Methadone Clinic’s Location Generates Neighborhood Furor

LONG BEACH — Robert, a tall, scraggly man in a plaid shirt and blue baseball cap, wants to get heroin out of his life.

He said he became an addict as a teen-ager and later turned to crime to support his habit. Nine of his 49 years have been spent in prison for burglary, forgery and drug dealing.

Now, Robert said, he has gone straight. The Long Beach resident has a steady job installing insulation. And he said he is starting “detox”--a 21-day program that substitutes methadone for deadly heroin.

He began treatments this week at the West County Medical Clinic, a methadone center adjoining the Carmelitos public housing project off Atlantic Avenue.

Mixed With Cherry Juice

Owner Steve Watt said there are about 300 other former heroin addicts like Robert who show up for a daily dose of methadone, which is mixed with cherry juice and taken orally from a plastic cup.

Carol, another recovering heroin addict, said people who use the clinic are trying to turn their lives around.

“We’re not out there robbing. We’re not out there stealing,” the 47-year-old Long Beach woman said.

She said she turned to heroin when her son was murdered eight years ago: “If I (still needed) to get high, I wouldn’t be coming here.”

But Councilman Edd Tuttle said he thinks the clinic could be cultivating crime in North Long Beach. At a City Council meeting Tuesday, he asked the city manager to report on whether people from the methadone center are suspected of committing crimes in the housing project or surrounding neighborhoods.

Tuttle said he also wants to know why the center was allowed to locate in the densely populated area in the first place. And he wants to know whether the city can revoke the center’s license “to do away with a public nuisance.”

The councilman said he suspects that a recent upsurge in drug dealing in the housing project may be related to the presence of the methadone center. He said he believes that most of the center’s addicts are not even from Long Beach but from cities to the north such as Compton, Lynwood and South Gate.

A restaurant a few blocks north of the center has had a problem with thefts from cars, which Tuttle said could be related to the center. Also, Viki Anson, an antiques dealer on nearby Market Street, said an armed robbery at her store about two months ago was committed by an addict whom she suspects may have patronized the clinic.

Watt denied that any of his addicts were involved in the crimes. He pointed out that the clinic closes at 1:30 p.m. on weekdays, hours before drug dealers routinely appear in the parking lots of the Carmelitos project.

Virtually All From Long Beach

Watt said that virtually all of his addicts are Long Beach residents and that other addicts can find treatment in their own communities.

There are 31 methadone centers in Los Angeles County, including two others in Long Beach and one in nearby Lynwood, said Dr. Imra Strantz, the county’s drug-abuse program director.

Watt said the North Long Beach center’s location was chosen largely because it is accessible to addicts in that part of the community. He has invested $60,000 in improvements in the old beige stucco building and said he does not want to move.

He accused Tuttle of trying to grandstand on an issue that the councilman knows nothing about.

The center reduces crime, Watt said, because heroin addicts no longer need to steal and rob to support $100-a-day habits.

“If I cut those people off now, they are going to revert to their life of crime,” he said. “Just saying ‘no’ is not going to work on a 25-year heroin addict.”

Watt said his clinic has treated 12,000 addicts in its eight-year history. The clinic was in offices on nearby Market Street before moving six years ago to the Atlantic Plaza address.

Model AIDS Testing Program

He said his clinic is one of 50 around the nation recent to offer a model program for monitoring acquired immune deficiency syndrome, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Starting in June, he said, AIDS testing will be performed on addicts.

Watt also received a letter from police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley in December that thanked him for briefing officers on methadone treatment programs. Sgt. Gary Halliday, an aide to Binkley, noted that the clinic is in a crime-plagued area and that it will be hard to determine whether crimes have been committed by its patrons.

Strantz said the clinic is one of several in the county that receives funds for treating indigent drug abusers. The center is “a new contract agency, and they are doing very well,” she said.

In general, she said, people support methadone treatment centers--as long as they are somewhere besides their own neighborhoods.