Task Force Raids Gang Members’ Homes : Law enforcement: Police seize 23 weapons, arrest 17-year-old murder suspect in two-day Valley operation. Action was prompted by five killings in last four weeks.

Prompted by killings blamed on a gang war in the northeast San Fernando Valley, police conducted two days of raids on the homes of gang members, seizing 23 weapons and arresting a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of murder, it was announced Thursday.

A task force of more than 75 officers from Los Angeles and San Fernando, using search warrants, fanned out from Mission Hills to North Hollywood and raided the homes of 35 members of two gangs believed responsible for as many as five killings in four weeks, Los Angeles Police Capt. Tim McBride said.

Officers said the pressure placed on the gangs, which were not identified by name, would help quell a “little gang war” involving retribution murders and the killing of innocent victims.

“We are taking the offensive in this gang war,” said McBride, who directed the two-day operation.

“We anticipate solving several crimes with this,” McBride, commander of the Foothill Division, said of the guns and other undisclosed evidence collected during the searches.

Last year, there were 11 gang-related murders in the Foothill Division, which includes most of the northeast Valley. In the last four weeks alone, detectives have investigated five killings attributed to the two gangs targeted in this week’s operation.

It was those killings, and several gang-related assaults, that spurred homicide investigators to seek search warrants for the homes of members of the two gangs, Detective Al Ferrand said.

Twenty-nine gang members were questioned about the slayings, but released. Ferrand said 14 handguns and nine rifles were seized.

A 30th gang member, a 17-year-old from Sun Valley, was arrested on suspicion of murder because a handgun in his possession was believed used in the Feb. 11 slaying of Francisco Javier Gonzales, 16, who was gunned down in Pacoima. Ferrand said Gonzales and the suspect were members of rival gangs and the shooting may have been retribution for an earlier shooting.