Westside Watch : Narcotics Officers Have Jokers Up Their Sleeves

Zorro left his initial. The Lone Ranger had his silver bullet. And now, following those famous--though fictional--champions of justice, the narcotics unit of the Santa Monica Police Department is leaving its own calling card at the scene of the crime: A joker.

In a drug raid in Santa Monica last week, police stormed three alleged drug houses and arrested six people suspected of selling rock cocaine. (See Community News section.) After the sweep, and with 10 suspects still at large, narcotics officers tacked up their card, which shows a jester sitting on a crescent moon and peering gleefully through large binoculars. Across the top, the card reads: “See Ya!” It’s signed, “Santa Monica Narcs.”

“It’s to let other drug dealers and their buyers know that we were here, and hopefully, scare them out of the areas,” said Sgt. Gary Gallinot. There’s also another message: “It lets them know we got their friends.”

The 10 suspects were later apprehended.

BLOCK THAT WORDPLAY DEPARTMENT: The topic was toilets, which is ordinary enough, and water-saving toilets, which are fine things even if it has been raining cats and dogs all winter. But the temptation to get cute was irresistible.

“Flushed with success,” read the press release from the Department of Water and Power, the city of Los Angeles is “lifting the lid” on water costs.

Further reading made it clear that water costs are actually being held down because of a program to distribute ultra-low flush toilets.

In any case, half a million of the economical little things have gone out in a program that started in Westside Councilwoman Ruth Galanter’s office five years ago, with savings estimated at 20,000 acre-feet of water a year--enough to meet the yearly needs of 40,000 families.

“Program efforts have not only been good for the environment, but have enabled community-based organizations to raise money and create more than 50 jobs,” Galanter said.

O.J. INDEX: Spotted in the window of a Fourth Street antique shop in downtown Santa Monica, a September, 1981, copy of Ebony magazine with you-know-who on the cover, football in hand. Asking price? $25, which is more than “Set Loose the Juice” T-shirts are going for on the Santa Monica Mall.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: A Pennsylvania psychologist is looking for people who are having dreams about the O.J. Simpson case to share their phantasms with him in the interests of science.

He is also interested in night visions of news-making events like the Republican takeover of Congress, which can either be a dream or a nightmare, depending on your political point of view.

“In dreams we process information in a far less restrictive fashion,” said Alan J. Lipman of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. “In the O.J. case, individuals display fundamental themes of human experience--jealousy, fear, anger, competition and betrayal . . . so it offers a primary and compelling example.”