O.C. Making Drugs for Officers to Sell : Crime: Santa Ana police arrest 350 small buyers in ‘reverse stings’ after taking the crack cocaine to streets.

Orange County authorities have been secretly manufacturing rock cocaine for Santa Ana police to sell in undercover operations targeting small-time drug buyers in several neighborhoods, including the area near Willard Intermediate school.

The practice is considered extremely risky by many law enforcement officials, including police in Los Angeles and San Diego. But Santa Ana police have sought special court orders in the last 18 months to make hundreds of sales, Police Chief Paul M. Walters said Wednesday.

“We’re not playing games here,” the chief said. “We’re trying to give the streets back to the residents and we’re making progress.”

Walters said the department resorted to the so-called reverse sting operations--where officers act as drug dealers--because they were not making a dent in the trafficking by posing as prospective buyers.

Powder cocaine seized in Santa Ana drug busts is taken to the Orange County Crime Laboratory, where it is cooked into “rocks”--also known as crack cocaine--to be sold in $10 and $20 pieces.

Since the operation started, officers have made about 350 arrests--about 100 of them within several blocks of Willard Intermediate School, said Capt. Bruce Carlson. Most of the others were arrested in a neighborhood targeted by the federally funded anti-crime program known as Weed and Seed.

At least two or three of those busted have been minors, said Dean Allen, head of the public defender’s Juvenile Court office.

“If they want to keep kids away from drugs, I think there are probably a lot of better ways to do it than just to sell them drugs,” Allen said.

Citing serious potential liabilities involved with distributing real narcotics, the Los Angeles and San Diego police departments say they do not employ the technique used by Santa Ana officers.

“You have got to ask yourself if it is worth doing,” said LAPD Lt. Sergio Diaz, who supervises street narcotics investigations in West Los Angeles. “What happens when a suspect makes off with the dope or they put it in their mouths? You have just introduced a drug into the community that wouldn’t have been there. There could be problems.”

Gerald Arenberg, executive director of the National Assn. of Police Chiefs in Washington, D.C., said the technique is simply too dangerous.

“I’d hate to be the department that permits this to happen and it turns out that somebody overdoses or has a heart attack after swallowing this stuff,” Arenberg said.

Walters acknowledged that reintroducing drugs to the streets is somewhat unorthodox but he said no one--not the police officers nor the buyers--has been injured. Police said some buyers have ingested the rocks before they could be arrested, but Walters said there have been no reports of buyers suffering ill-effects from swallowing the substance. And he said undercover officers have tried to avoid sales to juveniles.

During processing at the crime lab, the individual rocks are coated with a special dye that causes any part of the body to glow when touched by the drug and later illuminated under a black light. That helps police identify suspects who swallow the drugs or try to drop them.

Since the sales are made in such small quantities, Capt. Carlson said, there is little danger in putting harmful quantities of drugs back on the streets.

“The only reason we are doing this is because there is drug activity occurring in these neighborhoods,” Carlson said. “We’re trying to do what works for solving our own problems here.”

The so-called reverse sting operations are common in the high-stakes drug wars where investigators flash large amounts of narcotics to net big dealers. But on the streets, the tactic of selling small amounts of drugs to capture drug users is controversial.

Two years ago, a Florida appeals court put a stop to a similar operation, ruling that the sheriff of Broward County acted illegally in manufacturing crack cocaine for undercover investigations.

The state Supreme Court in Florida upheld the ruling, resulting in the reversal of hundreds of cases. “It is incredible that law enforcement’s manufacture of an inherently dangerous controlled substance, like crack cocaine, can ever be for the public safety,” the court said in its ruling.

Defendants arrested in the Florida cases have now a filed class action lawsuit in federal court asking for more than $1 million in assets that were seized from them after the arrests.

Santa Ana officials, however, stress that the operation has passed California legal tests and scrutiny by the Santa Ana city attorney’s office and the Orange County district attorney’s office.

