Shopping for ‘Blanca’ : Santa Ana Agents Say They Make Only a Dent on Drug Trade

It didn’t take long for “Javier,” an undercover Santa Ana police officer, to buy cocaine in the Fairview Villas Apartment Complex on Friday.

Two minutes after entering the sprawling complex on Fairview Street, Javier was approached by a wiry man who emerged from the shadows of a parking garage.

“He asked me what I wanted,” said the undercover officer who often uses the alias Javier during drug busts. “I told him I wanted blanca “--the Spanish street name for cocaine. The man returned a short time later with a square, plastic bag filled with white powder, and Javier paid him $20.

Moments later, four uniformed police officers jumped out of two squad cars, pinned the suspected drug pusher to a wall and handcuffed him.

“I didn’t know what was happening to me,” Abraham Contreras Alcarez, 30, of Santa Ana said while being processed Friday afternoon for allegedly selling a quarter-gram of cocaine to the undercover officer. Alcarez was taken to Orange County Central Jail, where he was being held on an unspecified amount of bail Friday evening.

Friday’s sweeps of the Fairview Villas were prompted by complaints from the owner of a nearby day-care center that the apartment complex is a bustling center for drug sales and use.

Mayor Daniel H. Young pledged to crack down on the 562-unit apartment complex after Dorothy L. Davis, who operates the Pride Development County day-care center on Sullivan Street, complained to the City Council Monday night that police have been unable to stop the drug trafficking.

Drug transactions are conducted openly in the maze-like alleys of the huge apartment complex, she told the council.

After a two-hour meeting on Thursday, Young and Police Chief Paul Walters announced that officers would focus attention on the complex and boost the daily patrols.

The narcotics squad was out in force at the Fairview Villas Friday, but several sweeps of the apartment complex resulted in only two arrests on drug charges, said Detective Sgt. Brad Messmer, who heads the squad’s “buy team”--a group of four undercover officers who purchase drugs from sellers before uniformed officers follow and make arrests.

Also arrested on suspicion of selling a controlled substance was Jose Luis Santana, 19, of Santa Ana. He told police that he came to the United States from Mexico six weeks ago to join his family.

The sweeps lasted until 5 p.m., Messmer said, and will continue throughout the weekend.

Messmer said he understood the frustration of residents and local business owners such as Davis. But, he added, many of them do not see the work of the undercover

officers who patrol the Fairview Villas and other “hot spots” every day.

“I can see her side of it,” Messmer said. “But I don’t agree that we aren’t doing everything possible about (eradication). They want (drug sales) stopped. I agree with that. But you can’t keep cops there on the street 24 hours a day.”

Messmer said the narcotics squad is grossly undermanned, and until there are more undercover officers, street sales of marijuana and narcotics will continue largely unchecked in Santa Ana. There are about a dozen locations in the city where motorists pull up to dealers standing on street corners and purchase drugs.

“(Santa Ana) is the worst in Orange County,” Messmer said Friday as he coordinated the series of small sweeps into the complex. “We have to spread ourselves real thin.”

Police efforts are also stymied because dealers who are arrested often return to the streets quickly on bail or after a short jail term, Messmer said. Also, “if we bust one, there’s always someone else to take his place,” he said.

Messmer lays much of the blame for the city’s drug problems on the recreational users who come by the hundreds each day from other, more affluent cities to buy drugs.

“It’s well known that you can come here and buy anything,” Messmer said. “If we can just dry up the demand, this would slow down.”

The buyers take advantage of the ease with which drugs are purchased at low-income apartment buildings.

“It’s a way for them to make money,” Messmer said of the street dealers that stand sometimes elbow-to-elbow waiting for drive-by sales.

Alcarez, who admitted that he sold drugs to the undercover officer, said he did so because he was suffering severe financial difficulties.

He said that several weeks ago he took an air compressor and spray gun from the metal finishing plant where he works. He pawned the equipment to a friend for $100 but needed to raise money to reclaim the equipment and return it to his employer by the weekend.

“I just needed the money real bad,” he said.

Meanwhile, several tenants living in the sprawling apartment complex applauded the sweeps and said they hope that police will eventually make their neighborhood free of drug-related activity.

Many of them said they live in fear of being robbed, burglarized or harassed by drug users and dealers.

“This place is very bad,” 18-year-old Monica Martinez said in Spanish. “The cars come driving in front of my apartment all night.”