9:30 PM (PT), an unprecedented LAPD raid took place against the broadcast studios and art galleries of Dr. Susan Block. Heavily armed elite LAPD officers claiming to be a SWAT team, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying high-powered rifles, forcibly entered the building, without warrants, about 45 minutes before the scheduled live broadcast of The Dr. Susan Block Show on www.radiosuzy1.com.
Helicopter gunships with nightvision technology buzzed overhead. Eyewitnesses said that SWAT Team members with what looked like M16 rifles surrounded the building and cordoned off the area to pedestrians. The operation was coordinated by Metro Vice Squad and Central Divisions of the LAPD, including Watch Commander Valez, Sergeant Sanchez, Central Vice Unit Sergeant Kilgore, Detective Katherine Robi, and Officers Morales, Moreno and Malik.
When Dr. Block stepped out of her dressing room she was held at gunpoint by LAPD uniformed officers. She was detained and questioned, separate from her staff, for about twenty minutes, while the producers, camera people and some of the guests were frisked. Then, the staff and guests were permitted back upstairs (some 50 guests crossed police lines to get in), and the show was allowed to go on. But most of the officers stayed, watching, searching and intimidating guests and staff, for some two and a half hours.
What was this all about? LAPD officials don't really know. Here was their story when they arrived. Four armed Hispanic men who had robbed and kidnapped someone were seen forcing their way into the building by a passerby. The SWAT team was there to search for the gunmen. They determined that there were no gunmen or hostages in the building within a few minutes. Yet they spent two and a half hours inside Dr. Block's studios and galleries, although official police records state they were here for 10 minutes. Do we have a Ramparts in every neighborhood?
They interrogated Dr. Block, her staff and guests about the nature of the show, which half of the officers said they watched. LAPD officers blocked off access to critical Internet broadcast servers and other equipment. Vice specialists searched through film archives. Other officers looked through the studio refrigerator, searched the bathrooms, combed through the books in the library, monitored Chief Engineer Theron Marks' mixing of the live show, and checked out the erotic art in the galleries. Finally, they confiscated a copy of Dr. Block's HBO show Radio Sex TV (executive produced by HBO Senior Vice President in charge of Documentary and Late Night Programming Sheila Nevins, and produced by Dave Bell, who, coincidentally, also created the reality TV series "LAPD").
