ACLU Asks Court to Bar LAPD’s Battering Ram

The Los Angeles Police Department’s use of a motorized, steel battering ram to storm the fortified residences of suspected drug dealers is “inherently dangerous” and should be declared unconstitutional, the California Supreme Court was told Monday.

“You can’t take a tank with a 14-foot battering ram and break through walls and not subject people on the other side to inordinate risk of injury or death,” American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Joan Howarth told the court. “It’s like driving a car through a wall.”

But Deputy Los Angeles City Atty. Jack L. Brown defended the controversial device, contending that it is sometimes necessary to use the ram to gain entrance to fortress-like drug operations and to reduce the danger of armed resistance by drug suspects.

“We’re not dealing with a peaches-and-cream situation,” Brown told the court. “Officers have families, too, and they don’t want to get killed either.”

The court heard arguments in a novel legal test of the use of the battering ram against so-called “rock houses,” where cocaine is sold in rock form.

Generally, the law allows police to break into residences to serve search warrants when denied entry. And courts have held that, under some circumstances, officers need not knock or issue warnings when there is valid reason to believe that they are in danger or that evidence will be destroyed.

But the ACLU argues that the Police Department’s use of the battering ram exceeds constitutional limits, violating state and federal guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

The ACLU brought suit against Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and other officials in behalf of a woman and her two children who were visiting a Pacoima home last year, when police, led by Gates, broke through a wall of the home with a ram mounted on an armored personnel carrier. A trace of cocaine was discovered but no weapons were found.

The justices have been asked to apply to this case the prohibitions against excessively intrusive searches that they established in a 1978 case, in which the conviction of a defendant charged with child molestation and incest was overturned because he was forced to undergo medical tests to obtain evidence linking him to the victim.

The ACLU contends that restraints against body searches should be applied to bar what it sees as excessively forceful searches of residences with the use of the battering ram.

Howarth argued Monday that, in addition to a regular search warrant for a residence, police should be required to obtain special judicial approval to use the battering ram--and, even then, still meet a long list of requirements to minimize the risk to occupants.

Authorities should be forced to point to specific suspects at such locations, where they intend to enter the premises and how they plan to avoid striking occupants or setting off fires or explosions, she said.

Asked by Justice Malcolm M. Lucas whether there were any circumstances in which she thought use of the ram would be legal, Howarth replied that it would be “very hard” to envision such a situation.

Brown, representing the city, conceded that the case presented an “image problem” for the Police Department. But he noted that the device had been used no more than six times and only when alternative methods had been ruled out.

Justice Joseph R. Grodin asked whether some form of prior judicial approval should not be required before using the device in view of its potential for injury.

“Images aside,” Grodin said, “if you bash through the door of somebody’s house, there’s got to be some risk.”

Brown replied that perhaps the police could “live with” such a requirement, provided it was narrowly and clearly drawn and did not hamper authorities in emergency situations.

The deputy city attorney also stressed that times had changed considerably from bygone days when citizens readily responded to the “constable’s knock.” Drug dealers now fortify their headquarters with massive wood beams and concrete blocks, solely to thwart or delay police searches, he said.

“We’re dealing with a situation where law enforcement officers are meeting an environment totally different from what they’ve encountered before,” Brown said.