Mobile Sting Leads to 60 Arrests in Oxnard

A year ago, two undercover police officers hit the streets of Oxnard, out to set up an intricate sting operation to capture thieves and retrieve millions of dollars in stolen property.

Detective Ken Dellinger, a gray-bearded 49-year-old in a dirty black vest, and his partner, Detective Johnny Gomez, 39, sporting oil-stained jeans and plastic yellow sunglasses, played the street game like seasoned criminals.

Dellinger called himself The Farmer and Gomez went by the name of Teddy Bear. Using their code names, they flashed thousands of dollars, engaged in street brawls and even passed some time with drug users who were making rock cocaine.

The two police officers did time in jail, drank with crooks, spent nights at homeless shelters and arranged ways for their new street friends to buy narcotics.

Over the year, the detectives also handed out almost 5,000 cards alerting Oxnard criminals to the fictitious business they ran out of a beat-up white van spray-painted with a crude smiley face on its back doors.

Dellinger and Gomez put out the word that they were in the business of buying stolen property. And before their undercover job was over, they had purchased more than $2 million worth from more than 100 different customers.

The payoff for the Oxnard Police Department from what is believed to be the state’s first sting operation run out of a van instead of a storefront came early Wednesday morning when 50 officers rousted 60 Oxnard suspects from their beds and arrested them on suspicion of burglary, possession of stolen goods, narcotics and prostitution.

As the sky began to lighten, eight teams of officers in 20 cars fanned out over the city to round up the suspects, who ranged in age from 11 to 67.

Oxnard police officers were backed up by the Ventura Police Department, the Port Hueneme Police Department, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, the district attorney’s office, the parole office and the probation office.

A team of seven officers converged on the dilapidated E-Z Motel on East Date Street just before 7 a.m. They filed one-by-one up a staircase that reeked of stale urine, then clomped down a dark, dank hall before waking a middle-aged black woman accused of selling stolen property and dealing narcotics.

An hour later, most teams had returned with the first of the suspects they hoped to round up throughout the day. As different criminals were brought into the police station for booking before being bused to jail, they yelled back and forth about who had set them up.

“Hey, this got something to do with Teddy Bear and Farmer?” asked one suspect, peering from behind the bars of a holding cell.

“Yeah, Teddy Bear and Farmer,” affirmed his friend, who had stumbled sleepy-eyed from his apartment only half an hour earlier.

The Oxnard operation is believed to mark the first successful completion of what police term a mobile, or rolling, sting, in California.

The undercover operation was part of a state experiment to determine the effectiveness of stings using an undercover van rather than the conventional, but more expensive, rented storefront.

A police department in Northern California also set up a mobile sting last year but was forced to curtail the investigation after only a few months, Oxnard police said.

The Oxnard operation was financed with a $40,000 grant from the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning. Oxnard’s Police Department raised an additional $4,444. The Channel Islands Rotary Club and the Oxnard Noontimers Lions Club also donated funds for the project.

Half of the money was used to purchase surveillance and electronic equipment for the van. The rest was set aside for maintenance, supplies and money to buy stolen goods.

In addition to arresting criminals and returning property, the sting will act as a deterrent to future crimes, said Oxnard Assistant Police Chief William A. Cady.

“It’s going to cause people who commit property crimes to be very careful about who they sell property to because we might be out there again,” he said.

The Oxnard Police Department’s Field Tactical Unit was primarily responsible for the operation. The department’s Crime Analysis Unit, Property Crimes Unit and Narcotics Unit also played major roles.

However, Gomez and Dellinger made all of the 225 transactions involving 115 people.

The stolen property they bought ranged from credit cards, jewelry and clothing to weapons and vehicles. With haggling skills they learned from a businessman, the officers purchased about $2 million worth of stolen property, paying less than two cents on the dollar.

The going rate for a television was $30; for a car, $100.

The Police Department has returned about 95% of the goods to the original owners, Sgt. Jamie Skeeters said.

The detectives confiscated 26 vehicles and, in the process, discovered a major auto theft ring in which vehicles stolen from Ventura County were transported to Mexico.

Gomez and Dellinger also found evidence of embezzlements that had cost county businesses about $2 million in the last two years.

All this they did from their battered white van, embossed with discreet red letters announcing their business: “Western Auto Collections Inc., where we buy, sell and repair VCRs, televisions and auto stereos.”

The fictitious business’s acronym, WAC, honored the initials of Assistant Police Chief Cady.

The van, chosen for its bullet-resistant walls of double-ply sheet metal, housed a collection of technological equipment worthy of James Bond.

A video camera hidden behind the black-tinted, rear-side window recorded every deal. Gomez and Dellinger would set the camera on automatic, position the criminal outside the window and tape the ensuing transaction.

The videotape collection will be used as evidence for the prosecution.

An electric printer that could, in a matter of minutes, produce pictures of whoever was standing outside the van rested on a side shelf. In cases when the two officers couldn’t identify a suspect, they took a picture of him and handed it out to the rest of the police force for help.

The detectives also were equipped with wireless remote recorders that were effective up to half a mile away from the van.

A cellular phone, a police radio and six guns also were hidden throughout the moving office.

The detectives called the van the Batmobile and referred to the warehouse where they parked it every night as their cave.

But the joking didn’t mitigate the danger inherent in the operation.

“Those guys put their lives on the line every day,” Skeeters said. “They were like sacrificial lambs.”

Gomez and Dellinger constantly worried that their police identities would be discovered or that someone would try to rob them.

The two officers were trailed half a dozen times on their way to park the van for the night. They were forced to drive in circles, sometimes parking in vacant fields for an hour to confuse those following them.

But the Oxnard criminal community was leery of offending them.

Rumors circulated that Gomez had knifed a man in Bakersfield and that they had once run a big operation in Fresno.

“We did what most crooks would do,” Dellinger said. “We went in and took over the area. We wanted to control everything that came and went, and we did.”