The Region - News from March 14, 1986

A man arrested in a crackdown on fortified cocaine “rock houses” in which the Los Angeles police “battering ram” was employed was sentenced in Superior Court to four years in state prison for maintaining one such dwelling solely for the purpose of selling drugs. Jeffrey Bryant, 34, was the first person in Los Angeles County to be charged with violating the state health and safety code only because he owned and maintained rock houses--reinforced dwellings where cocaine is sold in rock form. Two of the three rock houses that prosecutors claim Bryant operated in the Pacoima area were smashed open last year by police using the controversial motorized battering ram.