Police See Growing Gang Problem on Westside : Crime: They single out Hollywood, where there have been six gang-related killings since Aug. 1. ‘Operation Hammer’ sweeps result in 75 arrests.

Los Angeles police are expressing renewed concern that the gang problem on the Westside is growing out of control, particularly in Hollywood.

Since Aug. 1, there have been at least six gang-related killings in Hollywood, the most recent on Tuesday morning, police said.

In response to the gang problem, a 110-member law enforcement team swept through the Westside on Friday night and well into Saturday, looking for known gang members and watching for gang-related criminal activity.

By the end of the sweep, the latest in a series of Operation Hammer enforcement crackdowns, police had arrested 75 people, including 46 known gang members, on charges ranging from drug possession and parole violations to car theft and robbery.

Four juvenile females in Hollywood were among those arrested, after they allegedly severely beat up a pregnant teen-ager from a rival gang, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Brad Merritt, who supervises the Westside LAPD anti-gang unit, Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH.

Police said that unlike past Operation Hammer sweeps on the Westside and in other parts of the city, some of which netted hundreds of suspects, the gangs this time seemed forewarned. Police speculated that many gang members stayed inside or out of trouble.

“I wouldn’t call it a fantastic success, but it was successful,” Merritt said. “Quite frankly, we expected to make a few more arrests.”

“Somehow word got out,” Merritt said. “Some of those we caught said, ‘You guys must be with that (Operation) Hammer thing--we heard about you.’ ”

A similar Operation Hammer crackdown in the San Fernando Valley on Saturday night netted 251 suspects, according to Detective William Humphry of the valley’s CRASH unit.

But there too, even with the large arrest total, things seemed unusually quiet, and police suspected that the gangs had been tipped off, said Humphry, who recently moved to the valley unit from the Westside CRASH team.

“Somehow, the word is getting out about these Hammers,” Humphry said.

Nevertheless, the Westside police sweep “took six guns off the street, all of which were stolen, recovered two cars and recovered $1,353 in cash and 101 grams of cocaine and marijuana,” said Merritt.

The majority of the arrests occurred in the Hollywood area, followed by the Wilshire, Pacific and West Los Angeles LAPD divisions, Merritt said.

Merritt said most of the suspects were booked and detained and were required to post bail. He predicted a high success rate of prosecution, saying: “The majority of charges are substantial and viable. They will go through the court system.”

Police said they concentrated their efforts on Hollywood because of a rash of gang-related shootings and other acts of violence there.

Cmdr. James Jones, commanding officer of the four LAPD divisions on the Westside, said Hollywood gang activity has increased sharply in the last few months. Last year, there were 33 gang-related homicides in the Westside, police said. So far this year, there have been 36. In Hollywood, there were three gang-related homicides last year and so far this year there have been nine.

He attributed the surge in part to a crackdown on gangs by LAPD’s neighboring Rampart Division, which oversees the area between Hollywood and downtown, including MacArthur Park, he said.

“We have had a lot of shootings and violence in Hollywood from the time we put the pressure on in Rampart,” Jones said. “There is some carry-over.”

Merritt said Hollywood is now among the worst gang battlefields in the city. “Hollywood is out of control,” he said.

Despite the most recent Operation Hammer crackdown, gang members have continued their criminal activity. Early Tuesday morning, police said, one man was shot and killed and another was wounded by gang members during a robbery in Hollywood.

Emil Lacatus, 50, died at the scene of the holdup, 5733 Virginia Ave., and paramedics took Ian Stoica, 43, to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition with gunshot wounds.

Police said that as Lacatus, Stoica and another man were getting out of their vehicle about 12:40 a.m., armed gang members ordered them to empty their pockets. When Stoica yelled for police, the suspects opened fire, authorities said.

Police arrested five suspected gang members from South Los Angeles who had committed “half a dozen other robberies on this particular crime spree,” before shooting the two men, said LAPD homicide Detective Russell Kuster. Lawong Ellison, 26, of South Los Angeles, and four juveniles were been booked on murder charges, Kuster said.