Lennox Puts Pressure on Pushers : ‘Drug Supermarket’ Remains Despite Increased Arrests

LENNOX —  On a typical night along Inglewood Avenue here, a drug deal takes place every five minutes.

Sheriff’s deputies say it used to be even worse. Just one year ago, they say, drugs and money changed hands at nearly twice that rate.

Despite an estimated 50% drop in drug trafficking and related crimes such as purse-snatchings and prostitution, Inglewood Avenue in Lennox is still one of the county’s most active “drug supermarkets,” said Capt. Bob Wilbur of the sheriff’s Lennox substation.

Deputies arrested 150 suspects on drug charges in November, about 50 more than in November, 1984. Nearly all of them were charged with selling small amounts of drugs. The bigger dealers who supply street peddlers rarely make small sales themselves, officials said.

‘Long Way to Go’

“When outsiders drive down the avenue, it’s probably hard for them to imagine it was once worse than it is now,” Wilbur said. “We’ve come a long way, but obviously we still have a long way to go. This isn’t a problem that is going to go away overnight.”

Nor did the problem arise overnight.

Anni Rodriguez, who grew up in Lennox, remembers doing all her shopping at small stores along Inglewood Avenue. “I used to walk down Inglewood because I knew I’d see someone I knew,” she said. “Now it’s a disgrace.”

Most of her friends have fled Lennox for safer neighborhoods, but the 30-year-old mother of two refuses to leave.

“This is my home. I work nearby. My parents live here. Moving is just like giving up. I want to see Lennox be what it once was.”

Carnival Barkers

Up and down the one-mile stretch of Inglewood Avenue between Imperial Highway and Century Boulevard, drug dealers advertise their wares--mostly marijuana--like carnival barkers. Sometimes two or three compete for a sale. Customers, many of them driving luxury cars that look out of place in this mostly low-income community, creep up and down the street, creating traffic jams for motorists just trying to get through.

The dealers attract customers from throughout the county, officials say. “We’ve arrested people from everywhere. . . . Beverly Hills, Rolling Hills, Hollywood Hills, you name it,” said Sgt. Ron Trowbridge, a former member of the department’s undercover street patrol.

“They come here because it’s an easy buy. They drive down the street, see a signal, make a deal and take off in a matter of seconds. They never even have to leave their car.”

Officials suspect that most drug deals are made with passing motorists, but pedestrians, bicyclists, even people waiting for city buses, are open game for the zealous drug pushers.

“They basically go after anything that moves regardless of race, age or color,” said Trowbridge. He recalled a case in which drug dealers inadvertently botched a sheriff’s stakeout when a number of peddlers approached an undercover deputy and blocked his view of a suspect.

Undercover Operation

The increase in arrests is attributed to the creation in October, 1984, of an undercover Street Criminal Apprehension Team for Lennox. Bicycle patrols, neighborhood watch groups and undercover and surveillance teams helped to put some street dealers and a few suppliers out of business.

But with a seemingly endless stream of willing street peddlers in the area, suppliers have no trouble putting replacements on the street, said Trowbridge, who was once a member of the SCAT team.

“Dealers see that the percentages are in their favor,” Trowbridge said. “It’s kind of like they suspect we have limited resources and know that we can’t keep up high-pressure patrols forever. They hope to outlast us.”

Building a successful court case is difficult, Trowbridge said, because deputies must observe the sale, cite the buyer and arrest the seller.

Occasionally, deputies seek to deter customers by stopping suspicious cars. “Ninety percent of the time, they quite frankly admit that they are here to buy drugs,” Trowbridge said. “We try to make sure they don’t succeed. Sometimes they listen. Most times they don’t.”

Community Support

Wilbur said he fears that the drug problem will never improve unless deputies receive more community support.

In this tight-knit, largely Latino community, officials say that residents’ fear of hoodlums often keeps them from cooperating with police. “They know who the guys are who provide the dope,” Trowbridge said. “We have to earn their confidence so they’ll share that information with us.”

“They are our eyes and ears,” Wilbur said. “But they are prisoners of fear who lack confidence in our system.”

