Deputies seized 2,600 small packets of cocaine during a traffic stop near Gorman early Thursday, prompting sheriff’s Capt. Robert Lewis to consider bolstering his deployment of deputies to the northern edge of the county.
Shortly after 12:30 a.m., deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station stopped a motorist near Gorman and ended up arresting a man on suspicion of possessing cocaine, Lewis said.
“These were 2,600 individual bindles of cocaine, prepared for street sales,” he said. “We’re not sure where they were targeted for, but as I see it, we saved someone from 2,600 overdoses or death.”
A bindle is thumbnail-sized freezer bag typically used to contain narcotics in powder form.
Lewis recently deployed a third deputy to the Gorman area and is now considering adding a fourth.
“The Gorman deployment team is saving the Santa Clarita community by making sure these drugs are not hitting the streets,” he said. “I’m thinking of putting another deputy up there.”
Deputies deployed at the Kern County line, making traffic stops such as the one carried out early Thursday morning, are “identifying individuals coming to the Santa Clarita Valley and victimizing the residents of Santa Clarita,” Lewis said.
Deputies initially thought the seizure involved a thousand bindles of cocaine, until they counted the bindles and placed the lot into evidence.
Lt. Chuck Becerra, who oversees the SCV Sheriff’s Station’s specialty enforcement teams — such as the Summer Crime Enforcement Team and the Crime Prevention Unit — pursues  a crime prevention strategy, stopping crime before it happens.
He shares a mission phrase with members of the specialty teams he watches over: “Not on my watch.”
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