Police ‘Dealers’ Sting Unsuspecting Buyers : Drugs: Westminster undercover operation at apartment complex nets 27 prospective customers, most from out of town.

Margie Tran feels like she lives in a drug supermarket.

She has spent countless sleepless nights huddled by the window helplessly watching street traffickers--usually gang members--brazenly sell their illegal wares to drivers who pull into the large parking lot of her apartment complex, pony up their cash and drive away.

“They (buyers) are all types,” Tran said recently. “White, black, Asian. Everybody comes here.”

Lately, Westminster police have launched an undercover operation targeting Tran’s 15th Street apartment complex in an attempt to clean up one of the city’s most notorious drug-infested buildings, just a block away from the police station.

But unlike most undercover arrests in which police pose as buyers, Westminster officers set up a sting operation in which they dressed as gang members and pretended that their bags of parsley flakes or baking soda were actually marijuana or cocaine.

During several such operations in the past two weeks, police have made 56 arrests, including 27 people charged with solicitation for attempting to purchase the bogus drugs. In the process, Sgt. Bob Amren said, police have had a rare look at the consumer side of Westminster’s drug business.

What they have found is what residents say they knew all along. Most buyers are from out of town, they come from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds, and they seem to like cocaine about as much as they do marijuana.

Also, few of the buyers are teen-agers. Actually, the average age was 28 with the oldest person arrested being 47.

Of those buyers arrested, 13 were Anglo, four were Latino and 10 were Asian, Amren said. They came from all over Orange County’s northwest corner, including Garden Grove, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Santa Ana and Midway City. Some came from as far as San Dimas and Long Beach.

Amren also said that three of those arrested were laborers, four were machinists, seven claimed to be unemployed, one was a roofer, one was a telecommunications specialist, one was a painter, one was a computer operator, one was a pipe fitter, two were delivery people, one was a homemaker, two were mechanics, two were clerks and one was a construction worker.

Standing in the apartment building’s parking lot, Amren said the undercover police simply waited for cars to drive up. He said they didn’t have to wait long.

As customers drove up, some in expensive cars, they signaled to the undercover officers and then purchased the fake packages. But before they could drive away, they were stopped by uniformed officers waiting in unmarked patrol cars nearby.

Tuesday night, a four-hour sting operation nabbed 18 suspected drug buyers. In all, police have arrested 27 purchasers at the apartment complex, 14 charged with solicitation of marijuana and 13 for solicitation of cocaine.

Since those caught by the police sting did not actually purchase drugs, they were cited and released on a misdemeanor charge of soliciting the drugs. The intent, police said, was more to scare them away from the area than to put them behind bars.

“It’s been quite a show,” Amren said. “We are just trying to tell the buyers to beware. If we can scare them off, we can stop this thing.”

Residents said they have noticed a difference since police began their crackdown and since the owners of the complex built a high fence to obstruct the drug sales.

Sue Peterson said she used to sit in amazement at the round-the-clock sales that transpired outside her kitchen window. A mother of two young daughters, she said that she was afraid to let the girls play outside while the drug dealers stood around the parking lot, playing loud music and flagging down customers with elaborate hand signals.

She said, however, that the numbers of sales have dropped significantly.

“It used to be a lot worse,” Peterson said. “They used to buy, buy, buy, all the time.”

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this story.