Experts Question Use of Explosives in Siege Situation

The use of explosives by Philadelphia police in a confrontation with a radical group raises serious questions about tactics in siege situations, law enforcement officials and experts said Tuesday.

The explosive device dropped by a police helicopter on the heavily fortified house of the MOVE organization touched off a conflagration that destroyed or damaged 60 other homes in a Philadelphia neighborhood Monday. The device was called a percussion grenade by Mayor W. Wilson Goode on Monday, but a police spokesman described it more precisely on Tuesday as Tovex, a blasting agent used in mining operations.

“To drop a bomb on a building raises questions of recklessness,” said Hubert Williams, president of the Washington-based Police Foundation and former Newark, N.J., police director. While stressing that “I wasn’t there and I don’t know all of the complexities involved,” Williams said in an interview that “the duty of police first is to protect other lives” and that “you cannot and should not expose innocent people to those kinds of hazards.”

Use of such explosives, he added, “constitutes a rare type of situation which I consider to be extremely hazardous and reckless. . . . It poses serious questions that have to be raised by law enforcement officials.”

‘A Tough Decision’

Many police officials, including Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, gingerly handled questions on the Philadelphia department’s tactics. “I don’t think anyone should make judgments based on the information we have at this point,” Gates said in an impromptu press conference before a Police Commission meeting. “It was a tough decision they had to make.”

Asked if the Los Angeles Police Department’s highly publicized motorized battering ram would have been a better way to assault the Philadelphia fortress, Gates replied: “It certainly is an excellent way to get in. . . . It puts a nice-size hole in the wall for us.”

However, he added, “most people realize that there are situations in their communities that have to be dealt with in a very aggressive manner. Others sit back in their armchairs and . . . criticize everything the police do.”

Harsh Criticism

Other officials leveled harsh criticism at the Philadelphia police tactics. New York Mayor Edward I. Koch said: “If I had a police commissioner so stupid to allow a bomb to be thrown into a house, I would remove him.”

Burton Caine, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the bombing “totally unjustified.”

“Trained public safety officials should have known that the dropping of a bomb onto a row house--full of ammunition and other explosives--in a tightly compacted area . . . is like lighting a match in a room full of gas,” Caine said.

Jonathan Rubinstein, a law enforcement consultant who authored a 1973 study critical of Philadelphia police, said the incident was “a military act by a civilian force. . . . There was absolutely no justification for it. It was a grave error.”

‘Could Have Starved Them’

“There were any number of ways the police could have taken action,” he added. “They couldn’t have mounted a direct assault without sustaining terrible casualties . . . but they could have starved them out. It might have been three or four months or maybe a week” but it would have avoided what he called “a disaster for race relations (with) ramifications far beyond Philadelphia.”

Mark Zecca, a former Philadelphia prosecutor and Justice Department official who now is a Washington attorney, said: “The important thing now is to figure out how to pick up the pieces and find out how better to handle these situations.”

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Ed Davis, now a state senator, said in a telephone interview from his Sacramento office that “I don’t think anyone would deliberately use any tactic that would burn down homes.”

When Davis was chief, six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army died in a gun battle and ensuing fire that erupted after police surrounded their Los Angeles house on May 17, 1974. Investigators said the fire may have been started by the heat of a tear gas canister, and Davis said that led to development of tear gas devices that do not pose a fire threat. “We did a lot of testing,” Davis said. “We carefully tried to do everything we could to protect people and property.”

Times Staff Writers Andy Furillo, in Los Angeles, and Ronald J. Ostrow, in Washington, contributed to this story.