Inland Anti-Gang Unit in the Works

Riverside County Dist. Atty. Grover Trask and Sheriff Bob Doyle unveiled plans Monday for a new anti-gang task force that they said would apply a “full-court press” to the region’s escalating gang crime and violence.

The special unit, expected to receive $5.1 million in funding today from the Board of Supervisors, would include an additional 44 sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors and probation officers to help monitor and crack down on the estimated 11,000 gang members in the county.

“We will not concede anything to these outlaws,” Doyle said.

Trask said the estimated 321 gangs in Riverside County presented a “sea of problems” and accounted for a significant portion of murders and drug crimes in the county. More than 110 gangs have formed in the county since 1997, and he said 40 of his office’s 125 active homicide cases are gang-related.

The anti-gang unit, expected to be launched in March, would be supervised by a board of prosecutors and sheriff’s personnel who would preside over eight regional teams. Local police, county probation officers and the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement would also help staff the task force units.

“It takes a strategic, regional, connected effort to deal with gangs,” Trask said. “We will loudly and forcefully deter and stamp out the gang problem.”

Gang influence in the county is pronounced, Trask and Doyle said, noting last month’s shootings of a woman, her two young children and her mother inside a Rubidoux home. The suspect, Maximilliano Romero, is a known gang member.

This year, a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to kill two witnesses in a murder case against a convicted felon, a gang member she met inside the county jail.

On Sunday, a motorcycle gang targeting another biker gang opened fire at a toy drive at a Norco saloon, leaving three injured, including a Norco firefighter who was loading toys onto his firetruck.

“We’ve noticed increased violence with the gangs, a blatant attitude of intimidation that you have to be concerned with,” Trask said.

“We want to let the community know people like this will be taken off the street.”

Trask said civil injunctions of street gangs, search warrants and parole and probation compliance checks of known gang members would be employed more often.

“We’ll have a more active eye on associated gang members; they’ll be followed and monitored more closely,” said Jerry Lopez, gang coordinator of the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

The news conference included a display of gang materials seized from county crime scenes that included baseball bats adorned with gang logos, a school binder covered in gang symbols that was taken from a Perris elementary school, and Pittsburgh Pirates baseball caps worn by Perris gangs along with an assortment of guns and other weapons.