Arm Watcher : Policeman Pounds the Heroin Beat

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 and the resident heroin expert of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division.

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.

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.

Highest Number

Between January and August of 1985, 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.

“Most patrol officers don’t spend much time on heroin addicts,” Hascher said, because signs of heroin use are subtle and easily overlooked.

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.

Comparison Drawn

“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.”

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. However, he manages an easy rapport with prostitutes, scruffy street types and 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 in the department, and I haven’t had any complaints.”

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

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. . . . This isn’t always the case,” Hascher said.

Commit Crimes

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 rundown hotels and low-rent apartments. They commit robberies, burglaries, forgeries and other crimes to finance their drug habits, he said.

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

“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.