$3-Million Settlement Accepted in Police Raid

Calling the city’s offer a “devastating admission” of “rampant lawlessness” by Los Angeles police, residents of a Dalton Avenue neighborhood said Monday that they will accept a $3-million settlement for damages they suffered during a 1988 drug raid by officers who wrecked their apartments and beat several residents.

Some of the 55 residents who filed suit in the case said the city’s settlement offer--believed to be a record--is inadequate. However, one of their lawyers, George V. Denny III, said that in the end, “the clients decided to take the bird in the hand” rather than await the uncertainties of further litigation.

More than 80 police officers from the department’s Southwest Division stormed and wrecked two four-unit apartment houses near the Coliseum during an “orgy of violence” in which residents were punched, kicked, choked and insulted, according to their federal court lawsuit. Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, while never commenting on the specific charges by the residents, did concede that the raid “got out of control.”

Residents accused the officers of hurling a washing machine into a bathtub, pouring bleach over clothes, smashing walls, plumbing and furniture with sledgehammers and ripping a staircase from the side of a building. Residents also reported that officers spray painted walls with slogans such as “LAPD rules.”

The damage was so great that the Red Cross offered disaster assistance to the occupants of the raided apartments. Police at first blamed the damage on gang members, but later admitted that officers were at least partially responsible.

Gates said the officers may have overreacted to a rumor that someone had called the department’s Southwest Division a few days before the raid, threatening to kill a police officer.

Allegations of brutality, property destruction and other complaints against officers involved in the raid were investigated by the department. The chief eventually concluded that 38 officers broke departmental rules. In all, 22 were suspended for up to 22 days without pay and two others resigned.

Four officers still face court prosecution on misdemeanor counts, and a federal grand jury has been looking into the incident.

The settlement accepted Monday includes the $3 million, to be divided unequally by the 55 plaintiffs, plus “reasonable”--and as yet unspecified--attorneys’ fees and costs. City Atty. James K. Hahn said it was the largest settlement of its kind by the city that he knows of.

The attorneys, who held a news conference at Dalton Avenue and 39th Street Monday to announce that the settlement will be accepted, declined to discuss what the attorneys’ fees and costs might be. However, Thomas Beck, who also represented some of the residents, estimated last week that the fees for the 10 attorneys would total about $500,000, with additional costs totaling about $10,000.

John Burton, lead lawyer in the suit, said the plaintiffs had yet to decide how the money will be divided, but he speculated that the individual amounts would range from a minimum “in the area of $10,000” to a maximum “in excess of $100,000.”

Burton stressed that all of the plaintiffs had agreed to the $3-million settlement, but two of them, Hildebrandt Flowers and Rhonda Moore, told reporters they feel the figure is too low.

“I accepted it because the majority accepted it,” Flowers said. “But it’s not even a tap on the wrist to those officers, because it’s not coming out of their pockets.”

“It isn’t enough,” Moore added. “But if the case goes on and on, they probably won’t give us anything.”

The “Dalton Avenue Raid,” as it came to be known, was scheduled after Officer Carl A. Sims, a narcotics investigator, submitted a search-warrant affidavit describing the apartments as stash houses for gang members who sold narcotics on the street.

A departmental investigation later determined that Sims’ affidavit falsely claimed that there had been formal complaints of narcotics and other criminal activity outside the apartments and that an undercover officer had purchased rock cocaine there on “numerous” occasions.

Sims was suspended from duty for two days without pay after the officer heading the departmental investigation characterized his inaccuracies as “minor.”

But at the time Sims requested the warrant, no one questioned the validity of his affidavit. Warrant in hand, the officers from the Southwest Division descended on the Dalton Avenue neighborhood, arresting both inhabitants of the apartments and people who showed up outside.

Flowers said he had stopped by to “see what was going on” when officers “grabbed me, kicked my feet out from under me . . . and beat the hell out of me. . . .”

Flowers conceded that police knew him well from previous arrests.

“I’m not saying I’m no angel, ‘cause I’m not,” he said. “But there was no justification for this.”