The President’s Drug Plan : ‘Take Down’ Security Guard : L.A. Officers Forgo Speech for the Streets

Half an hour before President Bush began his speech, a Los Angeles Police undercover team arrested two crack dealers at a mini-mall a mile north of downtown, along with a third suspect, who surprised even veteran officers.

“We took down a security guard,” detective J. R. Thomas said. “The guy was watching the dope”--serving as a lookout for the dealers.

The police radio squawked. Two plainclothes policewomen had made a buy at another mini-mall at 6th and Bonnie Brae streets. Thomas rushed off to check it out.

By the time Bush started talking about “the greatest domestic threat facing our nation,” a black woman in a straw hat was handcuffed and sprawled against a detectives’ car at the second mini-mall and a Latino man about 30 was being led out of a pool hall by officers in blue L.A.P.D. Windbreakers.

Soon two young white men would be under arrest as well--for trying to buy $8 worth of crack.

Little Reason for Optimism

While President Bush was outlining his $7.9-billion “National Drug Control Strategy,” the team of about two dozen police officers was at work among the realities of the crack problem in one of the nation’s hardest hit cities. The evening on the streets would provide ample evidence of a problem cutting across racial and ethnic lines and give them little reason for optimism in any “comprehensive strategy” from the highest levels of government.

“I don’t know that we can do anything with these people--the adults,” Thomas said as his officers drove off with three carloads of accused dealers and users. “Maybe if we start with the young ones. But it will take a considerable amount of time. Years.”

Indeed, throughout the Los Angeles area, it had been a busy day in the drug wars.

In the morning, Glendale police announced the arrests of eight suspected Colombian traffickers, including a 71-year-old woman, and the seizure of more than 1,200 pounds of cocaine, most of it hidden in vaults under a false living room floor in a Monterey Park house.

Lawyer’s Car Seized

And in a news conference on the roof of Parker Center police headquarters downtown, Mayor Tom Bradley showed off a late-model Mercedes-Benz that was seized from a lawyer who allegedly tried to buy $50 in rock cocaine.

Later, Bradley had both praise and criticism for the Bush speech.

“We’ll take anything we can get,” he said. “The fact that the President has offered what appears to be a comprehensive attack is heartwarming.”

But, “clearly, it is not enough,” the mayor said.

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp similarly credited Bush with being “right on target,” but he added that the President’s strategy “doesn’t go far enough to help us in California.”

He likened California to a man whose house is burning down and Bush to the neighbor who offers help with a garden hose.

Lobby for More U.S. Aid

Since the start of the year, Los Angeles area officials have lobbied for more federal aid, chiefly by spotlighting the city’s growing role as a drug-trafficking center.

In January, federal and local narcotics agents in Los Angeles announced that they had seized more than $100 million in cash in 1988. It was the first time more cash was seized here than in Miami, although police in Miami had confiscated a greater quantity of cocaine.

In April, the heads of the Los Angeles offices of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs Service and other agencies joined county officials in complaining of an East Coast bias in allocation of federal drug-fighting funds. They said that it was the creation of a federally sponsored South Florida task force in 1982 that had prompted Colombian drug kingpins to bring much of their cocaine directly into California.

The Los Angeles campaign got a boost early last month, when a report by U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh described an alliance between the Colombian drug cartels and Los Angeles street gangs, which were said to be distributing crack cocaine to every corner of the nation. Southern California was also portrayed as home to clandestine labs producing 80% of the country’s PCP.

Call Bush Plan Inadequate

Even before Bush’s speech, local officials were calling the federal plan inadequate.

Twice in recent weeks, Van de Kamp, a Democratic candidate in the 1990 gubernatorial race, has promoted his own operation CrackDown to add more than 200 state drug agents and analysts, saying that “we can no longer wait for federal action.”

He said he was told that California will receive $40 million to $60 million through the Bush program, which he called “a drop in the bucket.” No allocations of funds for local jurisdictions were announced.

Van de Kamp and Bradley came in for criticism themselves from Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who was among a group of officials briefed in the White House by Bush and William J. Bennett, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“One is running for governor,” Antonovich noted, adding that Bradley and the Los Angeles City Council have shown “a lack of leadership in addressing the crime needs of the citizens” by failing to increase the size of the Los Angeles police force since 1974.

Praises President

Antonovich lauded Bush, however, for recognizing that “police can’t do everything” and for indicating that the drug fight “is going to require in our schools that values are taught and that our families and religious communities have a responsibility.”

Detective Thomas’ crew on the streets missed the speech.

They had made 14 arrests on the shift, starting at MacArthur Park, then moving to surrounding areas when word spread of the police presence. First they would arrest the crack dealers at a spot, then station undercover officers there to wait for customers to approach them to buy drugs.

As Bush was saying, “if you’re a parent, talk to your kids,” the officers were questioning the two final suspects of the shift, the two young white men, one 23, the other 20.

“How did you know to come here?” one of the officers asked the 23-year-old, a construction worker from Canyon Country.

“A friend in Echo Park showed us this place, sir,” he said. “We were going to get just $8 worth, sir.”

“How long you been smoking?”

“Half a dozen times.”

“Half a dozen times too many,” said a policewoman as the men were led off.

Said detective Bob Freet: “Now that we’ve totally eliminated narcotics from the Free World, let’s go home.”