Commission Urged to Limit Police’s Use of Battering Ram

Carrying placards and singing “We Shall Overcome,” nearly 100 representatives of Pacoima religious, civil rights and community groups attended the Los Angeles Police Commission meeting Monday to ask the panel to limit police use of a motorized battering ram that was employed against a suspected drug “rock house.”

Jose De Sosa, president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the NAACP, 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.

His request was seconded by representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Pacoima Ministers Assn.

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

The vehicle was used for the first time during the Pacoima raid, which resulted in two arrests but reportedly netted only a small amount of drugs. The only occupants of the home were two women and three children. None of them was hurt.

Police officials later said they had been unaware that there were any children present when they drove the armored vehicle with a 14-foot battering ram into a front room of the house, which police suspected was a rock house, a fortified dwelling where drugs are sold.

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.”

De Sosa said the commission should prohibit the use of the battering ram and explosive devices that were 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,” he said. “We want to wipe it out too. But we do not want this deadly weapon . . . in Pacoima” or anywhere else.

Drug Pushers

Jeffrey Joseph, president of the Pacoima Ministers Assn., said use of the battering ram will 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.

Linda Brown and her husband, Antonio Johnson, the residents of the house, and Delores Langford, who was visiting 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 an alleged earlier sale at the house to an undercover officer. Both were released on bail.