1st Anti-Gang United Front Forms in O.C. : Enforcement: Project will team federal, county and city officials in Santa Ana, site of two-thirds of gang-related county killings in ’93. Hard-core repeat offenders will be targeted.

Ten federal, county and city law enforcement officials will team up in two weeks in the first united front formed to crack down on hard-core gang members who commit violent crime in Santa Ana.

The police officers, prosecutors and probation officers--all working out of Santa Ana City Hall--will monitor, arrest and prosecute repeat offenders as part of the city’s Street Terrorist Offender Project, or STOP.

The project is the inaugural step of the Orange County district attorney’s $2-million program to battle gangs countywide. It brings welcome reinforcements to Santa Ana, where about two-thirds of the county’s gang-related killings last year occurred.

“Santa Ana has got the most aggravated problem, so it was the most logical place to start,” Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi said.

Task force members want to target the toughest gang leaders--the small number of gang members who commit the most frequent and violent crimes--in six Santa Ana neighborhoods.

Police won’t say which areas or gangs they’ll target or how they’ll try to dismantle gang leadership, but they promise to kick off the program visibly.

The Santa Ana Police Department is the only agency in the county so far to enlist agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to join anti-gang teams, said Santa Ana police Capt. Dan McCoy, who is coordinating STOP.

Similar gang task forces will start in four other Orange County cities this year as part of a gang strategy inspired by Westminster’s Tri-Agency Resource Gang Enforcement Team, or TARGET.

That project has successfully built dozens of criminal cases against hardened gang members. Violent crimes--homicides, attempted homicides and felony assaults--have dropped 59% in the city since TARGET started two years ago, Westminster Police Chief James Cook said.

The new program probably will face its litmus test in Santa Ana.

“Santa Ana has over 50 gangs with about 8,000 members or associates,” Police Chief Paul M. Walters told the City Council at a recent meeting.

In the past 30 years, the city’s violent crime rate has outpaced population growth by 9 to 1, he said.

County organizers have raised the stakes accordingly by giving Santa Ana two county-funded law enforcement teams. The four other cities involved in TARGET--Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange and Costa Mesa--will each receive one team.

Santa Ana will start its program with a team of one deputy district attorney, one investigator from the district attorney’s office and two probation officers. A second team will join STOP in June.

Prosecutors will handle cases from initial search warrants through taking the cases to court, and probation officers will check for gang members who violate their terms of probation.

Each team also includes four police officers, McCoy said, with an occasional liaison officer with the state Department of Corrections. If they need help, team members can also draw on Santa Ana’s regular 10-officer gang detail, which investigates day-to-day gang crimes.

ATF agents will play a different role. “There are significant penalties for firearms violations that don’t exist in state law but do exist in federal law,” McCoy said, so ATF agents will steer certain firearms-law violators to the U.S. Attorney’s office for prosecution.

The federal agents also track guns used in crimes to their original owners and investigate how the guns got into the hands of gang members.

Another Santa Ana police staff member will use a computer network spanning Orange and Los Angeles counties that can match weapons used in crimes in different locations.

Some residents in beleaguered areas said they welcome police involvement. “If (police) want to come in and search apartments for guns, I’ll give them the keys,” said one Santa Ana apartment building manager, who asked that his name not be used.

McCoy said the coordinated effort will help police officers get warrants quickly so they can search for weapons where specific hard-core gang members live. “We will be having more searches for firearms that are connected to gangs under the STOP program,” he said.

Westminster’s Cook cites improved communication among various agencies as the key success of the TARGET approach in his city. “As the team works together, they can move with lightning speed through the system,” Cook said.

Garden Grove, Orange, Anaheim and Costa Mesa will get teams between now and the middle of the year.

A prosecutor and probation officer will be assigned to South County by mid-year to help with gang-related prosecutions there, but they will not be teamed with specific sheriff’s deputies. Sheriff Brad Gates has declined to participate.

Santa Ana City Councilman Robert L. Richardson is optimistic about making law enforcement efforts more efficient. Because prosecutors and investigators work together to target certain gang members, “they know their profile,” Richardson said. “That communication--you can’t put a price on that.”

Police said residents will not see changes in gang violence overnight. Cook, for one, said it took a year to fine-tune his program.

McCoy predicted a similar timeline for Santa Ana.

“This problem took 20 years to get to the point it’s at,” McCoy said. “But over a period of time, those neighborhoods impacted should see a reduction in gang crime.”