‘Peace Comes Over Area’ When Police Arrive

After the LAPD’s mobile command center opened for business at 7th and Alvarado streets, Luis Rivera emerged from a nearby storefront and stepped without fear into the morning sun.

Rivera, 52, who is from Guatemala, provides security for several vacant tiendas (shops) facing MacArthur Park. He lives in one of the stores behind a partition, where he keeps a .30-caliber carbine.

“A great deal of peace comes over the area when the police come,” Rivera says. “I’m used to being harassed by drug dealers and gang members. That’s why I keep the rifle. But as soon as [the police] arrive, I feel safe enough to open my doors.”

The dark blue van was the roving headquarters of the Narcotics Enforcement Team, a 2-year-old program that provided 10 to 12 extra patrol officers per shift in the Alvarado corridor, the West’s largest and most dangerous drug market. The team ended its operations this weekend.

Its command center was part booking station, part administrative office, part lookout post and part public relations firm. It was known as the Roach Coach to local gangs and drug dealers, but police preferred Domingo Azul, or Blue Sunday, as the neighborhood’s residents called it.

Every morning five days a week, the van rolled into a pre-selected part of the corridor like a dreadnought showing the flag. The five patrol cars and the undercover vehicle that accompanied it then fanned out across a square-mile area, where more drug deals are made block for block than in any other part of Los Angeles.

On one recent day, the command center was parked in front of the Pio Jito Market, directly across from MacArthur Park, which was once home to more than 1,000 drug dealers, addicts and transients. Most of them are gone now.

Other criminals are not: Drug dealers, though in far smaller numbers, and peddlers of counterfeit documents hang out at major intersections. Around the banks of public telephones, young men broker international calls and charge them to stolen credit cards.

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Elderly women in aprons work the food stamp angle, buying them for 30 cents on the dollar from drug addicts. They sell them for 75 cents on the dollar to unscrupulous grocers who, in turn, seek reimbursement from the government for their full value.

There are unlicensed street vendors and unlicensed taxis that ferry drugs and traffickers. Profiting from much of the illegal activity are street gangs, such as 18th Street, Mara Salvatrucha, Crazy Riders, the Wanderers and the prison-based Mexican Mafia.

“We call it layered crime. It’s like a pyramid, with murder at the top,” said Det. Wallace W. Hull, one of the Narcotics Enforcement Team’s three supervisors. “We help take some of that off the street, try to make life a little better. Parents have even planned their children’s play times around our schedule.”

During the late morning, two team units pulled into a large vacant lot in the 1700 block of 6th Street--an area popular among heroin addicts. It was a typical call.

Soon, five people were lined up with their hands behind their heads. Two crack pipes, a 32-ounce bottle of King Cobra malt liquor, and a small paper bag containing almost 20 syringes were lying on the ground. Littering the area were the discards of drug addiction--bottle caps, used needles, rope tourniquets, balloons and small plastic bags.

One man with more than 50 needle marks in his right arm told police that he only used heroin once a day. He also said he was in a methadone treatment program. No one believed him. He was arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of heroin, a felony, and placed in the back of a patrol car. The other four people were released with a warning not to return.

Similar calls were handled throughout the day. In the early afternoon, the team arrested a Texas woman after she bought a small amount of crack cocaine at Coronado Street and 7th. The dealer could not be located.

The woman, who had a swollen, bloody cut over her left eye, said she was a prostitute from Houston. Police found a crack pipe in her clothes and a small plastic bag containing pieces of “slate,” a type of wafer-thin crack cocaine peculiar to the Alvarado corridor.

An hour later, another Narcotics Enforcement Team unit headed to 7th to break up a dope deal outside the Amigo No. 2 liquor store. The transaction involved five people who were using a mailbox to conduct a cocaine sale.

As a lookout positioned himself half a block away, a runner--or “hook”--arranged the buy with a client, who placed his money on the mailbox. Another person brought the coke from the supplier and substituted the drugs for the money. He had held the crack cocaine in his mouth until the last minute.

Police say drug sellers in the Alvarado corridor are now using such elaborate arrangements to insulate the main dealers from police. By carrying drugs in their mouths, traffickers can quickly swallow the evidence if authorities approach.

About 4 p.m. at Burlington Avenue and 7th, the team stopped and questioned the driver of a white and blue Chevrolet sedan. It was a Super Star cab and did not have a city license to operate. Some bandit taxis have been know to carry drugs.

The cabbie told police that he was just shopping with his family, but none of his passengers said they were related to him. The driver was cited for operating an illegal taxi. Then the police let him go.

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Just before the shift ended, Det. Hull returned to the command post at 7th and Alvarado. A crying child accompanied by his father walked by the rear door. Hull stepped outside. “Que quieres? (What do you want?)” he asked.

Whatever the boy’s problem was, it appeared easy to solve. The detective reached into the back of the van for a cardboard box filled with bracelets made out of purple plastic, bookmarks with anti-drug slogans, and baseball cards (Dodgers, of course).

Hull handed the boy several of each, and fastened a bracelet around his wrist. The child stopped sobbing and left, but he quickly returned with his brother and two sisters. They stood in the doorway, as Hull reached back into the box, continuing what the policy papers call “community-based policing.”