A Clean Sweep: Police Work at Its Finest

The temptation is to be skeptical, but I’m not. At least, not in this early stage. For now, I just want to give the Santa Ana cops a pat on the back and hope they prove deserving.

Cops from Los Angeles to New York have let us down so much recently that they’ve tested our faith. We can’t really have a functional society without police. We depend on them, but then they turn around and disappoint us so.

Then along comes a story like last week’s giant sweep of alleged drugs- and weapons-dealers in a Santa Ana neighborhood--and we are reminded again of just what good police do for us.

They don’t do what the corrupt Rampart Division officers in Los Angeles do. They don’t do what the physically brutal officers in New York did.

What they do is keep our streets safe. They guarantee a life that many of us take for granted--that is, the ability to conduct our daily business without fear.

What happened last week in Santa Ana was the arrest of dozens of suspected criminals. This was not a random bunch; it was a partly connected and partly disconnected group of people who make life miserable for people in a small section of west Santa Ana.

“What this boils down to,” says Santa Ana Sgt. Raul Luna, “is that unless you’re affected by crime and have to live with it, do you really know how miserable a living environment it is? And once you become accustomed to living with crime, and then you take that element out, these people are going to see so much nicer of a neighborhood. They’re not going to have that fear of letting their kids play in the frontyard, or walk down the street or play in the park like people can do in a regular neighborhood.”

The cops and FBI believe they’ve taken out of play both veteran gangbangers and veteran criminals. They’re the kind of people who rule a swatch of land in a city as if no one else has a right to be there.

The average citizen can’t do much about that. Oh, you can stick your chest out when a group of punks stops you on the way to the store and demands your wallet, but you may take a bullet or a beating for your trouble.

It takes the police.

In our more charitable moments, we tell ourselves that’s what the renegade Rampart officers started out thinking when they became the terrorists toward people they regarded as criminals. Maybe they convinced themselves they were making us all safer. Their blindness was that they end up scaring us.

Carefully Constructed Plan

One of the many differences here, Luna says, is that Operation Orion in Santa Ana was a carefully calibrated plan where high-tech surveillance helped gather evidence, which was then taken to a grand jury. Nor was the “team” composed of jaded gang-unit cops. Most of them, Luna says, were brought in from patrol units specifically to carry out the job.

Only when armed with warrants and indictments did the officers make the arrests.

For that reason, Luna believes the arrests, which do not represent the end of the operation, will stick.

“For those residents who don’t have confidence and feel it’s a hopeless case [maintaining safe neighborhoods], I hope we’ll be able to convince them by what we’re going to do in the future. This is just the first phase in pulling these people out of the neighborhood. We’re not going to go away. We’ll come back with phases two, three and four to keep them out of the neighborhood.”

Luna knows what’s at stake here.

We see a big show of police force, and sometimes our thoughts darken. Force can translate to abuse, both of people’s civil rights and standard decency.

“There have been incidents in the recent past where the credibility of police has been tarnished,” Luna says. “Those are few and far between, but when they happen, they have a tremendous impact on all law enforcement.”

That’s why it’s critical that this sweep proves to have been done by the book.

If so, it’ll represent ultimate policing: tackling a dangerous job to help keep the rest of us safe.

That’s a great thing to do for a career.

Not surprisingly, Luna says, the cops were pretty upbeat around the station last week.

“Any time you’re able to put the bad guys in jail . . . “ he says.

If Operation Orion plays out successfully, the Santa Ana cops will have done more than just put bad guys in jail.

They’ll remind us of the glory that’s supposed to be part of being a cop.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail at [email protected].