Drug Sting Nets Suspects Who Saw Others Arrested

Large orange signs proclaiming the neighborhood a “Drug Enforcement Area” and handcuffed arrestees lying on the ground did not deter some would-be drug buyers from patronizing a weekend police sting operation here.

By early Saturday, undercover police officers posing as drug dealers had arrested 20 men and women who bought plastic bags filled with a white substance they thought was cocaine.

“I’ll tell you how bright these people are,” said Police Lt. Patrick Gildea. “We actually had people coming up and getting in line when we had people (under arrest and handcuffed lying) on the ground.”

One woman walked up to a uniformed officer who was wearing a jacket emblazoned with eight-inch-tall letters that spelled POLICE and asked him to sell her cocaine, Gildea said.

This was not the first time the city’s police have taken to the streets and alleys of the Oak View neighborhood, an area of high-density apartments and a high-crime rate whose streets bear signs declaring it a “Drug Enforcement Area.” But this was one of the more successful crackdowns, Gildea said.

Complaints from Oak View’s residents prompted city officials last year to open a police substation there.

But even the high-profile police presence has not solved all of the problems in Oak View, which is bounded by Beach Boulevard, Warner and Slater avenues and Nichols Street. In its first year of operation the substation has suffered from vandalism and even gunfire when someone sprayed the building with 13 bullets last January.

However, there has been improvement.

“If we’d done this a year ago, we’d have had (arrested) 50 easily,” Gildea said of the undercover operation, which began Friday night and ended early Saturday and was aided by officers from the Garden Grove Police Department.