Foothill Division’s Expert on Heroin : Officer Relies on Rapport to Track Down Addicts

Manfred Hascher inspects the inner arms of everyone he meets, from corporate executives to sales clerks, for the telltale track marks of heroin use.

It’s not that Hascher suspects everyone of being a junkie. It’s just a habit ingrained by years of searching the streets of the northeastern San Fernando Valley for heroin addicts. Hascher is a Los Angeles police narcotics suppression officer or, less formally, a “hype cop.” Hype is the slang term for a heroin addict.

Hascher is the resident heroin expert of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, which encompasses Pacoima, Sylmar, Sunland-Tujunga, Arleta, Mission Hills and Lake View Terrace. His job is to seek out and arrest heroin addicts, keep watch over known heroin hangouts, cultivate informants and train other officers to recognize heroin users.

Pacoima a Problem Spot

Nobody can do more than guess, but there are certainly thousands of heroin addicts and dealers in the Foothill Division, and hundreds more who come to buy heroin there, Hascher said. Pacoima, in particular, is one of the most drug-ridden parts of the San Fernando Valley, he said.

Between January and August of this year, 333 people were arrested in the Foothill area for being under the influence of heroin, the highest number of all 18 city police divisions, said Officer John Ortega, a narcotics bureau statistician. Hascher was not the only one making the arrests. Narcotics task forces periodically blanket the area, supplementing regular patrols.

But “most patrol officers don’t spend much time on heroin addicts” because signs of heroin use are subtle and easily overlooked, said Hascher. A drowsy appearance and a slow, deliberate walk might be enough to cause Hascher to pull his patrol car over and question someone. Other clues are slurred speech, constricted pupils, needle punctures and track marks, bluish or grayish discoloration and streaking of the skin caused by impurities in the heroin.

“But track marks can be 20 years old,” Hascher said. “You can’t just base your work on any one of those symptoms. You have to look at it overall.”

A former investigator with the state Department of Motor Vehicles, Hascher became a policeman eight years ago. He sought the job of hype officer nearly three years ago because he typically arrested more heroin addicts than anybody else in the divisions he worked.

“My work is a lot like fishing. I enjoy doing it. I like the investigative work. I like the streets. I like trying to find out who’s committing the burglaries, who’s doing what to whom. I like driving down the streets, hearing the Mexican music playing, saying ‘Hey, man.’ I like BSing with these people.”

A lanky, sandy-haired 37-year-old, Hascher appears in his neat navy blue uniform to be the epitome of the clean-scrubbed, all-American police officer. He appears soft-spoken and mild-mannered, almost shy. His only addiction is a handful of cigarettes a day, he said. But he manages an easy rapport with prostitutes, scruffy street types and other addicts he arrests for heroin use, possession and sales.

“I get along with most of them very well. I treat them with dignity. I treat them like human beings,” Hascher said. “That’s one of the things I take pride in. I make as many arrests or more than most people on the department and I haven’t had any complaints.”

A supervisor praised Hascher’s work, saying he was “very good at what he does.”

Hascher has arrested heroin addicts as young as 13 and as old as 55 or 60, he said. The youngest was a school girl who told Hascher that, in exchange for heroin, she had sex with men at her low-income apartment while her parents were at work.

Arrested Mailman

He has also arrested attorneys, draftsmen, students, an aerobics instructor, an advertising salesman, women in advanced stages of pregnancy--even people with whom he attended high school in Van Nuys. Once, he arrested a mailman who walked into an apartment Hascher had under surveillance. The mailman came out with fresh needle marks on his inner arms.

“The common conception of a heroin addict is a minority person sleeping in a $5 hotel room with an electric light socket with no bulb, purple walls with the paint peeling off and a person on the mattress shooting heroin. This isn’t always the case,” Hascher said.

As the heroin-related overdose death of comedian John Belushi illustrated, heroin is “also used by the middle class and the rich, people of all different sizes, all shapes and colors,” he said.

“If it wasn’t for Caucasians buying heroin, a lot of these dealers would be out of business. We arrest the poor people more because they are more visible. They’re the ones who are walking up and down the street.”

Haunts Hangouts

Hascher spends much of his day driving around, scrutinizing bars, beauty salons, restaurants, apartments and houses where people sell heroin. When he concentrates his efforts on a certain area, the heroin addicts soon move to another. He then has to determine where they are and start the process again--like trolling, he said.

