Police Uncover Cache of Dynamite in Weekend Raids on Street Gang

When police detectives in South-Central Los Angeles raided almost two dozen locations this weekend to arrest gang members and confiscate their guns, ammunition and other firepower, the officers unexpectedly stumbled onto something “much more explosive”--dynamite.

In the 11-hour raid at four drug houses and 18 residences, the officers arrested eight people considered leaders of a faction of the Bloods street gang. The gang has grown increasingly violent, police said, and has committed crimes ranging from purse-snatching to attempted murder of a 2-year-old.

“They’re a criminal element,” said Lt. Bruce Hagerty. “They rape people out of fun.”

Police say they confiscated an Uzi assault weapon, various semiautomatic pistols, a shotgun, a rifle, boxes of bullets and 689 grams of cocaine. But what really caught their attention was the 12 small sticks of unmarked dynamite, stashed pell-mell among the clutter of a back-bedroom closet.

“When the officers recovered it, they first thought it was fireworks,” Hagerty said Saturday, recalling the surprise his officers felt when they opened the closet door and began rummaging through the contents. “But as soon as I saw it, I knew it was much more explosive.

“And when word got out that we had dynamite, the bomb squad and the anti-terrorist unit were here lickety-split. They took this stuff and were gone. They didn’t want this stuff lying around.

“Gangs are becoming a form of urban terrorism now. And this tells us they are getting all the firepower they need.”

Police said they did not know how the gang had planned to use the dynamite or if they had used explosives in the past. The dynamite had apparently been cut from three standard-sized sticks.

Detectives from the Police Department’s 77th Street Division and the South Bureau’s anti-gang CRASH unit began targeting a small faction of the Bloods about four months ago, after noticing that the 250-member group was becoming increasingly violent.

Hagerty said police intelligence had gathered information showing that the gang members had recently stepped up their drug and weapon sales.

“It’s become a good-size gang,” he said. “They’ve become more conspicuous in the 77th Street Division. They’re into everything now from murder to drive-by shootings, robberies and rape. They’re into narcotics and guns. Even assault on a police officer.”

Hoping to turn back the recent surge in violence, 90 officers were pooled to gather evidence and participate in the raid that began at 8 p.m. Friday. Teams of officers were dispatched to the 22 locations to serve a variety of arrest warrants for weapons, narcotics, assault and parole violation charges.

The five men and three women arrested all had criminal records, police said. A ninth alleged gang member, identified by police as Jerome Lowe, 23, evaded officers at one of the homes searched, and police said they were seeking him on suspicion of rape.

But even with the arrests, and the wide array of weapons displayed Saturday morning in the detective squad room at the 77th Street station, police said the case is merely a skirmish in a continuing police war against gangs. Hagerty said there are about 10,000 gang members in the 22-square-mile area patrolled by the 77th Street Division. The gang targeted over the weekend, he said, was formed 18 years ago.

“We’re going to keep this up,” Hagerty said of the weekend raid. “We’ll do more, whatever it takes. Because you never know what you’ll find. We’ve come across hand grenades before. But this is the first time we’ve seen dynamite.”