Car Died at Rammed House : TV Broadcasts of Mistaken Arrest Anger Custodian

If the cliche about everyone eventually getting 15 minutes of fame is true, Jerry Effinger is fervently hoping his quarter-hour is up.

The 35-year-old Granada Hills school custodian has found himself in the spotlight virtually every time television news programs have aired stories about the controversial Los Angeles Police Department battering ram during the past 10 days.

Because his car stalled on a Pacoima street on Feb. 6 at the precise moment that the Police Department’s armored vehicle rolled up to an alleged cocaine “rock house,” Effinger was taken into custody by officers. Even worse, he was also photographed by TV news crews who had been invited by police to watch the raid.

Tapes Rebroadcast

Effinger was soon released by police. But tapes showing him being led away in handcuffs from the scene of the smashed house have been repeatedly rebroadcast as TV stations reported on the continuing dispute sparked by use of the unusual ramming device.

“It’s really embarrassing to me. It’s hurt my pride,” said Effinger, a father of eight who has worked four years as plant manager and a volunteer sports coach at the Tulsa Street Elementary School.

“The kids keep coming up to me at school and saying, ‘Jerry, I saw you on TV last night. What were you doing?’ I try to tell them it was a mistake. But I don’t know what their parents think or whether the kids understand what happened.”

What happened, said Effinger, is that his car stopped running in front of the targeted house on Louvre Street as he was driving to his sister’s home, which is a few blocks away. When he opened the hood to examine the engine, a policeman stepped out of the shadows and pointed a gun at his head.

“He said, ‘Pssst, don’t say anything. Follow me.’ He made me lie down on a lawn,” Effinger recalled Friday.

“Then I saw this tank with a long stem on front of it coming down the street. It drove up on the lawn and smashed into the house next to us. It wasn’t 15 feet away from me.”

When the dust settled, police ordered Effinger to accompany them into the smashed house.

“When I asked why they were taking me in there, they said they didn’t have anybody to watch me outside,” he said.

‘Kept Telling Them’

“I kept telling them that I didn’t have anything to do with drugs. I kept asking them to go check my car and they’d see it wouldn’t crank.”

Soon, Effinger was led out of the house and into the blazing television camera lights and was taken to the Foothill Division police station.

At the station house, officers concluded that Effinger had nothing to do with drugs or with the suspected “rock house” (so nicknamed because “rocks” of cocaine are traded through a slot in a heavily fortified door). But a computer check uncovered a two-year-old unpaid speeding ticket carrying a $171 bail. He would be held in jail until he paid it--and he only had about $100 with him.

Allowed one phone call, Effinger tearfully called Tulsa Street School Principal Ruth Bunyan when his home phone in North Hollywood turned out to be busy. Bunyan took the remaining $71 to the police station.

Principal’s Comment

“He told me it was a speeding ticket,” Bunyan said Friday. “But then, when I got back home and turned on the 11 o’clock news that night, there he was, being taken away in a drug raid. I nearly died.”

Police officials later confirmed to Bunyan and The Times that Effinger was held on a traffic warrant.

“Jerry is beloved by the kids,” Bunyan said. “He coaches the sixth-grade softball team and on his breaks and lunch hours he works with the kids on things like talent shows. He’s the kind of man who will come back nights to work when he doesn’t have to.

“He’s very depressed that they keep reshowing him being arrested every time there’s another story on TV about that battering ram.”

Angry at Police

Effinger said he also is angry that police “took me from the sidewalk and into the scene of a crime and made me look like I was a part of it. I’ve never been arrested before. I’ve never been to jail before.”

As for the controversial battering ram, the man who had one of the closest looks of it in action doesn’t think much of it, either.

“That ram is a dangerous thing. They should use another tactic,” Effinger said. “To come from nowhere like a falling star and smash into a house? That’s too dangerous.”