Police Knock Down a Wall and Pick Up 16 Drug Suspects

Police rolled out their battering ram again Friday to break into a suspected South-Central Los Angeles “rock house,” where 16 people were arrested, investigators said. They said the house was frequented by students from a nearby high school.

It was the fourth time police have used the ram and, in terms of arrests, it was by far the most successful one. Detectives confiscated three grams of “rock” cocaine, a loaded shotgun, a loaded .38-caliber revolver and assorted drug paraphernalia in the raid.

Acting on tips they had received from the community, narcotics detectives used the motorized ram to smash open the windowless, storefront office building at 4066 S. Central Ave., which housed two crude interior cages where investigators said drug transactions were made.

Police said they had information that a customer had been shot inside one of the cages during a drug deal Wednesday night, but investigators did not know how seriously the victim--who never reported the incident--might have been hurt.

School 2 Blocks Away

Capt. Noel Cunningham, field commander for the Police Department’s Narcotics Division, said drugs were sold from the location around the clock. He said students from nearby Jefferson High School, two blocks east on Hooper Avenue, comprised a significant portion of the suspected dealers’ business.

Doug Urschel, the narcotics detective who prepared the search warrant that paved the way for Friday’s raid, said investigators were tipped to the operation by a woman “who said there were heavy cocaine sales there, and they’re selling to the Jefferson High School students.”

“What upset her was that that Jefferson High School kids would go there before class and get high before school,” Urschel said. “And then they would come back during school.”

Urschel said an informant who had viewed the operation from the inside told police that as many as 25 Jefferson students at a time would be in the rock house.

“It was a favorite place because they (the dealers) supplied you with the pipes (to smoke, or free-base, the highly refined cocaine),” Urschel said.

Cunningham said a police SWAT team notified the occupants over a loud speaker during the midday operation, just before the battering ram--mounted on a former Army armored personnel carrier--was used to smash a gaping hole in a wall at the rear of the building.

Of the 16 people arrested, 13 were alleged customers.

“This was also a location where the buyers could come in and safely smoke their dope” in a dimly lit room in the back of the building, Cunningham said.

The captain added that it was the busiest rock house that narcotics investigators have encountered so far. However, he did not estimate how much money the suspects were taking in.

Watched Action

Most of the hundreds of neighborhood residents who watched the raid on the store, which had a sign advertising that the location was an office for insurance and income tax services, declined to answer reporters’ questions about the alleged drug transactions.

Those who agreed to be interviewed, however, expressed support for the police action and agreed with the tactics used to get into the building.

“Maybe they need to do this to get them all off the street,” Bill Nowell, 21, said. “I got kids coming up in this neighborhood. I might have to go out there (after suspected drug dealers) vigilante-style.”

“They (police) are just doing their job,” added Alan Thomas, 23. “I saw a lot of people going in and out. But I think it’s going to be right back the way it was next week.”

However, Red Jones, 18, saw the problem differently, saying: “You have to put some jobs down here so the brothers won’t be selling no rocks.”

Women Seized

The suspects arrested ranged in age from 21 to 62, Cunningham said. Six were women, he added.

Police did not immediately release the names of the suspects or what charges were being sought against them.

Initial use of the battering ram earlier this year in Pacoima prompted numerous complaints from civil rights activists and a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. However, those complaints lessened when many Los Angeles residents expressed support for the ram in the fight against widespread neighborhood drug trafficking.