Police Sweep Nets 17 in String of Holdups

Raids by more than 100 police officers on Wednesday rounded up 17 men, women and teen-agers linked to a South-Central Los Angeles street gang that authorities believe is responsible for 30 violent restaurant and motel robberies in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

Officers--carrying search and arrest warrants naming 17 locations and many of the suspects-- recovered weapons that included pistols, rifles, shotguns and a semi-automatic machine gun during the arrests, according to investigators.

At least five of those named in the warrants already were in custody. They were arrested several weeks ago in connection with two of the robberies--a holdup in Tarzana during which two women customers were raped and a holdup in Long Beach during which an off-duty police officer was paralyzed by gunfire.

A total of 118 police officers, moving swiftly in teams of 5 to 13, swooped down on the 17 warrant locations shortly after dawn Wednesday. The suspects--ranging in age from 14 to 22--were taken by surprise and surrendered without incident, investigators said.

Those arrested on Wednesday were booked on a variety of counts, ranging from traffic warrants to suspicion of assault and possession of firearms. Many of the counts are unrelated to the 30 robberies attributed to the gang, according to Officer Sergio Diaz of the Los Angeles Police Department’s press information unit.

“We haven’t wiped the gang out, but we’ve sure curtailed their activities for a while,” said Sgt. J. J. May, a member of the Los Angeles Police Department CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) team that headed up the investigation.

“We’ve taken a lot of guns off the street,” May said. “We’ve put a lot of people in jail.”

The street gang--a “Crips” group whose members tend to congregate in an area centered on Florence and Vermont avenues--is responsible for crimes that are unusually “vicious and violent,” according to Lt. Dan Cooke, a spokesman for the department.

Police say that one of those crimes occurred last Jan. 14, when four or five men burst into JoJo’s restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana shortly before closing time, as customers at the bar were finishing their drinks.

Brandishing revolvers, the men pistol-whipped and kicked the manager, forcing him to hand over money from the cash registers. Ordering several of the women customers to disrobe, the robbers singled out two of them, herding the rest, along with the restaurant employees, into a walk-in freezer.

The two women--reportedly waitresses from a nearby restaurant who had stopped by for a nightcap--were dragged into a restroom and raped.

29 Other Crimes

The five men arrested in recent weeks in connection with the JoJo’s holdup--and others affiliated with the gang--have been linked to 29 other crimes, in part because of descriptions of the suspects and the tactics they employed, according to police.

These crimes include:

- A holdup--less than an hour before the JoJo’s robbery--at the Hungry Hunter restaurant in Ventura. Three or four armed men escaped with an undetermined amount of cash after firing several warning shots, forcing employees to strip before herding them into a freezer and striking the manager on the head with a pistol when he offered resistance.

- An armed robbery Dec. 9 at Ted’s Sizzling Steaks in Ventura, during which one of the gunmen attempted to sexually assault a female employee, but was dissuaded by another member of the holdup team.

- A holdup Dec. 31 at Reuben’s restaurant in North Hollywood during which a waitress was raped.

- An armed robbery Feb. 19 at Charley Brown’s restaurant in Long Beach that left off-duty Signal Hill Police Officer Anthony Giniewicz, 31, paralyzed with a bullet in the spine. Giniewicz walked out of the restaurant at closing time to find three men robbing his partner, Steven Owens, who had just left the restaurant. Investigators said that when Giniewicz attempted to go to his partner’s aid, the robbers shot him.