Hascher said he averages one to two arrests a day, but sometimes makes as many as four or none at all. Most commonly, Hascher arrests out-of-work or intermittently employed laborers or prostitutes who live in run-down hotels and low-rent apartments. They commit robberies, burglaries, forgeries and other crimes to finance their drug habits, he said.

Hascher isn’t concerned with large- and moderate-scale heroin dealers. He may exchange information about them with narcotics detectives, but in his own work he concentrates on the thousands of street hypes and small-time drug dealers in his territory, not major drug kingpins.

“Wherever you have large groups of Hispanics, illegal aliens, you are going to have heroin dealing,” Hascher said. “Everybody brings a little piece of heroin over the border. A guy will come from Mexico and he sells two to four balloons of heroin a day. He’s making enough money to support his wife and kids. That’s the only thing he’s kingpin over. It’s easy money for them and if they get arrested, they go to jail, they bail out and they go back to Mexico.”

Every time a heroin user or dealer is jailed, it will deter several crimes, Hascher said.

Drugs Spawn Crime

“I don’t think the reason I’m out here is because society cares what these people do to themselves. If all they did was buy their dope, go sit in their houses, watch TV and go to work tomorrow, it probably wouldn’t even be against the law.

“But it’s not that way. These people burglarize, rob and steal to obtain money for heroin. Heroin is expensive,” Hascher said, selecting at random from one of several fat, blue loose-leaf notebooks filled with the criminal records and photographs of known heroin addicts.

“We have some people in these books who have a record that is longer than I am tall,” said Hascher, who is 6 feet 5 inches.

“That’s what I like about this job. You’re getting the people who are breaking into people’s houses, breaking into people’s stores, forging checks and shoplifting--professional shoplifters who walk away with $4,000 to $5,000 worth of jewelry and fine clothing.”

Hascher asks everyone he arrests what it feels like to use heroin.

Addicts Like ‘Escape’

“Some say it’s like being warm. Some say it’s like having a sexual climax. Others say it’s nothing like that at all, it’s a tingling sensation. Some say they get a rush, others no rush. I would never try it. I don’t know whether I would have the willpower to stop.

“I understand why people do it. Someone else turns them on to it. They like it for escape, it feels good--for a while. Then they need it just to keep from getting sick.”

Despite the increased risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis from dirty needles, and the more immediate danger of overdosing, many heroin users consider themselves to be health conscious, he said.

“A lot of them don’t smoke and don’t drink,” Hascher said. He said he has offered a heroin addict a cigarette and had it declined with the explanation, “It’s not good for you.”

Hascher is sometimes amazed at the lengths to which people will go to get heroin. Once, he arrested a prostitute on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima who was getting into a car with three men. In her desperation to get money for heroin, she was going to have sex with all three for $25, Hascher said.

“You have to feel sorry for a person like that. What’s that old saying, ‘But for the grace of God, there go I?’ I’m not religious but I figure, ‘Put yourself in the other person’s shoes.’ If we had had different parents, a different upbringing, we might be the heroin users and they might be the policemen.”

‘Doesn’t Pay to Care’

But Hascher said he does not have much sympathy for most of the heroin users he arrests. He said it didn’t even bother him arresting the 13-year-old prostitute and junkie, although he wonders what became of her.

“Her arms looked so bad. She told me sometimes it took her 15 to 20 minutes to find a vein. You do that for a while and you mess your arms up pretty bad. We’re doing her a favor, really, getting her out of that place for a while. . . .

“I used to think, ‘Well, maybe I could help this person or that person but that doesn’t last for long on this job. It doesn’t pay to care. What are you going to do? If I maintained an attitude of trying to help these people, I would probably end up releasing 95% of the people I arrest from jail. I can’t get personally involved with them. I can’t go home thinking about it every night.”

He said he doesn’t fool himself into thinking he can reform a hype. Addicts rarely reform, Hascher said, and when they do it is usually because they are tired of being arrested over and over again, and weary of going through withdrawal.

Being Nice Works

Hascher treats the hypes he arrests with low-key humor, offering them cigarettes, a soft drink or candy bar. He does this in large part because it makes his job easier, he said.

“I treat them nice. I talk to them, establish rapport and they think, ‘Well, maybe I can fool this guy.’ I tell them, ‘Shooting heroin’s not all that bad. It’s not such a big deal’ and they’ll say, ‘This guy’s all right. ‘ It’s not done because I’m a nice guy. A person who’s more easygoing can get more. When they get abusive, I get the same way.”

