Officials Back Idea of 3-City Task Force to Lead Gangs Fight

A suggestion that Santa Ana, Westminster and Garden Grove police form a task force to combat mutual gang problems was warmly received Tuesday, three days after one of the county’s bloodiest gang attacks claimed the lives of a teen-age gang member and a 4-year-old boy.

The joint city effort was proposed Monday by Garden Grove City Councilman Frank Kessler, that city’s former police chief. Kessler said the tactic would be a more effective means of combatting gangs that travel among the three communities to attack rivals.

Police believe the shooting that killed two and wounded six at a Garden Grove home Saturday was retaliation by a Santa Ana gang for an earlier shooting of one of its members.

“We’d be happy to work with Garden Grove on whatever initiative they’d want to take,” Santa Ana City Manager David N. Ream said Tuesday. “Our police departments now cooperate very closely in the area of gang suppression.”

Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith said his city has already given “quite a deal of thought” to creating a unified anti-gang force.

“We have the same types of gang problems Garden Grove has got; probably not as extensive as Santa Ana’s,” Smith said. “We’ve had something like over 20 . . . drive-by shootings in Westminster since the first of the year.

“These gangs don’t have the city boundaries we do.”

Ream said such an anti-gang effort “needs to involve not only the cities but the (Orange County) sheriff and probation departments.”

Meanwhile, Garden Grove police said Tuesday they were making progress in their investigation of Saturday’s shooting, which occurred in the 13800 block of La Bonita Avenue, one block from the Santa Ana city border. They declined to elaborate, however, on the course of the investigation.

Police believe the shootings were by members of Santa Ana’s 5th Street gang, but said an arrest is not imminent.

Killed were Miguel Lorenzo Navarro, 17, of Santa Ana, a member of the rival 17th Street gang, and Frank Fernandez Jr., 4, of Garden Grove. Police said Navarro was the target of the attack. Six others were wounded, including Frank Jr.’s 2-year-old brother, Christopher.

Despite concerns about retaliation, police in Santa Ana and Garden Grove said Tuesday there have been no instances of gang-related violence since Saturday.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. John Conley, who heads a countywide prosecution team created last year to handle gang cases, said Tuesday that he sees merit in Kessler’s task-force suggestion.

“I think it’s worth exploring,” Conley said. “It would not be a solution in all cases. . . . There are a lot of gangs that are entirely within one city.”

These so-called “mutant” or “hybrid gangs” that cross city limits have recently sprung up in the county “out of nowhere,” Conley said. “Suddenly gangs are not territorial.”

In some cases, these gangs began as groups getting together to throw parties and charge admission, then turned to violence for unknown reasons, he said. “Suddenly they are attacking people.”

Garden Grove Police Capt. John Baker said Tuesday he had telephoned Santa Ana police to discuss Kessler’s idea, but had yet to speak to the head of that city’s anti-gang unit.

“We’re just going to get together to talk about . . . whether we need to do it and whether it’s feasible,” Baker said.

Garden Grove already works closely with Westminster on the Vietnamese gang problems. Both cities have a large Vietnamese community. The two cities have recently assigned officers to an FBI task force on extortion by gangs, Baker said.

Such joint efforts “work out pretty good,” he said. “The good part is you end up sharing information more than you would with just periodic meetings. It does help communication.”