Surveillance

Whenever the telephone rings, William Arias changes from a smiling, easygoing young man to darn near a nervous wreck. For several months, Arias has worn an electronic surveillance anklet while serving a jail sentence at home for drunk driving. That means authorities check on him several times a day and can call at any time. He takes the calls armed with a tall glass of water. He says his mouth gets dry just thinking about being taken back to jail before the anklet comes off in early December.

Gardena police are taking law enforcement in a new direction: Instead of just tailing the bad guys, they're tracking the good ones. Using a system like the one used to recover stolen cars, Gardena is monitoring the movement of its patrol cars, prisoner transport vehicle and undercover detectives. It is the first law enforcement agency in the nation to use the high-tech system to follow its police force. "I feel more comfortable using Teletrac," said Officer Nick Pepper.

France on Friday announced that it will no longer take part in allied aerial patrols over northern Iraq--a move again marking France's political distance from the United States and highlighting a very independent notion of French interests. Unlike "Operation Provide Comfort," the original, U.S.

Two Los Angeles City Council members proposed Wednesday installing cameras at problem intersections to photograph drivers speeding through red lights who would then get a $103 ticket through the mail. Taking the lead from such cities as New York and San Francisco, council members Laura Chick and Nate Holden proposed the monitoring system in hopes of reducing fatal traffic accidents at problem intersections.

The Clinton administration has sharply increased use of federal telephone wiretaps and other electronic surveillance in the United States since taking office, and official estimates foresee that the growth will continue in coming years. The expansion has been driven in large part by stepped-up use of electronic eavesdropping against narcotics traffickers.

With spying on Soviet military targets a thing of the past, U.S. surveillance satellites will focus more on environmental threats to world stability such as erupting volcanoes and shifting desert sands, CIA Director John M. Deutch said Thursday in Beverly Hills.

The red and white banners hang from street lights like a row of urban scarecrows, declaring this Parthenia Street neighborhood in Northridge an "LAPD Video Zone" and warning would-be criminals: "Buy Drugs, Go to Jail." But how well the signs work may depend on how long it takes for criminals to learn that there are, as yet, no video cameras. And even after they are installed--when is still undecided--the videotapes will be monitored by a civilian volunteer, not police.

The red and white banners hang from street lights like a row of urban scarecrows, declaring this Parthenia Street neighborhood an "LAPD Video Zone" and warning would-be crooks: "Buy Drugs, Go to Jail." But how well the signs work may depend on how long it takes the would-be criminals to learn the secret behind this latest crime-fighting tool: there are no video cameras.

There is no training manual for rookie cops sent back to high school as undercover narcs. But the really important rules can be learned more quickly than algebra. * Whenever possible, address authority figures as "dude." * Speak frequently about the band Rancid and how incredibly hard they rock.