RIOT AFTERMATH: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS : Loot Is a Dead Giveaway When Police Drop By : Contraband: Officers, acting on numerous tips, recover some merchandise stolen from stores during last week’s violence. But it’s only a fraction of what thieves got away with.

The tipster calling the Hollywood Division says there’s “$1 million in furniture” stashed in a row of apartments off Melrose, so the get-back-the-loot squad heads out, bringing two trucks.

Sgt. Paul Anderson soon is leading a dozen Los Angeles police officers up the stairs of the tenement, the team spreading out to knock on doors.

“You guys don’t happen to have anything you shouldn’t?” Anderson asks a man who answers the door at the first apartment he tries.

“No. No,” the man says, inviting the cops in to show he has nothing to hide.

“Bingo!” one of the officers calls out, and there they see it--right against the wall in the tiny studio unit, barely the size of a Beverly Hills closet, is a spanking new sofa, a white leather beauty worth perhaps $1,500.

The man begins explaining how he found it “in the street,” but two officers are already lifting it by the ends. A baby begins crying.

“Out of here!” a police officer declares.

So it went Monday around Los Angeles as authorities began their counterattack against the looters. More than 12,000 people were arrested during last week’s unrest, but police do not pretend they caught more than a fraction of those who took part--the vast majority escaped with ease.

But then the tips began coming in over the weekend. Many neighbors, it seemed, didn’t like seeing the looters flaunt their new stereos, CD players or that French Provincial dining room chair, even if the guy only had one from a matching set.

When the emergency eased Sunday, Hollywood Division officers began checking out their leads, and were startled by the results: more neighbors began turning in neighbors; most people confronted readily gave up their loot; and others--upon seeing police officers--quietly put out their share of the loot in hallways, in planters, on stoops.

The officers had filled four trucks on one block alone. They got air conditioners, bicycles, clothing, shoes, electronic gadgets, lamps, “and on and on,” said Capt. Frank Pegueros.

By Monday, it was happening all over.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department raided a North Long Beach apartment complex, made 10 arrests and recovered $30,000 to $35,000 worth of merchandise, including a washer and dryer, a television set, a stove and a refrigerator.

In Boyle Heights, outraged neighbors tipped Los Angeles police to booty that filled two apartments--so much stuff that it had to be carted to the Hollenbeck Division by a National Guard truck. There was:

A Persian rug. A meat scale. A 400-watt amplifier. One hundred pocket radios. Thirty cassette players. Forty Giorgio Armani suits.

Five men--three brothers and their two cousins--ultimately confessed to having taken the goods last Thursday, when they went out in a three-car caravan and broke into one store after another. “I guess they just got swept up in the hysteria,” Detective Ray Doyle said.

To Doyle, as with other officers receiving such tips, it was encouraging that many “decent” people “were just as horrified by what happened last week as we are. So when something like this (large cache) happened, they made sure we found out.”

What made this discovery even more fortunate, Doyle said, was that the five looters remembered which stores they had hit. By late afternoon, Sears had sent a truck to recover several thousand dollars worth of goods.

And David Margalit, owner of Nick Charles Clothing, had been by to pick up his $4,000 worth of 100% wool designer suits--at least slim comfort for the merchant, who said his Olympic Boulevard store was so badly looted he had to shut it down and lay off all 15 employees.

“They took 4,500 pieces out of here,” Margalit sighed. “Leather jackets, Valentino, Armani--your better garments, $750 suits they don’t even know the names of. . . .”

When the merchandise cannot easily be matched with a merchant, it is shipped to the Police Department’s property division for storage. Unclaimed goods eventually are auctioned off.

On Monday morning, the Hollywood Division opened two reporting stations for merchants to record their losses so their merchandise could be found among the recovered goods. One reporting station, set up at the Oriental Mission Church on Western Avenue, quickly drew 174 Korean-Americans. “People have lost everything,” said Soug Oh, a church worker.

