Open-Air Drugstore : Huntington Beach Council Told Sales, Use Out of Control

Teacher Carol Van Asten watched as an expensive, late-model car on Tuesday morning drove slowly down Utica Avenue, stopping at the intersection of Florida Street. The driver, a well-dressed man, appeared to be looking for someone.

“See that car?” Van Asten asked. “It’s somebody out shopping for drugs here. You get to know the kind of people and cars that come here for drugs.”

Van Asten is the owner of the private Carden School at 721 Utica Ave. She also was among about a dozen people from the Florida-Utica area who on Monday night told a startled City Council that drug-selling is rampant and virtually out of control in their neighborhood.

In a city that takes pride in a low crime rate and a laid-back lifestyle, the talk of drug deals in a neighborhood only a mile from police headquarters and City Hall proved embarrassing: As residents made their charges, the council sat beneath a banner that recognized Red Ribbon Week and proclaimed the city to be “Drug Free and Proud.”

The Florida-Utica area is across Beach Boulevard from the new, gleaming Newland Center shopping plaza. But apartment buildings on Utica and Florida streets, in the area of the reported drug sales, are unkempt and obviously in need of repairs. Many residents of the apartments told council members that they live in a virtual battleground of drug crimes.

The residents told of drug-selling on the street, day and night. They told of wealthy people who drive in from all parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties to shop for cocaine from street-side vendors. The residents also talked of fear and frustration.

“People are afraid,” one woman said. “The drug dealers have guns, and they shoot them.”

Councilman Jack Kelly, who once played a cowboy on the old “Maverick” television series, seemed incredulous. “They shoot?” he asked. “With bullets?”

The woman nodded affirmatively.

And Police Chief Ronald Lowenberg confirmed that the problem is serious.

“The citizens are correct that our attempts to quell the problem with uniformed police officers have not been as successful as we had hoped,” Lowenberg told the council. Lowenberg said even when drug dealers are arrested, “they’re only off the streets a short time.” While he has pressed prosecutors to seek longer sentences for repeat offenders, “to date we’ve not had great success.”

The chief also said officers have noted that many of those arrested have been illegal immigrants. “They’re deported out of the country, but it’s been our experience that they’re back in our area selling drugs in a few weeks.”

Lowenberg said the problem is so bad that police are afraid to try undercover operations during the day for fear of gunfire that might erupt and hit children at the Carden School, which enrolls students from preschool through eighth grade.

“We have found that a number of drug dealers are carrying weapons,” the police chief told the council. “It might be a prescription for tragedy if we try to make arrests during school hours--to try to take people in custody close to the school.”

Lowenberg said police are still trying to halt the drug sales, however, by using undercover operations at night. He said police have had a “series of meetings” with residents in the area. “I wish we could do more for them,” Lowenberg said.

No regular foot patrol officers have been assigned to the area, Lowenberg said, because he doesn’t have enough personnel.

Kelly was among council members who said more must be done. “My impression is that not a lot has been accomplished,” Kelly told the police chief.

Added Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson: “We need some sort of foot patrol.”

The council, however, took no vote on the foot-patrol question. And on Tuesday morning, residents of the Florida-Utica area said that without an increased police presence, crime will continue to escalate in their neighborhood.

“I see 20 to 60 drug deals on the street here every day,” said Van Asten. “Surely the police could put one person on foot patrol here.”

Added resident Mike Engstrom: “This is a street where cocaine is for sale. . . . The selling goes on all the time. I’d guess that $4,000 to $5,000 in drugs are sold every day.”

According to Engstrom and several other Florida-Utica residents, many of the drug sellers do not live in the neighborhood, but they come to the street because it has become well known in Southern California as a place for quick, drive-up sales of cocaine.

Some residents said the drug sellers are so efficient that they even carry telephone beepers.

One woman told the council that a pay telephone outside a liquor store at the intersection of Utica and Beach Boulevard is used by many drug buyers. The woman said people call from the pay phone to a beeper number. The drug dealers then rendezvous with the prospective buyer at a nearby parking lot.

Engstrom on Tuesday pointed out areas where he said he has seen daily drug sales. One, he said, is a parking lot behind apartments in the 700 block of Utica. Just off that parking lot is a dank laundry room. On Tuesday Engstrom pointed to some recently discarded items in the room that he said were used for inhaling cocaine right on the spot, immediately after purchase.

“The users put the coke in this (mashed, empty beer can) then light it,” Engstrom said.

The apartment manager, Sam Stovall, agreed that drug use and sales have been a continuous problem in the parking lot. “They not only sell and use drugs back here, but they also urinate and defecate here,” Stovall said.

Carden School, freshly painted and free of graffiti, is a visual exception to many of the buildings in the 700 block of Utica Avenue. About 300 students attend classes there, and at noon on Tuesday, children played and laughed behind the school’s walled playgrounds.

Teacher-owner Van Asten said she and the staff make sure that the children are safe and well protected. “But the children can just look out on the street and see drug sales every day,” she said. “I could sell this property and move on, but I want to help the residents here and make this neighborhood safe again.”