Street-Level View of the War on Drugs : Crime: Fewer deals are occurring out in the open, and officers must work harder to make arrests. Police report progress, but no one is thinking of victory speeches.

The undercover police officer moved on foot through the parking lots, the small shops and the apartment house hallways in the Roscoe Boulevard neighborhood considered one of the hot spots of street-level drug sales in the San Fernando Valley.

The “UC,” short for undercover officer, kept up a running commentary so the officers listening to the broadcast from his hidden radio transmitter would know what was happening. They waited in cars parked nearby, ready to move in on the setup area when the UC gave the word that a drug buy had occurred.

“Who’s working out here? Who’s working?” the UC said to passersby and the young men hanging around the shops. “Who’s got a two-oh? You got a twenty?”

But after 10 minutes, there were no sellers for the would-be drug customer looking to buy a $20 rock of cocaine.

“It’s looking very dry out here,” he said. “I think we may have dried up this hole. They are not out here like they used to be. . . . I’m going back to the car.”

It would be several more stops at so-called hot spots before the first arrest of the day would be made during the “buy-bust” operation. At the end of the four-hour Wednesday evening sweep through locations in Van Nuys, Sepulveda and Panorama City, the narcotics team would have five suspects in handcuffs in the back of the Ford Club Wagon--the mobile jail that moves with the squad from setup to setup.

The results of the sweep provide a telling look at the status of the “drug war” in the Valley.

While federal officials in recent weeks have announced that the big picture of the war on drugs shows improvement, the day-to-day battles in the trenches--the streets--go on.

Police here say they, too, have seen improvements. Overall, drug arrests are down in the Valley and dealing does not occur out in the open as much as it did even three years ago in some areas.

Narcotics officers say it takes harder work and more finesse these days to arrest dealers. But the problem persists and no one is thinking about victory speeches.

The State Department’s annual drug control report released this month said “important gains” were made in the seizure of drugs--particularly cocaine--and cutting back on its production and transport into the United States.

At the other end of the spectrum--on the streets, where cocaine smuggled into the country in metric tons is ultimately sold in single rocks the size of a child’s fingernail--Los Angeles police say gains have been made as well. Their view, though, is tinged with street-cop frustration.

Police Lt. Gary Rogness, who has headed the street narcotics team in the Valley for six years, said he has seen thousands of arrests drive open drug dealing back off the streets but not completely away.

“There no doubt has been an impact,” Rogness said. “Five years ago, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. It was absolutely out of control. We’d send a car into a hot spot and the dealers would converge on it. It was that easy to make arrests.

“Now you have to work harder to make arrests, but it’s still out there. . . . I compare it to sitting on the beach and someone gives you a fork and the task of throwing all the sand back into the ocean. You can sure make some progress but the job will never get done.”

Progress is measured in a number of ways by police, many of them subjective.

Four years ago, the Valley narcotics team began charting hot spots--called Chronic Narcotics Sales Locations. These spots were determined by frequency of arrests, observations by officers, and complaints from citizens and city officials.

The first list contained 56 hot spots that included intersections, apartment buildings, even complete neighborhoods. The locations became the targets of weekly and sometimes daily buy-bust operations.

Rogness said that in four years, more than two dozen of the hot spots have been eliminated through the intensive enforcement, and although some new spots have been added, the list now contains 32 locations in the Valley.

Looking at the list recently, Rogness said he feels frustration at the inability to eliminate some of the locations that have been considered hot spots for the entire four years. Places like a block-long stretch of Blythe Street and areas along Sepulveda Boulevard at Nordhoff Street or Roscoe Boulevard continue to be key targets for the drug team.

Police say heavy enforcement and the placement of barricades on streets in some of the areas have helped deter dealers and customers. Those spots and others are no longer the “drive-through drug markets” they were in the late 1980s. But they continue to be areas where police make numerous drug arrests.

As one undercover officer said, the Sepulveda corridor is freeway-close, and police constantly encounter drug dealers and buyers from throughout the city at its hot spots.

Recent arrest statistics from the Valley show the changing nature of the street drug trade and police efforts to combat it.

A comparison of drug arrests by all police in the Valley shows a decline of 16% from 8,699 in 1990 to 7,250 last year. But within that figure, the 42-officer street narcotics team has seen a nearly 6% increase in arrests from 2,869 in 1990 to 3,035 last year.

Rogness said the statistics show that drug arrests made by uniformed officers have dropped dramatically in a year. He interprets this to be a result, in part, of a drop in the conspicuous drug dealing that plagued areas just a few years earlier. Patrol officers are unable to make as many arrests because the dealers have retreated in many areas.

They are there, Rogness said, but they just aren’t standing on the street waiting to run up to car windows. The police have also adjusted. Instead of shooting fish in a barrel, it has become more like fishing. “You put the bait out there and the fish nibble on it,” he said.

And the undercover anglers wait to reel them in.

Undercover officers said dealers use youngsters on bicycles to act as neighborhood lookouts for police. Each dealer rarely carries more than one piece of cocaine. And it is becoming rarer for buyers to directly approach a dealer. Instead, customers are shepherded to dealers by “directors”--usually bike-riding juveniles--that act as lookouts for customers as well as police.

During the Wednesday evening operation, UCs went out on buy-bust missions at three intersections, a city park and near a Catholic school where drug dealing is believed chronic. But no buys or arrests were made.

“I’m the plague out here,” one of the UCs whispered in frustration into his body mike after being unable to find a dealer at Nordhoff and Sepulveda.

Kevin Ball, one of the “chase” officers who waited nearby in an unmarked car, said the dearth of “players” was unusual. “It usually doesn’t take this long,” he said.

But the sixth operation was the charm. The UC approached a young man sitting on a bike on Roscoe and asked for a “twenty.” The director led him to a sandwich shop where a dealer waited outside. Marked money was exchanged for a small, pale rock. As the UC walked away, he said: “It’s a go. It’s a go,” and five unmarked cars rushed in from all directions.

The dealer, only 16 years old, and his director were arrested without even a foot chase. Last to arrive on the scene was the 15-passenger Club Wagon. The suspects were handcuffed and hustled into the back of the van. The police hoped by the end of the night that they would fill the van.

At the next stop, in a neighborhood near Woodley Avenue and Vanowen Street, a UC persuaded a director to lead her to his dealer. “I just want to get a twenty and go home,” she said.

The director told her to wait by a Laundromat. Soon the dealer came out and the deal went down. Another “go” and another two arrests. The commotion of police cars pulling up caused a man standing nearby to bolt down the street. Officers chased on foot, but he got away. The narcotics officers suspected that he might have been holding the dealer’s drugs.

The last stop of the evening was Blythe Street west of Van Nuys Boulevard. The block-long stretch is the “Old Faithful” of narcotics operations in the Valley. The drug officers said drug dealing remains widespread there and arrests frequent--394 made by the narcotics unit alone on the block in the last three years.

On this night, the UC bought a rock of cocaine within five minutes after the setup began. After a short foot chase that included jumping over fences, one suspect was arrested and two got away.

The captured man was added to the Club Wagon, which had one of the director’s bikes handcuffed to the back.

After that, the narcotics squad headed back to the Van Nuys station to process the suspects and plan the next day’s operation.

“Well, we got five,” Rogness said, summing up the outing. “And three people we would have liked to talk to got away.”

By the next morning, informants had started contacting members of the unit to tell them that the man they arrested on Blythe Street was one of the street’s major dealers. This pleased Rogness. It was one of those important gains.

“See, sometimes you get lucky,” Rogness said. “Even on a slow day.”