The officials, however, say anger is slowly replacing fear as more residents and neighborhood watch groups come forward with information. Still, residents who do call in with tips often insist that they remain anonymous.

“The same guy who called in with a hot tip might ignore me on the street, but that’s OK by me” Sgt. Lee Smith said. “He might have a family to protect and I can certainly respect that.”

Security Increased

Security for informants has been stepped up since someone fired shots into the home of a resident who had videotaped drug sales from his living room window and given the tape to investigators.

“I don’t know if that guy will ever tell us another word, but I tell you he made a world of difference,” Smith said. In viewing the tape, assistant district attorneys, judges and other authorities outside the area got their first candid view of drug sales along Inglewood Avenue. Smith said he believes the tape will lead to an increase in drug-related prosecutions.

“Those people couldn’t believe their eyes,” Smith said. “Now they see why half of the area’s residents avoid traveling down Inglewood Avenue altogether.”

Nearly all residents who attended a recent community meeting told county officials they go out of their way to stay off Inglewood Avenue.

“I stay off that street unless I want to get good and mad,” said Manuel Balboa, a longtime Lennox resident who says there are not enough fingers on his hands to count the times he has been approached by drug dealers.

“They have no shame. They approach me in front of my family and smile like I’m an old friend,” Balboa said in an interview. “Authorities say it’s better, but it’s still unacceptable.”

Community Deteriorated

Anger and frustration rise in Balboa’s voice as he describes how the community he moved to 13 years ago has deteriorated.

“I used to be so proud to live here. Everyone was,” he said, recalling how Lennox was once a “land of opportunity for immigrants from all over the world.”

Once a middle-class, white community, the unincorporated island wedged between Inglewood, Hawthorne and Los Angeles International Airport is now dominated by people of Cuban, Mexican, Asian and South American descent.

Slowly, the community changed as drug dealers, many from Mexico, entered the area. Officials believe that some of the area’s major dealers are linked to powerful drug rings in Mexico that provide them with a steady stream of drugs and illegal aliens to sell them.

“We worked so hard to get here, and now these criminals come in here, ruin our neighborhood and give our community a bad name,” Balboa said. “There is more to Lennox than drug dealers on Inglewood Avenue and prostitutes on Imperial Highway. But try to tell someone who doesn’t live here that.”

Similar Stories

Scores of other residents who choose to stay or can’t afford to leave tell similar stories. Drug traffic and related crimes, once largely contained to the business district along Inglewood Avenue, are spreading to residential streets, causing people to say they feel trapped inside their homes.

Alicia Acuna won’t allow her children to play outside. “They can play outside at school,” she said. “When they’re at home they play inside. I have to protect them.”

Another resident, who wished to remain anonymous, switched from a night job to one in the daytime in order to stay off the streets at night, and removed almost all landscaping from his home to eliminate a favorite hiding place for drug dealers running from sheriff’s deputies. “I trimmed a bush outside my house one day and all these bags filled with drugs fell all over the place,” the resident said “Those bushes were gone the next day.”

Chris Moyer and Caroline Farmer, both Lennox residents since the 1950s, put up barbed-wire fences around their homes, at Wilbur’s suggestion, to keep drug dealers from cutting through their yards.

“I’ve seen this area go from a very pleasant place to live, to the point where you should have a machine gunw. . . . But that’s not the answer,” Moyer said.

So far, neither residents nor officials have found the answer to the community’s drug problem.

Residents say they feel betrayed by a system in which their closest elected representative is County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, whose district stretches from Beverly Hills to Long Beach.

‘Orphan Community’

“I call Lennox an orphan community because while other communities have city halls and mayors to fight for their rights, we really have no one,” said Hector Carrio, president of the Lennox School Board. “Supervisor Hahn tries, but our problems deserve more attention than he could ever give us.”

Hahn did not return repeated phone calls this week, but at the community meeting he said he would support “almost any program that would help make Lennox a better place to live and work.”

Though Hahn maintains an office in the Lennox branch of the county library and has recently supported crime prevention and job-training programs in the area, residents say he and his staff are too far removed to understand the community’s needs.

“Our officials live in nice clean neighborhoods,” Balboa said. “If they lived in Lennox I bet we would see changes a lot sooner. “