Gang Raid Leaves Some Bad Feelings : Police: South-Central residents accuse officers of going overboard in their search. They also resent Chief Williams’ comparison of area to Beirut.

Some residents of neighborhoods targeted in a police crackdown on gangs last week are seething over Police Chief Willie L. Williams’ comparison of their neighborhoods to Beirut and said officers were heavy-handed in their execution of search warrants.

“This is an attempt to criminalize our people and suggests to others it’s OK to do the same,” Cal Burton, who is challenging Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, said Tuesday of Williams’ comment.

“He owes the people of South-Central an apology. We don’t have snipers, flamethrowers, rocket launchers. We don’t have terrorists kidnaping people and blowing up planes.”

Williams said through a spokesman late Tuesday that “gang members (in South-Central) are holding the community hostage much like people in Beirut held Americans hostage several years ago. Through drugs and crime, they have the community in fear, similar to the way they’re doing in Beirut.”

Cmdr. Tim McBride, a spokesman for Williams, said Tuesday that “if any citizens were offended by the reference to Beirut, then we apologize.” He added, however, that “if any country in the world had nearly 1,000 people die in murders like in Los Angeles, they would think they were in a war. The reference to Beirut is more in reference to the sense of fear in which many in the community live.”

Ridley-Thomas, who represents the area where the raids were focused, said he has received calls from constituents who said they were rousted out of bed. He said he plans to discuss each complaint with Williams.

“Having said that, the problem of gang violence is a very, very serious one,” Ridley-Thomas said. “Law enforcement has an important role to play in dealing with it. My constituents want this issue of gang violence dealt with.”

More than 800 officers from several agencies made 60 arrests Saturday in a crackdown on a Los Angeles street gang. Afterward, Williams told reporters: “We talk about Beirut. But we have neighborhoods like Beirut right here in Los Angeles, and we’re going to turn that around.”

That comment, Burton said, is “geared to inflame residents, but more importantly, it’s geared to make additional oppression of our communities possible.”

Williams told the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday that Saturday’s arrests came after a 2 1/2-year investigation, and that officers seized 60 to 75 weapons, two kilos of cocaine at one location and have made two or three additional arrests since Saturday.

Eight men arrested in the raids were arraigned Tuesday on charges that include attempted murder and possession of drugs for sale.

One resident filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking $50 million in damages from the city for destruction allegedly caused by police during the raid.

Betty Jones returned to her 85th Street home Saturday after working overnight to find it a shambles, said her attorney, Stephen Yagman.

Jones’ home, Yagman said, was “Daltonized”--a reference to a notorious LAPD raid on Dalton Street in 1988 when 80 police officers burst into two apartment buildings, wreaking destruction that left them uninhabitable.

He called police officers who conducted Saturday’s raid on Jones’ home “thugs,” adding: “Obviously, Willie Williams needs to be taught a lesson, and it’s this: ‘Don’t be a thug.’ ”

Yagman, who said he planned to file more cases stemming from the raid, added that he did not know if anyone had been in the home before Jones returned there or whether anyone had been arrested. In a neighborhood near Florence and Normandie avenues, a flash point for the 1992 riots, one resident, Sally Gladden, complained bitterly about the raid on her home.

Gladden said it looked as though 50 officers came to her residence on West 70th Street, armed with rifles and shotguns. “They put the weapons in my face,” said Gladden, 47. “They didn’t say who they were looking for, and they didn’t show me the search warrant until after they searched the house.”

She said her 25-year-old nephew, who has been in jail since November, belonged to a gang. “But no gang members live in my house,” she said. “Does anyone care that they put a gun in a woman’s face? Not a handgun, but such heavy artillery.

“If this crackdown was the result of a two-year investigation, as Chief Williams said, then why didn’t they know he was in jail?” she asked.

In a separate incident in the same neighborhood, a man said officers came to his home with a warrant for his 15-year-old brother, but the teen-ager is incarcerated at a county camp for youthful offenders.

Lamont Bennett, 20, said he was handcuffed after officers ordered him, his father, stepmother and 12-year-old sister out of the house.

“They took me down, did not read me my rights, held me for five hours and did not charge me,” he said.

Bennett said he has never been involved with the Eight-Tray Gangster Crips, the gang targeted in Saturday’s raids. Since the raid on his home, he said, his sister has been having nightmares.

Cheryl Johnson, who lives in the Fairfax district, said about 20 officers showed up at her apartment with rifles and shotguns, saying they were investigating her 20-year-old son who is on parole.

She said her son, who was not taken into custody, was paroled to her custody more than a year ago and has not missed a single meeting with his parole officer.

Nonetheless, she said, police--led by parole officers--used a battering ram on her apartment door. She said officers joked afterward, telling her: “At least we didn’t tear up your house.”

Johnson’s mother said that he has associated with Eight-Tray gang members in the past.