3 Arrested in Plot to Kill Police Officers

Three alleged gang members were arrested Saturday in a plot to kill “two or three” Los Angeles police officers on New Year’s Eve, in apparent retaliation for a police crackdown on drug sales in the gang’s San Fernando Valley neighborhood, authorities said.

Despite the arrests of the 18-year-old men, the Police Department is keeping in effect a special bulletin it issued Dec. 9 advising officers to be especially careful on New Year’s Eve because of the suspected plot.

Officers have received death threats since September in phone calls and in flyers posted on telephone poles and lampposts in Van Nuys, Homicide Detective Jim Vojtecky said.

“On Thursday, we got quite a bit of information from reliable sources that confirmed the gang was planning to kill two or three police officers on New Year’s Eve,” Vojtecky said. He refused to name the sources, but said they were not rival gang members.

Vojtecky said police did not know how the gang planned to kill the officers. “We don’t know if it’s going to be by a bombing, a radio call or an ambush,” he told a news conference. But he added that the gang members were “definitely irritated.”

On Saturday morning, 34 officers armed with search warrants raided four sites and arrested Cesar Reveles and Hector Aleman, both of Van Nuys, and Sergio Camarena of Sylmar. Police said they seized a bolt-action rifle, a sawed-off rifle, a .38-caliber handgun and 163 rounds of ammunition.

A gang expert with Community Youth Gang Services said he believed the gang involved is Barrio Van Nuys, which has about 60 active members. It is longtime San Fernando Valley gang, some of whose members live just a few blocks away from the Van Nuys police station.

Residents of the Van Nuys neighborhood where two of the arrests occurred said motorists from all over Los Angeles drive to the 14100 and 14600 blocks of Calvert Street to purchase drugs from the gang.

Police officials refused to identify which gang the suspects belonged to, saying that they did not want to give the members “prestige and notoriety in the community.” But Sgt. Tim Day, who works in the department’s gang enforcement division, said the gang has been in existence for nearly 30 years, is a “known violent gang” and deals in heroin, cocaine and marijuana. It claims as its turf the area bounded by Sepulveda and Van Nuys boulevards and Sherman Way and Burbank Boulevard.

Day said several members of the gang are sent to prison for felonies ranging from drug dealing to murder each year.

“This isn’t a bunch of high school taggers on the bus,” Day said. “These are hard-core gangsters and we regarded this as a serious threat.”

The three suspects were arrested without incident at their homes, Vojtecky said. Reveles and Camarena were being held Saturday without bail at Van Nuys jail on suspicion of conspiring to kill a police officer. Aleman was being held on $1,000 bail on suspicion of possessing a sawed-off rifle.

“We’re not 100% sure if we got all of them, or if there’ll be any more arrests,” Vojtecky said. “But we believe we have the nucleus of those involved.”

Area residents said there are still several gang members left in the neighborhood.

“It’s been the word on the street for a while now” that gang members were planning the attack on police, said a 21-year-old construction worker who has lived on Calvert Street for two years.

“I don’t know if they’ll still plan on doing it,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “But I know they’ll still be trying to sell drugs. They’ll be doing it tonight.”

Police, concerned by increased gang activity in recent months, had been arresting more gang members and serving more search warrants in the area, Vojtecky said.

Shortly thereafter, the flyers began appearing in the area and death threats began, he said. One of the threats was written in a leaflet that read: “Police have been screwing with our drug sales. So we’re going to screw with the police and kill two or three of them.”

Calvert Street is dominated by several apartment houses that are fronted by high fences. Graffiti mark many of the alleys and walls. Some housefronts have gang graffiti visible through fresh coats of paint.

As neighbors discussed the arrests Saturday, police officers drove up and down the block in patrol cars. Small children waved at them.

A county gang expert, Manuel Velasquez, said gang members may have wished to kill the police officers as retaliation for the police crackdown on their drug trade.

“A lot of it has to do with . . . machismo,” he said. “They try to put out that they are big and bad, then law enforcement ends up taking these guys down left and right, and it makes the neighborhood look bad.”

But he said they might also have wanted to bolster their reputation among other gangs in the neighborhood--and attract the attention of a broader population--by striking at a new and different target.