Woman’s Suit Against LAPD Is Reinstated

A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit filed by a South-Central Los Angeles woman who claimed that Los Angeles police officers trashed her apartment during a crackdown on violent street gangs, known as Operation Sunrise. Betty Jones’ residence on West 85th Street was one of 97 homes raided by more than 200 police and FBI agents on April 1, 1995 in an operation aimed primarily at the Eight-Tray Gangster Crips.

In a suit for damages in Los Angeles federal court, Jones said that a dozen police officers barged into her apartment, broke down doors for which there were keys, destroyed property and urinated into a steam iron.

U.S. District Court Judge James M. Ideman dismissed the suit in 1966 on a motion by the city attorney’s office, which went unopposed by Jones’ lawyer, Stephen Yagman. Yagman later contended that he had not received advance notice of the dismissal motion, a claim disputed by the city’s lawyers. They produced a signed receipt from an employee at his Venice law office.

But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled this week that the suit should be reinstated. Citing the accounts by Jones and others, the court said “this evidence raises a genuine issue of material fact as to the reasonableness of the officers’ conduct.”