Battering Ram Nets 2 Women, 3 Children, Criticism

“Rock houses”--fortified dwellings from which drugs are sold--are generally operated by several armed young men who sell their merchandise through a slot in a front door.

But when Los Angeles police used an armored military vehicle with a 14-foot battering ram to smash down the wall of a suspected Pacoima rock house Wednesday night, the only occupants were two women and three small children, two of whom were eating ice cream.

Despite an extensive search of the house, the only drug found was a small amount of marijuana. There were no guns.

The raid and the use of the armored vehicle--whose occupants included Police Chief Daryl F. Gates--drew criticism Thursday from the residents of the home and from neighbors in the 13000 block of Louvre Street.

The home was left with a gaping hole in a front room used by the children as a play area.

Tom Montgomery, vice president of the NAACP’s San Fernando Valley chapter, called the raid “ridiculous” as he looked at the damage Thursday.

“We want to take steps to make sure that Daryl Gates doesn’t do this again,” he said.

Children Had Been in Room

Delores Langford, who was visiting the home with her two children at the time of the raid, said, “Just two minutes before they did this, the children were in the room” that was hit by the battering ram.

Shaking visibly, Langford said the children left the front room only because she called her two children into the kitchen “to give them some ice cream” and a resident of the home, Linda Brown, “called her son in to feed him dinner.”

Brown, 24, was arrested for child endangering, and her 5-year-old son was taken into protective custody, police said.

Police arrested Brown’s husband, Antonio Johnson, 25, who was not at home at the time of the raid, on suspicion of sale of cocaine based upon what officers said was an earlier undercover purchase of cocaine from the home.

Gates on Thursday defended the raid, saying undercover officers recently purchased cocaine from the home, which was fortified with steel bars and a steel door.

Asked why officers didn’t arrest Johnson at the time of the alleged purchase, Gates said: “Because we want to close them down.”

Residents of the home and neighbors denied that drugs were being sold from the house and said the steel bars and doors provided protection.

Similar protective equipment can be seen on other houses in the neighborhood, a low-income area of the East San Fernando Valley. Several neighbors said they did not see an unusual amount of traffic to and from the house, a possible sign of drug transactions.

Brown said she and Langford were talking Wednesday night when suddenly, she heard a noise and looked out the window. She said neither woman heard police announce their presence.

“All I could see was this big tank coming up in the yard,” Brown said.

“Then a gun came through here,” Langford said, pointing at the kitchen window. “We jumped up and ran. My oldest son started screaming ‘Mom! Mom! Mom!’ I grabbed my son and was laying on him, and my other son, I had my legs wrapped around him.” She said that because of the confusion she was not sure at what point the vehicle entered the front room.

Langford’s oldest son, Dyvon, 9, had taken his ice cream into the living room of the house when officers suddenly shattered the glass in the barred kitchen window and the living room. They pointed a gun at him and shouted, “Don’t move,” Langford said.

“Shut up! Shut up! You know what’s going on here,” Langford quoted the officers as saying. “We kept saying, ‘Please don’t shoot.’ ”

“They came in with real big guns. They had us in the corner at gunpoint. They didn’t warn us or nothing. They didn’t talk on those blow horns. They didn’t hand us no warrant or anything,” Brown said.

Asked why no drugs were found in the house, Gates said, “I suspect they’re sold out. That happens all the time.”

Gates refused to say if any precautions were taken to protect the children.

“The proof of the pudding is no one was injured,” he said.

Francis Johnson, the mother of the arrested man, said the house’s window bars and steel doors were on the house when her son moved in about six months ago.

Officers, including members of the Special Weapons And Tactics unit, surrounded the house at 7:30 p.m. and then announced their presence over a bullhorn. They then lobbed a diversionary explosive device into the house, said Cmdr. William Booth. Moments later, the armored vehicle crashed through the wall, Booth said.

Brown and Antonio Johnson were booked at the Van Nuys Jail. Both were freed Thursday--Johnson on $5,000 bail and Brown on $3,000 bail. The child remained in custody.

Booth said narcotics paraphernalia and accounting sheets police believe are “records of narcotics transactions” also were found inside the home, which was searched on a warrant.

“Our effort last night was designed to notify rock house dealers through the media that we are not going to put up with it. The message has to go out: ‘If you don’t want a battering ram breaking down your wall and SWAT coming through your doors, don’t deal dope,’ ” Gates said at a news conference at Erwin C. Piper Technical Center in downtown Los Angeles, where the military vehicle is stored.

Police said the vehicle, a converted military V-100 used in the Vietnam War as an escort convoy, was lent to the police department for use in providing security during the Olympic Games last summer. It is now on indefinite loan to the department, which added the battering ram.

Gates said the vehicle allows police to penetrate a rock house’s heavy fortifications without endangering officers. He said previous efforts to arrest suspects in drug busts have resulted in at least two officers being seriously injured. Additionally, he said, in fortified drug-sale houses, drugs are generally sold through a slot in the door, making if difficult to identify the dealer.

Also, the vehicle gains access to a home so quickly that occupants have no chance to destroy evidence, Gates said.

Antonio Johnson called the drug allegations “a lie” in an interview.

“I don’t have no drugs. I don’t even use cocaine,” he said.

Brown said in a telephone interview that Johnson had lived in the rented house since July. Brown moved into the home in December, shortly after the couple’s marriage.

“It’s just not fair the way they did this house and the way they did us,” Brown said. “They said that they bought cocaine from this house. That’s what they say, which is not true, ma’am. It’s not true. I would swear on my grandmother’s grave, that is not true. This house was like this when he moved here; the bars and everything were here,” Brown said.

Francis Johnson said her son is disabled from a 1980 automobile accident in which his legs were crushed and that he lives on disability. She said he purchased the 1976 Cadillac in the home’s driveway in 1979, saving the $4.50 an hour he earned as a janitor before the accident.

Asked whether the city is liable for the damages caused to the Pacoima home, Gates refused to comment.

Mike Wilkinson, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said the issue is a hazy one.

The state Penal Code stipulates: “Any peace officer who has reasonable cause to believe that a person to be arrested has committed a public offense may use reasonable force to effect the arrest, to prevent escape or to overcome resistance.”

What is not clear, Wilkinson said, is the definition of reasonable force.

“That is something that is grist for many long law review articles. It really is something that is hard to boil down to any hard and fast rules,” Wilkinson said.

Anyone who wanted to sue the city for what he considered to be unreasonable force in a case like Wednesday’s raid would first be required to file a claim for damages with the city clerk’s office, which would refer the matter to the city attorney’s office. If the city attorney’s office declined to file a claim, the victims would have six months to file a lawsuit.