SWEEP LEADS TO 42 ARRESTS EX-CONS GET VISITS FROM DEPUTIES.

Byline: Greg Botonis Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A new task force that targets probationers and parolees arrested 42 suspected violators during a two-day sweep and confiscated guns, drugs, explosives and thousands of dollars in cash, officials said Tuesday.

Under the DISARM program - designed to get weapons out of the hands of those prohibited from having them - nearly 75 law enforcement personnel, divided into teams, contacted 120 probationers and parolees beginning before dawn on Monday and Tuesday.

``I can't think of any operation that we have seen in Los Angeles County that has been bigger or more successful than this one,'' said John Tuchek, a supervising deputy probation officer who heads the program. ``This is still a relatively new program, and we're still trying to get the bugs worked out.

``But if this any indication of what's to come, this is going to be the most successful program we have ever seen.''

DISARM - Developing Increased Safety through Arms Recovery and Management - is a county-funded program that deploys six probation officers throughout Los Angeles County. In conjunction with local law enforcement agencies, they organize large-scale sweeps, contacting ex-convicts who are on parole or probation to determine if they are abiding by the law.

On Monday, deputies made 20 arrests and recovered four guns, a pound of marijuana and three ounces of rock cocaine, as well as an undetermined amount of methamphetamine, officials said.

At one home in the 900 block of East Avenue Q-11, deputies made two arrests and confiscated a .25-caliber handgun, 13 rocks of methamphetamine valued at about $100 each, a vial of PCP, tablets thought to be the designer drug Ecstasy and what appeared to be a film canister filled with a powder linked to a detonation device. They also found equipment used to make methamphetamine.

Near the end of Tuesday's operation, deputies visited a home in the 38800 block of Second Street East and found $50,000 cash, two crossbows and a small amount of an unknown type of drug.

At one point Tuesday, authorities cordoned off an area near 47th Street East and Avenue S when a probationer fled from deputies. He was never found, although deputies recovered packaged methamphetamine they said he dropped.

Project DISARM kicked off Feb. 22 in East Los Angeles, and since then has been used in Hawthorne, Gardenia, Whittier, El Monte and Azusa. More than 500 locations have been checked throughout Los Angeles County, officials said.

Organizers say the program has become an essential part of the area's law-enforcement effort.

``The Antelope Valley is second in number of probationers only to South Central L.A.,'' Tuchek said. ``The Antelope Valley was high on the list of areas to do these checks on following East L.A.

``Even with the numbers, this was the smoothest operation I have seen as far as a multi-agency task force.''

DISARM, initially approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in January as a Probation Department program, has become the model for a statewide effort being considered by the Governor's Office, officials said.

The program has solicited the help of agencies such as the California Youth Authority; the U.S. Attorney's Office; the FBI; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and DISARM officials expect to create a permanent link between themselves and those agencies.

Seeing the success of the current program, supervisors will be adding a second team with six deputy probation officers and a team from the Sheriff's Department, which could include as many as eight personnel.

``This is a great program because whatever you get, a new charge, a violation, somebody is there to handle it,'' said Deputy Parole Officer Janice Jones, who spent more than a month organizing the DISARM team's sweep in the Antelope Valley. ``With all the agencies involved in this, it's incredible how they all work together as a team.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Sheriff's deputies take a suspect into custody Tuesday after a probation and parole sweep uncovered a methamphetamine lab as well as weapons.

(2 -- color) Deputies working with the county's DISARM program search a Palmdale garage after a parolee fled their 75-member sweep of 120 parolees and probationers Tuesday. Forty-two suspects were arrested.

Greg Botonis/Staff Photographer