Police in Van Nuys Get High-Tech Assistance : Law enforcement: LAPD division gets first of five night-vision scopes, the same type used by military in Persian Gulf War.

For decades, darkness has been a faithful accomplice to the gang members on Blythe Street in Panorama City, cloaking their drug deals and drive-by shootings.

But on Friday, Los Angeles police acquired the ability to pierce the veil with a new, high-tech weapon developed for a battlefield of a different sort.

The first of five Night Enforcer 250 night-vision scopes--utilizing the same technology widely employed by the military in the Persian Gulf War and elsewhere in recent years--were donated to the Los Angeles Police Department by ITT Gilfillan of Van Nuys.

“One of the problems has been that (gang members) have seen us before we see them,” said police Capt. James McMurray of the department’s Van Nuys Division, which received the first scope.

“I think we just changed the balance.”

Allowing for observation in near-total darkness, the scopes have been used in police work throughout the country--this summer a pair was used by the Police Department’s Devonshire Division to track and eventually capture a pair of suspected rapists in Chatsworth Park.

But the donation to the Van Nuys Division marks a new effort to phase these devices into the everyday arsenal of local law enforcement. The company asked Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) to choose the law enforcement agency to receive the first donated scope, and he picked the department’s Van Nuys Division.

Over the next month, four more units will be donated to Los Angeles-area law enforcement agencies, including at least two more to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Although the devices give an obvious surveillance advantage to undercover vice officers, beat officers also hope they will help protect the lives of those chasing suspects at night or performing search-and-rescue operations.

“I can remember being on building searches and the room is dark as can be and you don’t want to turn on a light so the suspect can see you,” Officer Ron Carpenter of the Van Nuys Division said.

Both Carpenter and McMurray spent Friday at a press conference at the ITT facility, where lights were clicked off in a room to demonstrate the device--handicapping the television camera operators who bumped about seeking footage in the near-total darkness.

The 26-ounce scope converts available dim light--such as starlight--into electrical energy, boosts it electronically and then converts the energy into ghostly greenish-white images. Using the scope, a six-foot-tall man could be spotted on a moonless night at a distance of 125 yards, the manufacturer says.

At a cost of $2,400 apiece, the night-vision scopes have been widely used by the military--including operations in Kuwait, Iraq, Grenada and Panama--and only recently have been redesigned to meet the needs of local law enforcement.

Devonshire Division Detective Debra Kirk is one of those who has already reaped the benefits of the scope. In July, she and a fellow detective used a device purchased for police by a local support group--previously, the only such scope in the Police Department--to stake out Chatsworth Park North, where two rapes were reported within a week of each other.

After a volunteer surveillance team spotted two suspects moving into the park at night, the two detectives watched the men engage in suspicious activity that would have been impossible to spot without the scopes, Kirk said.

“The park is completely dark where the rapes were occurring,” Kirk said. “The use of the night vision goggles was invaluable in the apprehension of the suspects.”

As a result, police arrested Francisco Javier Ochoa and Jose Abran Umanzor, both 21, of Canoga Park. Both are awaiting trial, Kirk said.

ITT has also donated the scopes to the New York Police Department and other law enforcement agencies with the hope that they will buy more once they see the benefits.

Capt. Robert Welsh of the Ohio Highway Patrol said in an interview that his agency used the scopes to help suppress the 1993 uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, where officers used the scopes to find convicts hiding in darkened tunnels dug underneath the prison.

“We could use the scopes to figure out where they were without having to go in and get hit on the head by them,” Welsh said. “It helps to do things covertly.”

With all the uses for the night scopes, McMurray says demand to use them is high at the Van Nuys Division. Although his anti-gang unit is already eager to be the first, he said he will allow other police units to conduct test runs with the device during the next month.

But he does expect to see one thing with the night-vision scope right away, no matter who is using it.

“I think you’re probably going to see some arrests very soon,” he said.