Panel Urged to Curb Police Use of Battering Ram

Carrying placards and singing “We Shall Overcome,” nearly 100 representatives of Pacoima religious, civil rights and community groups Monday asked the Los Angeles Police Commission to severely limit police use of the motorized battering ram that was used to smash down the wall of a suspected drug-sale house in Pacoima last week.

Jose De Sosa, president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, also asked the commission to publicly reprimand Police Chief Daryl F. Gates for “his reckless and unreasonable decision” to use the device in the Wednesday night raid. De Sosa’s request was echoed by representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Pacoima Ministers’ Assn.

Police Commission President Stephen D. Yslas said the commission would begin an immediate evaluation of the “criteria that went into the department’s use of this battering ram” and would “undertake to develop an appropriate set of criteria for this tank.”

First Use of Ram

The 14-foot battering ram attached to an armored military vehicle was used by the Police Department for the first time during the Pacoima raid, which netted only a small amount of drugs.

Gates, who was present at the hearing, was defensive about the raid, in which he participated.

“All this stuff just gives support to those people who are in those rock houses,” Gates said. “They are going to say, ‘Ho, ho, ho. All those people have come down and they’ve really told the chief, haven’t they? He’s not going to use the battering ram . . . because the community is against those things.’

“And quite frankly, community, if you don’t want us to use it, we won’t use it. But that means you’re going to have a proliferation of narcotics, and you’re going to have a proliferation of rock houses all over this city and all over this community. You make the choices.”

(“Rock houses” are heavily fortified dwellings in which drugs are sold through a slot in the door.)

Unaware Children Present

The only occupants of the home were two women and three children, two of whom were eating ice cream. No one was hurt. Police officials later said they had been unaware children were present at the time of the raid.

Carrying signs with such slogans as “No More Battering Ram or No More Gates” and “Will Your House Be Next?” the protesters filled the commission’s downtown meeting room to overflowing.

De Sosa said the commission should prohibit use of the battering ram and explosive devices used in the raid “unless it is necessary to prevent imminent harm or injury to officers, victims or innocent bystanders.”

“The entire community is much disturbed,” said the Rev. T. G. Pledger, vice president of the Pacoima Ministers’ Assn. “This is a total disgrace to the human race. We’re not here to indulge anybody in narcotics. We want to wipe it out, too. But we do not want this deadly weapon to happen no more in Pacoima and nowhere else in the world.”

Escalation of Weaponry Feared

Dr. Jeffrey Joseph, president of the ministers’ group, said use of the battering ram would lead to an escalation in the weaponry used by drug pushers.

“If you get a weapon like that, they will get hand grenades,” Joseph said.

Joseph said the raid may have harmed the children present. He said one of the children at the raid, when told that he and his mother would attend Monday’s Police Commission meeting, asked: “Are they going to shoot at us like they done the other night?”

“That child has already been hurt,” Joseph said. Those present in the house said officers pointed guns at them during the raid.

Occupants Arrested

Linda Brown and her husband, Antonio Johnson, the occupants of the alleged rock house, and Delores Langford, who was visiting the house with her two children at the time of the raid, were present at the hearing but did not speak.

Brown was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment. Johnson was arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine for sale based on the alleged earlier sale from the house to an undercover officer. Both were released on bail.

According to an affidavit filed in Van Nuys Municipal Court to justify searching the Louvre Street home, police received an anonymous phone call the week of Jan. 23 saying that narcotics were being sold from the house.