By early afternoon, the division had received 60 tips on the location of stolen goods. Most seemed to be based in truth, officers said, but exaggerated--as with the tip about “$1 million” in furniture.

The target was in the 5000 block of Melrose, in a business district replete with showrooms. But after half an hour of knocking on doors, the team had filled just two trucks with furniture, worth perhaps $15,000.

Much of it came from one house, where officers arrested a young man after finding another leather sofa, a brass lamp, 10 new chairs--few of which match--and a crescent-shaped table they have a hard time describing on yellow property tags.

“Makeup table,” a female police officer calls out.

“They’re all giving the same answers,” Officer Kathleen Hardy said. “ ‘I don’t know (where it came from).’ ‘Somebody brought it in.’ ”

Soon Sgt. Anderson and several officers have gathered in an apartment across the street that presents them with a tough judgment call: A flower-print sofa and love seat look brand-new, as do the large Sony TV and stacked stereo system in a glass case--atop which is a framed junior high “honor roll” certificate. But the only person in the place, a teen-age girl, insists: “My mom buy it. Last year. Maybe December.”

“They look too new for that,” an officer retorts.

“Show me how to work it,” Anderson asks suddenly, nodding at the complex stereo system.

The girl turns it on, passing the test.

The sergeant orders his men out. “If we can’t be (sure), forget it,” he said. “We’re not going to take people’s furniture.”

Once outside, they decide to pursue another tip several miles away--that there’s a large cache of electronic equipment in an apartment on Harold Way.

“I get sick and tired of false rumors,” Anderson says, a bit disappointed they haven’t found all the furniture they expected. “But this may be the one.”

Yet the next stop--a fourth floor unit in a new stucco apartment--looks like it too may fall short of their hopes. While a youth watching television in the living room is in favored gang regalia, Raiders gear, the only thing clearly brand-new is a pair of tiny Reeboks on the baby held by a young women.

While one officer finds a mountain bike on a patio, it’s hard to say whether it’s newly stolen: there are some pebbles between the rubber treads, indicating it’s been ridden at least a little.

“This is a questionable one right here,” Anderson says.

But then a voice calls out from the hallway, “Touchdown.”

From a closet, a police officer pulls three unopened boxes with telephones.

“Is this yours?” the youth is asked. He shrugs, “No.”

It seems they might let him go, but then officers begin returning from the bedrooms. They bring shirts in store wrapping, electric mixers, food processors, at least four coffee makers--Sunbeam and Mr. Coffee--shoes with security clamps, pants with tags, cameras with tags, a wallet in its box, a new barbecue grill in the box and, from a hiding place within the dirty laundry, a bottle of Kahlua.

After they open the microwave in the kitchen and find the Sears tag inside, $179.99, the youth confesses that he got most all the stuff from the department store.

“Finally, a tip that’s right,” Anderson says.

The TV news is showing replays of last week’s looting as they finish carting the stuff to the police truck parked below. As the last officer walks out, he takes one look back and sees something stuck behind the sofa cushions--the baby’s new Reeboks.

The cop thinks it over a moment. “I can’t,” he says, then continues out.

Also contributing to today’s coverage are Laurie Becklund, Leslie Berger, Bettina Boxall, Howard Blume, Stephanie Chavez, Virginia Ellis, Andrea Ford, Ashley Dunn, David Ferrell, Tina Griego, Lee Harris, Scott Harris, Melissa Healy, Shawn Hubler, Amy Kazmin, John H. Lee, Penelope McMillan, Patt Morrison, Fred Muir, Dean E. Murphy, Lisa Omphroy, James Rainey, James Risen, Cecilia Rasmussen, Kenneth Reich, Carla Rivera, Ron Russell, Louis Sahagun, John Schwada, Stuart Silverstein, Richard Simon, Mark A. Stein, Vicki Torres, Henry Weinstein, Eric Young and Nora Zamichow.