Hypes are generally not violent, Hascher said, but “they will lie to you. They’re the best liars in the world. They’re nice to talk to, but you wouldn’t want to take them home.”

One recent day, Hascher stopped his unmarked car outside a small Pacoima market, drawing the disdainful glances of a cluster of people standing in the parking lot or sitting on a bench surrounded by litter and bottles.

“Stand up for me, will you?” Hascher asked a middle-aged woman dressed in jeans and a blue turtleneck. Flashing him a hostile but resigned glance, she lethargically flung out her arms for Hascher to examine.

Street Search

“I got legal prescriptions for everything. I just got out of the hospital. You can talk to my doctor,” she said, indignantly as if she had been through it all many times before.

“I haven’t arrested you for a long time,” Hascher said conversationally, frisking her, patting the backs and sides of her legs, reaching into her pockets.

“Oh, they just love to bust innocent people,” she said.

“Oh come on,” Hascher said softly, rummaging through her purse. He came up with several prescription-pill containers. Her pupils were small and her arms had what appeared to be needle marks.

“I’m going to take you in. Don’t make a break for it,” Hascher said. She laughed in spite of herself as she got into the back seat of the patrol car.

Story Checks Out

By the time they arrived at the station, his gentle but relentless teasing had the woman smiling. “I like him. I think he’s pretty neat,” she said. After a closer examination, Hascher released her because her arms had no fresh needle marks and receipts in her purse confirmed that she had recently been hospitalized. He even offered her a ride back to the market but she didn’t want to wait around for him.

Another day, dressed in a white sweat shirt, jeans and tennis shoes, Hascher went to visit one of his informants. Karen (not her real name), a hype and petty thief who Hascher said supports her $90-a-day heroin habit by turning tricks, came to the door looking bedraggled and not at all happy to see him. She asked him to come back in an hour.

Hascher said he knew the reason. She needed to go buy heroin, and “fix.” He left as requested. An hour later, Karen was a transformed person. She came to the door bubbly, smiling, relaxed, confident, charming and affable, and motioned him in. She apologized for the delay, saying she would have been unable to concentrate on the conversation until she “fixed.” Without it, she feels like she has the flu, she said.

Hascher pretended to peek under the bed. “Anybody hiding under there?” he asked. “I’m jealous.” He paused. “Did you get me a Christmas present?”

Extensive Arrest Record

A slender woman of 24, Karen sat on the orange corduroy bedspread. It was covered with burn holes. The television was tuned to Laverne and Shirley. The amber curtains let in little light. The small hotel room also contained a desk, lamp, clock and an imitation wood-grain plastic-topped bedside table. Hascher draped his lanky frame on a small straight-backed chair.

Karen said she has been arrested about 25 times, mostly for prostitution and being under the influence of heroin, but sometimes for felonies such as burglary and grand theft. Hascher has arrested her five of those times, for burglary, grand theft and auto theft. The most recent arrest was in October.

Still, she said, she views Hascher as “a nice guy. He seems like he’s on my level. He understands where I’m coming from,” she said, brushing her long dark hair.

Hascher told Karen she should meet a nice guy in a bar who doesn’t care about her past and settle down in a house “with a white picket fence and geraniums out front.”

Lasts Eight Hours

But Karen said she cannot see herself ever quitting heroin. Every morning, if she has money, the first thing she does is buy heroin. If she doesn’t have money, she walks out to San Fernando Road, sticks her thumb out and turns a trick for $30, the cost of one tiny brown nugget of heroin that will keep her “well” about eight hours. Then she turns another trick and goes back for heroin, generally buying only enough for one fix, she said. If she bought more, she would use it.

She said two of her three children were born addicted to heroin. Several times while Karen was pregnant, she was jailed and struggled through withdrawal. The babies went through it, too. She said she could feel them trembling and kicking inside her. She was arrested midway through her third pregnancy and managed to stay off heroin until the day the baby was born.

“Then I went and snuck out of the hospital and got me some drugs,” she said. One child was adopted; the other two stay with relatives.

Police, with Karen’s information, so far have arrested one prison escapee, two burglars and received tips on where heroin dealing is occurring, he said. During this particular visit, Karen gave Hascher the names of several people she said shoplifted $400 to $600 worth of fine-quality boots, clothing and other merchandise each day.

Hascher arrested them last week on suspicion of being under the influence of heroin. They had a shopping bag full of new clothes in their car, but the tags had been removed so police could not prove shoplifting.