RIOT AFTERMATH : Long Beach Police Get the Goods on Looting Suspects : Raids: Some of those arrested had tossed out old furniture to make room for stolen items, officers say.

For some people in the Tropical Palms Apartments in Long Beach, last week was a looter’s dream. All they had to do was walk to the furniture store across the street and take what they wanted.

And they did.

But today, as seven women and three men prepare to be arraigned for receiving stolen property after what a sheriff’s deputy called the strangest raid he had ever seen, authorities expect to have the last laugh.

After being too outnumbered to prevent the looting Thursday night, sheriff’s deputies converged on the apartments with search warrants Monday and found $35,000 worth of new sofas, televisions, VCRs, lamps and other items pillaged from Hall’s Furniture in the 6400 block of Atlantic Avenue.

“It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Deputy Alan Pettit said. “It was like walking into a trade show.”

Meanwhile, police recovered hundreds of items of booty elsewhere in Long Beach that had been looted from other stores. Officers had set up a special phone line for people wishing to return items with no questions asked.

“We’re getting so much of it we haven’t even had time to calculate the value,” Cmdr. Anthony Batts said.

Among the items turned in were bicycles, guitars, stereo and video equipment, furniture and clothing.

At the apartments in north Long Beach, deputies were greeted Monday by the sight of old furniture and appliances piled in alleyways and on outdoor balconies throughout the 160-unit complex.

The culprits had hauled away so much loot from the store on the other side of Kona Lane, a quiet residential street that separates the apartments from a small shopping center, that they had dumped some of their old furniture.

“It was out with the old and in with the new,” Pettit said.

Armed with search warrants, deputies arrested a couple of suspects within a few minutes, and later the officers expanded the search as other residents began to whisper tips about whom they had seen steal what.

Pettit described those arrested as “your ordinary citizen types. . . . For the most part they were people with jobs. . . . Nobody that we know of had a prior criminal record.”

On Tuesday, few residents of the apartments were willing to talk about the incident, saying they feared retaliation.

“Those that got caught are pretty mad,” one woman said. “Before the police showed up to take the (stolen) furniture away, the garbage people came and hauled off their old stuff.”