City Attorney’s Battle Plan Against Cocaine Outlets Founders in Court

Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn on Wednesday announced a plan to clamp down on motels, apartment buildings and other residences where rock cocaine is sold--but it immediately foundered in the courts.

Backed enthusiastically by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Hahn launched the narcotics abatement unit of city lawyers who will go to court to shut down what Hahn called “cesspools of drug dealing” throughout the city.

Hahn immediately sent a deputy to court for a restraining order. But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kurt Lewin was unimpressed with the urgency of the problem or the solution touted by Hahn.

Lewin declined a request by Deputy City Atty. Kevin T. Ryan for temporary restraining orders to force owners and operators of the “rental rock houses” to eliminate drug dealing immediately or face closure. Instead, he scheduled a court hearing for Feb. 16 on six suits filed by Hahn’s new unit.

The next round for the city attorney’s office will be to persuade the judge to issue a restraining order at that hearing.

‘Drug-Related Activity’

Later Wednesday, a Times reporter visited some of the sites targeted by Hahn and saw what neighbors called “drug-related activity.” Wads of bills were exchanged surreptitiously near a motel, and pedestrians and automobiles, passing by in a stream, stopped at an apartment building suspected of being a drug sale site.

“I’m surprised they haven’t closed it earlier,” said Lorenzo Gregg, 32, one of a small group of local residents who gathered outside the Gates Hotel, 7814 Figueroa St., to listen to Hahn and Bradley. “There has been a lot of drug trafficking, people getting killed, shot. It’s bad for the community. You can’t even walk around at night.”

“We are not going to quit until we have made every neighborhood in this city safe and secure for decent, law-abiding citizens,” Bradley said.

The two officials and police were applauded by members of the Western Heights Neighborhood Assn. who waved a placard proclaiming opposition to rock houses, places where cocaine is sold.

Deputy Police Chief Glen Levant, who said police made 58,000 drug arrests and closed 500 rock houses last year, said Hahn’s efforts represent the first attack on the motels. He said 200 motels and other sites have been identified throughout the city as places where drug dealers operate.

The Gates Motel, where more than 60 arrests have been made in the last two years, was one of six sites Hahn’s office attempted to close to drug dealers Wednesday.

Civil suits were filed against owners and operators of each targeted location under the state’s relatively new Controlled Substances Abatement Act.

Patterned after the state’s 1912 Red Light Abatement Act, which allowed authorities to put houses of prostitution out of business as public nuisances, the law enables a judge to padlock the premises of a motel or house used for drug trafficking if owners ignore court orders to abate the nuisance.

Those found in contempt of court orders banning illegal activity can be fined from $500 to $10,000 under the drug abatement law.

“We have no desire to deny anyone the use of their business or home,” Hahn said. “ . . . But the drug trafficking problem in this city is too serious, too menacing and too urgent for us to keep fighting with one hand tied behind our back.”

In addition to the 12-unit Gates Motel, which Hahn termed “one of the worst locations,” the suits seek to curtail drug dealing at:

- The 15-unit Mid-Town Motel, 730 S. Alvarado St., where 19 arrests were made last year;

- A 10-unit apartment building, 2922 S. Budlong Ave., where 52 arrests were made in six months;

- Five adjoining dwellings at 3847-3849 S. Western Ave., with 30 arrests in 18 months;

- A house at 1733 Longwood Ave., with 10 arrests in two years;

- Another single family dwelling at 2179 W. 21st St., where 15 arrests have been made since June.

Hahn said he hopes his special unit can file suits against similar sites every month.

Ernest Moszzkley, a security guard at the Dr. Ruth Temple Health Center near the Western Avenue site, said young men run through the clinic when the purported “crack house” across the street is raided.

“The police make sweeps,” he said. “But (the dealers) are like rats. They come back.”