THE CORNER : Police Try to Loosen Drug Dealers’ Grip by Setting Up Blockade

From her Harbor City apartment, Alice can see for miles. Her view includes the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro and the twinkling lights of the Unocal Refinery in Wilmington.

Closer to home, the sights are far less appealing. Graffiti on the sidewalk. Drug dealers in the street, flagging down cars and passing out crack cocaine like candy. Gang shootings. Kids, some as young as 8, handcuffed and carted off in police cruisers.

But Alice doesn’t want to talk about what she sees. Nor does she, like most who live near the intersection of 252nd Street and Marigold Avenue in Harbor City, want to give her last name.

“I can’t tell you,” she says. “I live by myself. I have to think of my life.”

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division says the corner of 252nd and Marigold, and the blocks that surround it, make up the busiest--and most dangerous--drug-dealing area in the Harbor Division, and one of the busiest in the entire city. Since the beginning of this year, 205 narcotics arrests have been made at 252nd and Marigold alone. A recent sting operation in the neighborhood, in which police posed as drug dealers and buyers, netted 54 arrests in four hours.

“It’s a cesspool,” said Capt. Joseph De Ladurantey, the division’s commanding officer.

So last week, the police tried to turn the tide. For four nights, half a dozen officers barricaded a four-block area and stopped every car that came into the neighborhood--not to make arrests, but to give residents like Alice some peace.

“We’re not here to take people to jail,” said Don Linfield, the officer in charge of the operation, which was to conclude early today. “We’re here as a suppression effort. We’re just making our presence known, to let these people (gangs and drug dealers) know they don’t own the streets anymore.”

The blockade was the first step in what De Ladurantey said will be a months-long effort to restore order to the community, “to take back the sidewalks and the streets and give them back” to law-abiding residents.

He acknowledges that it will not be an easy task. The dealers have a tight hold on the Marigold Avenue neighborhood--so tight, police say, that dealers have ordered residents to lock their dogs indoors at night so they can skip through the back yards and alleys to avoid getting caught. And the fearful residents have complied.

One resident, who gave his name only as Nelson, said drug dealers used to hide their guns under his car and threatened to burn his house down if he or his family gave them any trouble. Gunfire, he said, is “common around this neighborhood. You hear gunshots; it’s like being on a farm, you hear chickens.”

De Ladurantey expects it to take months of intermittent police crackdowns for neighbors to feel comfortable enough to walk outside at night. Even in daylight, neighbors are jittery--constantly looking over their shoulders.

According to police, people come from all over--as far as the San Fernando Valley and sometimes Orange County--to buy drugs in this neighborhood. Perhaps that’s because of its accessible location, just off the Harbor Freeway near Lomita Boulevard and Normandie Avenue. In addition, the corner is not far from the Normont Terrace housing project, which police and Housing Authority officials say is known for drug dealing.

The neighborhood blockade, which began Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., is similar to a recent crackdown in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles, although tiny in comparison. In Pico-Union, up to 160 officers barricaded a square-mile area. They posted 20 sawhorse barriers with large signs reading “Narcotics Enforcement Zone, Residents Only” in intersections leading into the district. Some neighbors report that drug dealing has declined in their area but has picked up in outlying blocks.

In the Harbor City crackdown, police used sawhorse barriers and yellow police tape--but no signs--to block off the junctions of 252nd Street and Normandie Avenue, and 252nd Street and Petroleum Avenue. The maneuver forced drivers to enter the neighborhood along Marigold Avenue, where they encountered uniformed officers who inspected every car going in and out.

At first glance, the neighborhood--a blend of single-family homes and fairly well-kept stucco apartment houses guarded by wrought iron gates--does not seem to warrant such intense police attention. But those who live and work there tell a different story.

“There is a lot of crime, even in the daytime, here,” said Hector DuBon, assistant principal of nearby Normont Elementary School. “On one occasion we had a cleaning crew held up at gunpoint at nighttime on school grounds. On another occasion at 12 noon in the middle of the day a guy pulls up and steals a car at gunpoint. A couple of times we’ve had drive-by shootings. . . . They were aiming in our direction and so the kids just hit the ground.”

Even those who have had brushes with the law are complaining about crime.

Take Thomas Walker, who recently was arrested by sheriff’s deputies for possession of cocaine--a charge he denies.

“It’s so corrupt here,” he said. “Gangs, drugs, drive-by shootings. I got shot here about three years ago, standing right here in front of that tree.”

Some in the neighborhood have complained that the roadblock is an intrusion, and that the police are hassling honest citizens. But Wednesday night, as he drank a beer after walking nearly all the way home from County Jail in downtown Los Angeles, Walker said he welcomes the police presence.

“I love to see it,” he said. “I’d like to live in a nice neighborhood just like everyone else.”