I wonder what kind of job they do at work.”

The woman said she has two daughters at the Magnolia Avenue school. For her and other residents of the neighborhood, the drug trade is especially distasteful because it goes on only a few feet from the school.

From his post on Venice Boulevard, a crossing guard for the school quietly watches the drug deals that go on almost constantly across the street.

“They’ve threatened me three times because they think I put the finger on them,” said the guard, who asked that his name not be published. “They’ve thrown rocks at me, they’ve stolen my bicycle and once they stole my chair.”

Principal Patricia Martinez said drug-related shootings are routine in the neighborhood. Some of the school’s 1,900 pupils have poor muscle development, she said, because their parents are afraid to let them play outside.

“The drug dealers are more brazen and the quantity of people coming in here has increased,” the principal said. “They come and stand right in front of the school sometimes.”

At the corner of Magnolia Avenue and 15th Street, a group of about five men working as a team sold small bags of marijuana to a diverse clientele that included immigrants and blue-collar workers.

The group’s leader was a man called El Moro, who directed his troops with hand signals and loud whistles. El Moro said little, but when he talked, he complained about the police raids.

“It’s a free-fire zone here,” he said.

A block away, on Venice Boulevard, Javier, a 23-year-old native of Tijuana, sold his bags of marijuana openly. Although the smell of liquor was heavy on his breath and his eyes were blood-shot, Javier was alert as he scanned the midday traffic on Venice Boulevard.

Javier sold his last bag to a professional-appearing couple in a Japanese sports car. As the woman drove away, the man in the passenger seat inspected the goods they had just purchased.

Javier explained that he makes a profit of $5 to $10 on each bag of marijuana he sells for $20 to $25. Other people “higher up” sell him the bags, he said.

How can he tell who the buyers are?

“By the looks in their eyes,” Javier answered. “You can see that they want it.”