Task Force Makes 145 Arrests, Seizes 168 Guns : Law enforcement: The 10-week operation is a joint effort of U.S. agents and local police. Those held are allegedly violent career criminals.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on Thursday unveiled results of a 10-week operation in Inglewood and parts of Los Angeles during which police seized 168 guns and made at least 145 arrests of people they described as violent career criminals.

Although the federal agents and their local counterparts acknowledged that the confiscated weapons represent only a fraction of the estimated thousands on the streets, they said the seizures mean that lives have been saved.

“You can’t downplay it,” said Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams, who joined the federal agency’s Los Angeles director, George A. Rodriguez, and Inglewood Police Chief Oliver M. Thompson at a news conference at the World Trade Center. “Ten guns, 10,000 . . . you save some lives, you’ve made a difference.”

Dubbed ACES West, for Armed Criminal Enforcement Study, the effort has involved 70 Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, most of whom began their work June 1. It will continue through Sept. 30.

Within the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division, where a smaller team of federal agents has been working with police since April, 1991, 171 felony arrests have been made and 353 firearms seized.

By contrast, about 4,500 firearms were seized during the week of the riots, according to Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms spokesman John E. D’Angelo.

The Newton Division and, more recently, the LAPD’s Rampart Division, whose officers patrol in and around downtown Los Angeles, were targeted by the U.S. agency because they have high levels of violent crime and gang activity.

And in Inglewood, targeted for similar reasons, law-enforcement authorities have made 58 felony arrests and seized 50 firearms since agents began working with police in June, 1991.

Virtually all of those arrested are affiliated with gangs, and the guns seized include an undetermined number taken by looters during the spring riots, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said ACES West did not spring from the riots, which actually delayed the start of the project by a month. He said the task force--the third of its kind in the country, after two earlier efforts in Washington, D.C.--resulted from the agency’s recognition that metropolitan Los Angeles is among the most violent areas in the country.

During the project, agents worked undercover buying drugs and guns and laid the groundwork for getting search warrants, which often lead to the seizure of more firearms, D’Angelo said.

Thompson said the project’s greatest effect would be to deter lawbreakers from using guns once word spreads about the potential for tough sentencing under federal laws.

For example, convicted felons with records including violence or drug-trafficking would face a mandatory 10- to 15-year prison term if they are caught with a firearm.