The Sheriff’s Department, which runs the county crime lab, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carl W. Armbrust, head of the office’s narcotic enforcement unit, declined to comment. However, in court orders filed in connection with the Santa Ana cases, prosecutors cite cases reviewed by state appeals courts and the California Supreme Court as having approved the technique of reverse sting operations.

Santa Ana police have also said that no problems have surfaced so far and that rock cocaine is being used because the substance is not water soluble and will have no effect on the body if swallowed.

Carlson said the department chose not to use rock cocaine confiscated off the streets because it could contain more harmful impurities.

“Processing it through the crime lab ensures that it’s pure cocaine that we use,” he said.

Only one police officer is granted access to the county lab to retrieve the drugs, police said. Carlson said the drug buys are videotaped and a supervisor is always on the scene. He acknowledged, however, that the drugs are not always recovered.

“It is ingested on occasion, and sometimes people throw it away,” he said. The police form used to track the narcotics actually allows officers to note whether the drugs were “recovered,” “swallowed” or “not found.” Of the 41 rocks sold under one court order, 10 were swallowed during arrests, court documents show.

“Nothing’s 100% foolproof,” Walters said.

An additional security measure requires police to obtain court orders for each batch of rocks released.

Police officials say they have obtained as many as five court orders authorizing the reverse stings.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Brenner’s signature appears on the court orders, but the judge said Wednesday that he did not recall considering such requests.

“I don’t believe they would go to the trouble for a court order for such a small amount of dope for a reverse sting,” Brenner said, adding that he does recall approving larger quantities in the “multi-kilo range” for use in larger police investigations.

Brenner said he did not know the role of the Orange County crime laboratory in the process, but had heard “some attorneys joking that they were making rock cocaine over there.”

“It does have an unseemly side to it, doesn’t it?” Brenner said of the process.

Attorneys with the Orange County public defender’s office said they have seen hundreds of the Santa Ana reverse sting cases.

“They’re mostly $10 or $20 buys. I’ve seen less,” said Bob Knox, a deputy public defender who handles preliminary hearings in Santa Ana Municipal Court. “In my opinion, its sort of an easy way to make a lot of felony arrests for drugs and show statistically that you’re making busts.”

Processing the cocaine in the county crime lab for sale is drawing even more serious concerns among local defense attorneys.

“Why does the crime lab need to make dope?” asked Deputy Public Defender Brian Ducker. “ And rock cocaine especially, which is even more deadly than powdered cocaine. I’m worried about them killing someone. Someone could overdose. Someone could die. There are a lot of things that are possible and hardly worth the risk.”

Other local police departments have opted to use decoy cocaine in reverse sting operations because there is no risk that real drugs will escape into the community. Huntington Beach Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg said investigators there have used crushed drywall in lieu of powdered cocaine.

Anaheim police have used macadamia nuts or pebbles in place of real rock cocaine, or actual tar to resemble black tar heroin.

“So far for us, it works just as well as the real thing. If the real thing gets away from you, there’s always the issue of why not use fake cocaine,” Lowenberg said. “We’ve had good success with the prosecution of cases where we have used fake cocaine.”

Santa Ana police say peddling the real thing allows police to charge suspects with drug possession, which merits stiffer punishment.

Defense attorney William J. Kopeny described the reverse sting process as too aggressive. “Here we have a situation of police not only solving the crime but supplying the crime,” he said. “Do we really want the government to engage in that?”

Santa Ana police, however, say the drastic tactic was necessary because of the city’s serious street drug problem. The operations have targeted the 1300 block of North Ross Street near Willard School and the Weed and Seed project area, bounded by First Street, McFadden Avenue and Sullivan and Raitt streets.

“The thing that we’re trying to do is bring long-term change to these neighborhoods by eliminating signs of visible crime,” Walters said.

About 55% of people who cruise Santa Ana’s streets in search of drugs come from other cities, Carlson said. Cracking down on buyers discourages them from coming to town and eventually discourages sellers, he said.

“We’re trying to get the message out that Santa Ana is not the place to come and buy drugs,” Carlson said.