TV Show to Feature Oxnard Officers’ Sting

Two Oxnard police officers who went undercover for a year to break up a stolen-property ring will be the subject of a national television show, police said.

Officers Ken Dellinger and Johnny Gomez will be featured on an episode of the CBS television show “Top Cops” Thursday at 8 p.m., Oxnard Police Chief Robert Owens said.

“It’s quite a nice recognition of the difficulty of conducting an operation like that,” Owens said. The two officers hit the streets of Oxnard in January, 1989, to set up what is believed to be the state’s first successful sting operation run out of a van instead of a storefront.

Dellinger called himself The Farmer and Gomez went by the name of Teddy Bear as they infiltrated the underground, flashing thousands of dollars, brawling in city streets and spending time with drug users who were making rock cocaine.

Dellinger and Gomez ran a fictitious business out of their beat-up white van where they purchased more than $2 million in stolen goods from more than 100 customers.

The payoff came a year later on Jan. 11, 1990, when 50 officers rousted 60 suspects during an early morning raid and arrested them on suspicion of burglary, possession of stolen goods, narcotics and prostitution.

Dellinger and Gomez have both been reassigned to patrol duties in the past year. Dellinger was last in the news when he was cleared by the Ventura County district attorney’s office in the November shooting of a 60-year-old farm worker.

Dellinger and four other officers had answered a call reporting a man with a gun at an Oxnard residence, the district attorney’s report said. Dellinger identified himself as a police officer after he confronted an intoxicated Umertino Ayala urinating in the yard, the report said.

Ayala allegedly pulled a gun and pointed it at Dellinger, who then shot Ayala in the chest, arm and leg, authorities said.

Ayala has filed a $450,000 claim against the city contending that he posed no threat to Dellinger and that the department violated his civil rights.