DRUG COPS SWAMPED BLIGHT PERSISTS, OVERWHELMING CITY'S CAMPAIGN TO DISLODGE DEALERS.

Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer

Drug houses have continued to flourish in many parts of Los Angeles despite a 4-year-old city task force that has made hundreds of arrests and forced landlords to evict drug dealers.

Since 1997, the task force of the Los Angeles Police Department, city attorneys and building inspectors has forced more than 900 evictions and closed 200 drug houses citywide, 35 percent of which were in the San Fernando Valley. Since 1998, the unit has made more than 900 arrests with more than one-third of those in the Valley.

``We're making narcotics abatement a priority,'' said LAPD Capt. Walter Schick, the commanding officer of the Narcotics Division's Field Enforcement Section. ``There's a new focus on making rock houses go away permanently.''

Despite the assault on drug houses, dealers have simply set up shop at new locations. Investigators still are deluged with complaints about drug houses and say dealers are getting more aggressive while the number of officers assigned exclusively to drug cases dwindles because of reassignments to beef up police patrols.

The city's answer is the Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program, a task force formed in 1997, to make an all-out push on drug houses.

In addition to police efforts, the task force uses civil law to force drug dealers' evictions and make property owners clean up and renovate rentals as a way to root out trouble. Under the law, the city can go as far as demolishing a building to solve nuisance properties.

While neighborhood activists welcome the actions, some are frustrated with a city bureaucracy that doesn't always listen or can't always respond quickly enough to complaints.

``We often have meetings with the police and ask them how come they don't respond,'' said Margarita Diaz of Familias Unidas, a grass-roots group of 15 mothers fighting crime in North Hills. ``We need better cooperation between residents and the police.''

Assistant City Attorney Mary Claire Molidor, the task force director, is sympathetic.

``It's a constant mantra that we want residents to participate in city government,'' she said. ``Yet when residents hear things and see things, and we're not able to act on them quickly, people get frustrated.''

But police say they are committed to investigating complaints promptly and are working to shut down drug house activities permanently.

North Hills in crossfire 

The epicenter of drug activity in the Valley is North Hills, a community with the most police calls for service in the Valley and a well-known open- air drug market.

Police believe there are at least 40 drug houses that remain unidentified in the North Hills and Panorama City areas alone. Given the high amount of street sales surrounding these properties, investigators believe the supply is coming from someplace nearby.

But the short-staffed police drug units, which have been slashed to put officers on patrol, are already juggling multiple cases and haven't yet begun to investigate these suspected drug houses.

``We try to identify and eradicate these locations as best we can,'' said LAPD Detective Rob Holcomb, a supervisor in the Valley's Field Enforcement Section. ``We're not holding back the tide.''

As a result, some residents' complaints, many of which may be perfectly legitimate, fall to the bottom of police priority lists, Holcomb said.

So far this year, the Valley Narcotics Bureau has received more than 300 complaints of narcotics activities. The police estimate they will receive up to 500 such complaints by year's end.

``The majority of complaints are good,'' Holcomb said. ``It's just that people don't have enough for us to act on immediately, and therefore the complaint goes to bottom of the list, unfortunately.''

Drug dealers are increasingly using apartments as their drug headquarters, police say, because they're off the street behind security gates, far from LAPD patrols.

Because of the pressure to keep drugs out, some apartment managers have also begun to keep a watchful eye on their tenants. Miguel Loera, a North Hills apartment complex manager, recently had nine cameras installed to keep an eye out for suspected drug dealing in his complex.

``They don't work, but they pay the rent,'' Loera said. ``I've called the police several times. They ask me to get their driver's license plates and descriptions. What do they want me to do, put handcuffs on them and hold them until they get here?''

As street sales increase, so do the numbers of drug houses, police said. And fueling a rise in street dealing is the recruitment of Mexican immigrants by midlevel dealers with the lure of quick cash for selling $10 and $20 bags of crack on the sidewalks outside drug houses.

``A lot of recent immigrants are hired by gang members who train them as front-line street dealers,'' Holcomb said. ``We literally get guys with no shoes, Mexican money in their pocket and 100 bucks on them. They tell them that it's easy money and there's hardly any police around.''

Regular undercover police stings net the street dealers, but linking them to the suppliers is difficult.

``A lot of these street dealers, they don't know where they're getting the drugs from,'' Holcomb said. ``All they know is to look for a guy in a cowboy hat. They don't know where he lives.''

When they do find the source, authorities are successful in forcing dealers out.

The task force has mailed more than 900 eviction letters to suspected drug dealers and property owners across the city since 1997, and has forced landlords to clean up more than 386 properties across the city in the last two years. And the task force has forced the demolition of 71 properties across the city, including 21 in the Valley.

Property owners are beginning to take notice. Last month, the City Attorney's Office sent property owner Ron Feinstein a letter notifying him that a tenant had been arrested in connection with dealing dope out of an apartment unit and suggested measures to quell the activity.

``The next day, I sent it to my attorney and asked him to start eviction proceedings,'' said Feinstein, who owns four properties in North Hills and Van Nuys, and is getting video cameras installed in one complex because of suspected drug activities. ``We contacted the tenant, and ... several days later, they moved out. I was tickled pink.''

The City Attorney's Office is usually successful in forcing dealers out within weeks, but closing an abatement case on a property with problems can take months. Such cases usually require a barrage of Planning Department paperwork, police surveillance information and arrests, and a history from the Planning Department, authorities said.

Hard to close cases

Opening abatement cases requires solid evidence of illicit activities, but closing such cases is getting more difficult, a problem exacerbated by the dwindling numbers of specialized police officers.

``As the specialized units are cut off and put into patrol, the expertise and undercover status needed for drug cases has been severely reduced,'' said Molidor, who added she also understands the importance of filling the ranks of patrol cops.

Police credit the task force with blowing away a dark cloud that has infected North Hills for so many years.

Apartments have been refurbished. Neighborhood coalitions have been formed. People are living there longer.

A Nuisance Abatement Program survey showed in 1997 only 30 percent of schoolchildren enrolled at Langdon Street Elementary School re-enrolled in the next school year, indicating that families weren't staying very long.

In 1999, that number rose to 60 percent.

The vacancy rate in several dozen apartment complexes was 50 percent in 1997. By 1999, that rate had dropped to 5 percent.

``The City Attorney's Office has made an incredible difference over there,'' said LAPD Sgt. Ernie Jimenez, who patrolled the streets of North Hills as its senior lead officer.

``The buildings have been cleaned up. It's well-lit at night. The problems have kind of moved from the areas we worked on.''

CAPTION(S):

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Box: DRUG HOUSES BY THE NUMBERS

Source: Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program

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