Drug Sweep Brings In 79 Gang Members : Investigation: Federal and local law enforcement involved in ‘Operation Bandanna’ are seeking another 40 gang members. Videotape of the ‘sting’s’ drug buys is expected to speed up prosecution.

A six-month police undercover investigation dubbed “Operation Bandanna” has led to the arrests of 79 San Diego gang members on drug-related charges, authorities said Wednesday.

Authorities are seeking another 40 gang members and their associates who have also been charged as part of the investigation.

“The aim of Operation Bandanna was to arrest and prosecute hard-core gang members to reduce the level of violent crime, drive-by shootings, robberies and other gang-related violence afflicting many of our neighborhoods” Dist. Atty Edwin Miller said at a downtown press conference.

“A secondary but important goal was to rid these neighborhoods of open-air drug markets, most of which are controlled by gangs.”

San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen said the success of “Operation Bandanna,” combined with those of past investigations targeting gang members should send a warning to the city’s drug dealers and gang members.

“I guess I’d want to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in the ‘Terminator’ in saying, ‘We’ll be back,’ ” he said.

The sweeps began at 8 a.m. Tuesday when about 100 officers representing six local, state and federal agencies began making arrests in Sherman Heights, Logan Heights, Southcrest Park, City Heights, Chollas View, National City, Golden Hill, downtown San Diego, Memorial Park, Del Sol and Encanto.

During Wednesday’s press conference, authorities showed videotaped footage of marijuana sales between police informants and several of the defendants, evidence authorities hope will lead to quick convictions.

The investigation consisted of two main phases. The first was a short two-week drug-buying operation involving black gangs last June. The second was a six-month phase from August through January, which targeted drug trafficking by Latino gangs.

Authorities used four informants from the gang subculture to make videotaped drug purchases from gang members at street corner drug markets near schools and parks throughout San Diego.

The informants used marked bills supplied by the FBI and the district attorney’s office to make more than 200 buys, including rock cocaine, cocaine powder, PCP, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin.

The district attorney’s office charged one person and used the county grand jury to indict 90 more. The U.S. attorney general’s office used a federal grand jury to indict six. Twenty-two were charged in juvenile court.

All of the defendants were charged with sales of drugs, and some were charged with employing minors to sell controlled substances.

More than 90 of those charged are convicted felons, 72 are now on parole or probation and 24 are deportable.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Deddeh said in an interview that marijuana was the drug of choice in the Latino neighborhoods. He attributed the trend partly to the realization by drug dealers that the U.S. legal system doesn’t prosecute marijuana sales as seriously as other drugs such as rock cocaine.

The latest sweeps follow in the footsteps of the highly touted “Operation Blue Rag” and “Operation Red Rag,” in which authorities rounded up more than 150 Crips and Bloods gang members in the spring and fall of 1990.

Borrowing from those two operations, Miller said the use of videotapes in “Operation Bandanna” will make convictions easier, as they did in “Red Rag,” which resulted in a virtual 100% conviction rate of the 114 defendants charged.

“There were no trials in ‘Red Rag.’ All of those individuals, virtually 100% pled out,” Miller said. “The fact that we have the video, and the defendants have the video available to inspect themselves usually makes a great deal of difference.”

Miller said that, in the year before “Blue Rag,” more than 75 incidents involving violence by West Coast Crips were reported to the San Diego police, but that in the year following the operation, the number dropped to 15.

Authorities on Wednesday also announced that, since 1989, more than 400 drug dealers have been pulled from San Diego streets as a result of investigations like “Operation Bandanna” and its predecessors.

“Violent street gangs are not simply a local threat or a state threat,” U.S. Atty. William Braniff said. “They’re a national threat too, because they attack society at the foundation of all civilization, the basic premise that people cannot control others by fear or violence.”

FBI Agent Joe Johnson said “Operation Bandanna” was aided by the end of the Cold War, which spurred a realignment of 300 agents from the FBI’s foreign counter-intelligence program to fight violent crime in the United States.

“Locally we did significantly well. . . . We had 21 people assigned to the violent crimes program until the middle of January,” said Johnson, the FBI’s special agent in charge of San Diego. “As a result of this realignment, we received 10 more people.”

The operation was a joint effort of local, state and federal agencies, including the district attorney’s office, San Diego Police Department, FBI, National City Police Department, U.S. attorney, the county probation department, Parole Community Services Division of the California Department of Corrections, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement of the California Department of Justice, Naval Investigative Service, the U.S. marshal and the county Sheriff’s Department.