First 4 Months of ’88 : Gangs Linked to 25% of Narcotics Unit Arrests

Nearly 25% of the suspects arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department’s San Fernando Valley narcotics unit during the first four months of the year have been identified as gang members, authorities said Thursday.

The unit began targeting drug sales among street gangs on Jan. 1.

Of the 752 people arrested in the Valley for drug violations through April 30, at least 179 were gang members, said Lt. Gary Rogness, commander of the Valley Bureau narcotics unit.

The suspects were identified as gang members through their own statements and by detectives who specialize in gangs, Rogness said.

Rogness said more gang members may have been arrested than police were able to determine. In addition to the 179 identified gang members, 345 people were arrested by the unit at “chronic hot-spot locations” of gang activity in the Valley, he said.

Rogness said the arrest figures demonstrate a connection between gangs and drugs.

“Gangs are deeply involved in the distribution of drugs in the Valley,” he said. “In the last couple years, they have realized how much money can be made and they are becoming more and more involved.”

Because of the growing problem of gangs and drugs, the Police Department this year increased the size of its drug-enforcement units and made street gangs its primary target under a citywide program called GRATS (Gang-Related Active Trafficker Suppression), officials said. Police would not disclose the size of the units.

The drug units’ efforts have been independent of the highly publicized anti-gang sweeps across the city by police task forces. The drug detectives have worked primarily undercover in known gang drug-sales locations in the Valley, making drug buys that have resulted in felony charges against dealers, authorities said.

“The primary focus is on breaking the backs of these gangs,” Rogness said. “All my detectives know that if you are given two situations, one that involves a gang member and one that doesn’t, and you have to act on one, you should go after the gang member.”

Police would not identify the so-called “hot spots” of gang drug sales, except to say that they were in parks, housing projects and on street corners in the northeast Valley.

Rogness said the majority of arrests by the Valley unit have been for felony drug sales and possession.

“They are hand-to-hand drug sales with police,” he said of the cases. “These are felony crimes, and these people are going to see state prisons.

“This will have a very strong effect” on gang activity in the Valley, he said.

It is impossible to determine if more gang members have been arrested during the first four months of this year than during the same period last year since the drug unit did not classify arrests according to gang affiliation until Jan. 1.

Lt. John Trundle of the Special Investigations Division, which is directing the GRATS program, said a one-month survey of citywide arrests shows that 92% of the drug-unit cases have resulted in charges.

“We think it will be closer to 96% by the time all the cases go through” the filing process, Trundle said.