Police Erect Barriers to Halt Drug Dealing : Narcotics: Barricades manned by officers are placed on Lanark Street in Canoga Park to rid the area of drive-by purchases. Residents report some success.

The Los Angeles Police Department threw up the barricades late Friday afternoon, hoping to deter drive-by drug deals on Canoga Park’s Lanark Street.

Neighbors said the cleanup campaign seems to be showing some signs of success.

Unlike the unmanned, permanent cement-and-steel barricades erected in a Sepulveda neighborhood last year, the Lanark Street obstructions were temporary plastic sawhorses and signs that warned “High Narcotics Traffic Area” and, in Spanish, “Area de Drogas.”

The barricades--at the intersections of Lanark and Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Lanark and Owensmouth Avenue--were manned by two officers each. They questioned passersby on their business in the area before allowing them to pass.

Senior Lead Officer George Aguilar, who patrols the area, said the object was to alert would-be drug buyers that police are monitoring the street. Ideally, he said, the small run-in with the officers would persuade prospective buyers not to return.

“We’re not trying to make a lot of arrests here with these,” he said. “We just hope they will see us and say, ‘Well, I think from now on I’m going to go and buy my dope somewhere else.’ ”

Aguilar, who likened the barricades to a sobriety checkpoint, said they will be used sporadically and will remain up for several hours at a time.

The roadblocks are part of a larger effort to curtail rampant drug dealing on Lanark Street. Residents interviewed Friday said the campaign was starting to achieve its desired effect.

Although drug dealers have not disappeared, residents said the increased police presence seems to have reduced the trafficking.

“They are making a little bit of headway, but the problem didn’t appear overnight and it’s not going to go away overnight,” said Anita Casias, 39, who lives in a Lanark Street apartment building.

A year ago, the courtyard of her building--filled Friday afternoon with the sound of laughing children--was often populated by drug dealers and users who hid there from police.

A month ago, at the urging of city officials, owners of most of the buildings on the block installed locked security gates to prevent non-residents from entering, apartment manager Rosie Delcid said. One property owner hired a private security company to patrol his four buildings.

Police Capt. Valentino Paniccia said officers have been hitting the area hard in the past month.

On April 5 officers arrested about 24 prospective drug buyers in 2 1/2 hours. Aguilar has patrolled the street and the park on foot several times. One apartment resident has allowed his unit to be used as a police observation post, which has resulted in the arrest of six suspected drug dealers.

“The police are working hard,” Delcid said.

“It’s getting cleaner and cleaner every day,” said Ramona Magallanes, 35, as she loaded bags of cans, glass bottles and plastic containers into her station wagon to take them to a recycling center. “Before, there were more drug dealers, but the police are sweeping them away.”

Despite the initial success by police, many residents are still afraid to cooperate with the authorities.

At a community meeting in March, police asked residents to give police the license plate numbers of cars from which they suspected people were buying drugs. The owners then receive letters warning that their vehicles had been seen in a high drug area.

A similar program in Venice had great success in reducing drug traffic, but only a few of the mostly Latino residents of Lanark Street have participated. Several said Friday that they fear gang reprisals.

Paniccia said, however, that he expects cooperation by residents to increase as they become “more confident of what the police are doing.”