Neighbors Cheer as 30 Are Seized in Drug Raid

Residents who described their block as a “wide-open drug supermarket” cheered Wednesday as Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies raided six locations in their South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood, confiscating only a small quantity of drugs but arresting 30 people, including 14 juveniles.

More than 90 deputies converged on the 1200 block of East 64th Street shortly before 5 p.m., culminating an investigation that began in May with undercover drug buys, Detective Ron Payne said.

“They should have done this earlier, when the gangs were putting graffiti on the wall across the street,” said Henry Wesley, manager of an apartment complex on the block. “This is overdue. They needed to clean this street up.”

The investigation began as a result of repeated complaints from residents, deputies said.

Those arrested Monday were booked for investigation of various drug-related offenses. The adults included 11 men and five women. One adult was booked for investigation of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, deputies said. None of the suspects’ identities was immediately available.

Stashed in Crib

The juveniles--three girls and 14 boys--ranged in age from 14 to 17. They were not identified because of their ages. One 17-year-old girl was arrested for investigation of endangering the life of her 7-month-old baby after deputies found marijuana hidden in the infant’s crib, deputies said.

Deputies seized approximately one gram of marijuana and one gram of cocaine, investigators said.

For the past two years, open drug sales by members of a street gang called the Florence Tokers have been common on the block, residents said. Gang members repeatedly vandalized a house under construction next door to one of the raided homes before the man building it could complete the foundation, residents said. He finally gave up, they added, and the incomplete structure still sits there, its cinder block walls covered with gang slogans.

“There are problems all the time with drugs and violence,” one man, who asked not to be identified, said in Spanish. “They break into the houses.”

Many residents requested anonymity for fear of gang retaliation.

“It’s good the police came,” another resident said. “Everybody here sells weed. . . . The selling is wide open and in broad daylight. It’s past time for this raid. But the drug dealers may be back next week.”

Placed in Vans

One man stood on his front porch with his two daughters, watching deputies handcuff suspects and place them in vans.

“I’m afraid for my daughters,” he said in Spanish. “ . . . I don’t want them to go out.”

One woman, who would identify herself only as Karen, said the raid was “very good--as long as they keep it up.”

Her friend, Lashone Johnson, 17, said the neighborhood had become so infested with drug peddlers that “everybody was thinking about moving.”

“They’re mostly selling weed and just a little crack,” she said.

A woman who spoke from inside her fenced yard, where her two young children played in a portable wading pool, said police “don’t seem to make enough of an effort to keep the dealers off the street.”

“It’s wide open. They sell to people in cars, people walking. It sets a terrible example for the kids,” she said.

‘Improve Things’

Another woman hoped the arrests “would improve things.” But, she said, “I don’t think so.”

“Police have come before, but never in such force,” she said.

Deputies said there have been isolated narcotics arrests in the area before, including 60 between May and September last year.