On Their Tracks : Specially Trained Police Cruise Streets for ‘Addicts’ in Effort to Cut Drug-Related Burglaries

Mike Stutler and Al Aird were on the prowl.

As their patrol car moved along Sherman Way in Reseda both officers carefully watched the alleys and sidewalks. They eyed people sitting in parked cars. They looked closely at anyone standing at a pay phone.

“It’s a game of cat and mouse,” Stutler said. “They know we are looking for them. And they are watching out for us.”

Stutler and Aird were in a Los Angeles Police Department “hype” car, so-called because the officers assigned to it cruise the West San Fernando Valley with but one goal: to seek out and arrest street drug addicts--known in police parlance as hypes because they use hypodermic needles.

Heroin and cocaine addicts are believed by police to be responsible for most of the area’s burglaries and a large portion of other property crimes. That makes the mission of the hype car simple.

“Putting a hype in jail stops crime,” Aird said. “These people have habits to support and they create crime to obtain their drug. It’s a cycle. That’s where we come in.”

Although little known outside the department, hype cars have been used intermittently by Los Angeles police for at least a decade.

But in the past year, police in the Valley--where more than 36,000 burglaries and thefts were reported--began assigning more officers to permanent hype patrols in an effort to combat the tide of property loss.

Full-time patrols for street drug addicts are currently assigned in three of the Valley’s five police divisions. And administrators at one of the remaining two are considering adding a hype unit later this year.

Though troubling to some civil libertarians who question the constitutionality of the hype patrols, the more frequent use of the patrols in the Valley has been successful in suppressing crime, police say.

“It is common sense,” said Capt. Sid Mills, commander of the Van Nuys Division, where a hype patrol was started three months ago. “When we can get a hype off the street, we know he is not going to be committing crime.”

Stutler and Aird spot a suspect on a sidewalk near Wilbur Avenue. The man wears a heavy jacket though it is an unusually warm winter morning, and he shuffles slowly along with a downcast gaze. His gait picks up a beat as the patrol car glides by and he quickly turns around and heads the opposite way.

The man’s uncertain movement is enough to pique the interest of the officers, both of whom know by training how to identify narcotic intoxication.

After a quick U-turn Stutler and Aird head back and find the man sitting on the curb behind a parked car. His name is Walter. He takes off his sunglasses, exposing severely constricted pupils--an indication of possible heroin use.

Walter speaks slowly and denies being under the influence of drugs. At the officers’ request, he takes his jacket off and rolls up his shirt sleeves, exposing arms lined with scars from needle punctures. One mark is bleeding and the officers say it is fresh.

Walter is taken into custody for being under the influence of heroin. They remove a large folding knife from his pocket before he is driven to the nearby West Valley station. Along the way the 30-year-old man admits that he had “fixed” the night before. He says he is unemployed and homeless but denies that he was in the area to commit any crime.

At the station, the officers’ hunch is supported when a computer search of Walter’s criminal record reveals prior arrests for five burglaries, a robbery, a car theft and four assaults.

“Here is a long-term addict who has no job and no money,” Stutler says. “How’s he going to get his next fix?”

But Walter is not arrested for what he might have been about to do. He is arrested under a California law that makes it a misdemeanor to be under the influence of drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

And that law--with a required 90-day minimum sentence for a conviction--provides the basis for how the hype patrol works.

Patrols for street addicts are assigned to the Foothill, Van Nuys and West Valley divisions. At least one officer assigned to each of the cars is qualified as a narcotics expert. The patrols are routinely used to train other officers in recognizing drug intoxication.

Unlike investigating alcohol intoxication, the officers cannot rely upon a breath analysis to make an arrest. Instead, they look for tell-tale signs of drug intoxication: from bodily indicators such as pupil size and needle marks to more subjective clues such as personal hygiene, speech patterns and other mannerisms.

“I look for a variety of symptoms being present,” said Officer Joe Penrod, assigned to the Foothill hype car. “A low, raspy voice is a symptom of heroin use. But by itself it doesn’t mean anything. I am looking for everything combined.”

The hype patrols throughout the Valley make an estimated 90 to 100 arrests each month.

Officers said they make infrequent court appearances from the arrests. Suspects facing the misdemeanor charge routinely plead guilty and receive minimum sentences of 90 days in County Jail.

Because the crime is a misdemeanor, police may use discretion in deciding whether to seek charges against the suspect. Often charges are not filed if the suspect provides information to police about more serious crimes. In the past year hype arrests have resulted in information being obtained that helped solve homicides and led to the arrests of drug dealers and “fences.”

Walter was released at the end of the day when he gave information to detectives about burglaries he knew other drug addicts had committed.

But even those who are charged and go to jail rarely serve a sentence of 90 days, authorities said. Overcrowding and the ability of inmates to earn time off of their sentences through good behavior means the convicted drug user may face less than 30 days in jail. Others spend even shorter periods in jail if charges are not filed by the city attorney’s office because they would be difficult to prove.

Hype patrol officers acknowledge that removing a street addict from the community is only a temporary measure. The officers often find themselves arresting the same people over and over--so often in some cases that officer and addict know each other by name.

“It is the old revolving door,” Stutler said. “They go in and out, in and out.”

But it is a trade-off police willingly make and claim is successful.

“I think there is a tremendous impact from getting just one hype out of circulation,” said Foothill Capt. Valentino Paniccia. “If he has a $100-a-day habit, he has to come up with a tremendous amount of property to sell to get that kind of money. If he is in jail 30 days, then that’s probably a minimum 30 burglaries that didn’t happen.”

Paniccia points to his division’s burglary statistics to help prove his point. After assigning a full-time hype patrol in the division that includes Pacoima, Sylmar and Lake View Terrace during 1989, burglaries for the year dropped 10.4%, according to department statistics.

Burglaries also decreased slightly in West Valley and Van Nuys divisions, year-end statistics showed.

But it is impossible to prove that the arrests bring about a drop in property crime, police said. Realistically, they said, hype patrols were probably only one factor leading to the burglary decreases. Still, police officials have no doubts about the success of hype patrols.

Although Los Angeles police said the department has never conducted a study in an effort to determine how much crime is committed by drug users, national studies on the subject tend to support the police view, according to the Drugs and Crime Data Clearinghouse in Rockville, Md.

Glen Holley, an information specialist with the clearinghouse, cited a 1985 National Institute of Justice report that a study of 753 Los Angeles-area heroin users by a UCLA research team found that those surveyed committed 21% to 31% more crimes after becoming daily users of the drug.

Despite the apparent success, there are critics of hype patrols. Paul Hoffman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Los Angeles, said the use of one law--in this case, the drug influence law--to attack another crime problem is troubling.

Hoffman also noted that the use of a general profile to identify drug users may infringe on constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure. The use of profiles to identify drug suspects has been approved by courts only for identifying smugglers at airports. “There is absolutely no basis to extend this to the street,” he said.

But that criticism is not likely to sway police. As more officers are trained as narcotics experts and then rotated into routine patrol assignments in the Valley, the need for permanent hype patrols may lessen, police said.

In the meantime, officers who do the job full time describe it as depressing at times but ultimately satisfying.

“You are dealing with people that have slid to the bottom,” said Penrod, noting the high degree of disease and drug withdrawal sickness associated with addicts. But he added, “Seeing the burglary rate drop, that’s where I get my satisfaction.”