Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, Militarization, and Black Response to the Late Twentieth-Century War on Drugs

Abstract

In the winter of 1985 the Los Angeles Police Department (lapd) unveiled a signature new weapon in the city's drug war. With Chief Daryl F. Gates copiloting, the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (swat) used a fourteen-foot battering ram attached to an “armored vehicle” to break into a house in Pacoima. After tearing a “gaping hole” in one of the outside walls of the house, police found two women and three children inside, eating ice cream. swat uncovered negligible quantities of illicit drugs, and the district attorney subsequently declined to prosecute. In the days following the raid, black clergy and the San Fernando Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp) organized a protest rally in a local church. “We don't need new weapons to be tried out on us,” Rev. Jeffrey Joseph exclaimed. “Of all the methods that there are to arrest a person, they used a brand new toy.” Not all members of the African American community agreed, however. City councilman David Cunningham, who represented South Los Angeles, praised Gates's actions. “Go right ahead, Chief. You do whatever you can to get rid of these rock houses. They're going to destroy the black community if you don't.”1