Agencies Team Up for Sweep; 24 Arrested

Reacting to complaints by area merchants, about 40 officers from various agencies swarmed into a neighborhood early Tuesday and made 24 arrests for crimes ranging from trespassing to parole violation.

At the same time, agents of the California Department of Health Services questioned about 30 people on suspicion of Medi-Cal fraud. Officials said they suspended payments in 20 of the cases.

“It’s a lot safer for us to go with the Police Department,” said Larry Malm, the health agency’s chief investigator in Orange County. “Everybody worked together.”

Bob Clark, a spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department, which coordinated the 6 a.m. sweep, called the operation a success.

“It’s just a good way for us to be together at the same time and, to some extent, solve a community problem,” he said of the action, which included health fraud investigators, state parole agents and Orange County probation officers.

Clark said that the sweep, the third of its kind in the past 12 months, was prompted by merchants’ complaints about loitering, trespassing and littering at a shopping center at McFadden and Standard avenues.

Besides descending on the shopping center’s parking lot where most of the early-morning arrests were made, he said, officers armed with 109 outstanding arrest warrants visited the fugitives’ last known addresses.

“It not only sends a message to the criminals,” Clark said of the arrests, “but also to the community that we’re doing something.”