Police Patrols Bring a Calm to Pico-Union : The Streets: Troubled area quiet after officers deploy to chase out drug dealers, gang members and other mischief-makers.

Edgar Castillo couldn’t believe his eyes. On Friday morning, the streets of his Pico-Union neighborhood were free from gangster mischief. There were no shifty characters peddling baggies of dope, no street-corner rude boys threatening residents.

The night before, for the first time in eight years, Castillo actually saw policemen pass his house on foot patrol. It felt good, said the 26-year-old truck driver who lives with his mother. He felt safe again. So did Mom.

For the time being, an army of 160 police officers has reclaimed the crime-weary streets of Pico-Union, occupying a square-mile area that one official has termed the “hottest drug-dealing spot” in the city. By Friday morning, officers arrested 104 people, including a dozen for narcotics offenses. The rest were apprehended for crimes such as drinking in public, lewd conduct and prostitution.

Transportation and sanitation workers moved in with the police, towing away abandoned cars, cleaning trash from the streets and scrubbing gang graffiti from liquor store walls and fences. In all, authorities impounded 64 cars, many of them abandoned vehicles that police believe were used by dealers to hawk their wares. Police issued 143 citations for moving violations.

“If it got caught in our net, we arrested it,” said Lt. Michael Schaffer of LAPD’s Rampart Division. “We weren’t throwing the net at people. We were only out trying to control an area that’s been inundated with narcotics for the past several years. The smart troublemakers saw us coming and moved on. But 104 people didn’t.”

Those taken into custody were brought to either of two police command centers nearby where officers used a portable computer to check for outstanding warrants. Some were issued summonses and released. Others were booked into the Rampart Division lockup, Schaffer said.

Police moved into the area before noon Thursday, posting sawhorse barricades and taking the streets where drug dealers had roamed at will. So far this year, 8,000 arrests have been made in the 27-block area a few miles west of downtown, including 3,000 narcotics offenses. Twenty-two people have also been killed there since January.

The police units continued their stepped-up presence throughout the night. Officials initially intended to deploy 60 officers to the neighborhood. But dozens of others volunteered for the patrol, Schaffer said. At one point, there were as many as 120 officers combing the streets at one time.

Many were amazed at the audacity of the few drug dealers who remained after the sweeps began.

“Some people in life have pretty flat learning curves,” Schaffer said. “You could have put 30 officers on each side of the street, and somebody will still be out there hawking cars for drugs or soliciting prostitution.”

One woman dangled a $5 bag of crack cocaine to drivers a few feet away from passing uniformed officers. When arrested, police said, the woman insisted she was unaware of what was in the bag.

When police observed another suspected drug dealer flagging down cars, they told him to leave the area. Five minutes later, police found him on the same spot, still waving to motorists.

“He got mad and pushed the officer,” Schaffer said of the man who was later arrested. “Because to him, he was just doing his thing there, selling drugs. It was that simple. And like some rival gang member, the police had moved into his area.”

To some community groups, however, the recent police tactic in Pico-Union is the wrong solution for the problem.

“A lot of these kids who deal drugs are taking the money home to their families,” said Billie Quijano, a community specialist with the multiservice agency El Centro del Pueblo. The police are not seeing “the hundreds of kids I talk to everyday. Drugs are often about economics.”

Police counter that the sweep is already proving to be a success. And they say they will keep showing the flag in Pico-Union--maybe not 160 officers, but a presence nonetheless.

On Thursday, they said, families emerged from their houses and asked officers for autographs. Many mothers said it was the first day their children played in the streets in a long time.

As part of the crackdown, authorities filed suit against operators of a gas station that has been described as a center of drug dealing in the Pico-Union District.

“We’re also trying to get the message to hotels and boardinghouses to change the way they screen tenants, to have merchants provide better lighting and concertina wiring around their properties, or provide security guards during peak drug sale times,” said Deputy City Atty. Marcia Gonzales. “We think the multifaceted approach will be the solution in the long run.”