ANAHEIM : Area’s Drug Activity Targeted by Police

It was 3 p.m. Thursday when the car turned slowly from Haster Street onto Wakefield Avenue.

As schoolchildren got off a school bus nearby, a young man in a baseball cap made eye contact with the driver of the car and gave a quick nod toward the curb. As the driver continued on, another teen-ager flashed open his hand to reveal a small plastic bag containing tiny white rocks.

Police said the youths were probably drug dealers who thought the driver was seeking rock cocaine. The drug dealing is a problem officers and residents of this neighborhood between Disneyland and Anaheim Stadium say must be stopped.

“There are neighborhoods with worse drug problems out there, but this is about as bad as it gets in this city,” said Sgt. Michael Hannah, who is heading a task force trying to clean up the neighborhood of mostly low-rent apartments.

One major step will occur within six weeks when the neighborhood becomes the first in Anaheim to have some streets barricaded to stop drug-related traffic.

Residents complained to the City Council this week that drivers were circling the area seeking dealers, and the barricades are seen as one way to stop them. All 19 of the neighborhood’s property owners agreed to split the $1,550 cost for the barricades.

Three five-foot-tall barricades of steel posts will be erected by city crews to keep cars from turning into the neighborhood. Posts will go up on Wakefield Avenue to keep cars from turning south on Mountain View Avenue, while two others will be built to prevent motorists on Haster Street from using two alleys that connect it to Mountain View.

The barriers, which will still allow bicycle and pedestrian traffic, will force drivers seeking drugs out onto the heavily traveled streets of Haster and Orangewood Avenue, increasing their profile and making their capture easier, Hannah said. Police hope the tactic eventually will scare the buyers away, Hannah said.

“If there is no demand, there will be no supply,” Hannah said. “In this neighborhood we have arrested people from every city in Orange County and some from Los Angeles County on solicitation charges, so this is an area that is known to buyers. We have arrested as many as 20 buyers in an eight-hour shift.”

Ed Calvin, who owns an apartment complex in the area, said that the police and the owners are working to clean up the area and that he is glad to see the barriers go up. He said he has evicted six residents he suspected of drug dealing, but other people still approach him to see if he wants to buy.

“My wife was down there with my manager one day and some kid walked up and stuck his head in the car to see if they wanted to buy,” he said.

Hannah warned that neither the task force nor the barricades will mean a quick eradication of the neighborhood’s dealers.

“This is not a problem that took hold in one day,” Hannah said, “so it will take more than one day to solve. But we don’t want people buying dope in this neighborhood or this city.”