6th St. Gang 2nd to None in Crimes, Authorities Say

There are gangs in Orange County that have been around much longer, but police say none in recent years has developed a bigger reputation for criminal activity than Santa Ana’s 6th Street gang.

“Homicide, rape, assault, you name it,” Santa Ana police Lt. Robert Helton said Wednesday. “They have been terrorizing people around here for a long time. . . . They are not much better than animals.”

Running the streets for the last six years, the gang became the target for a multi-agency investigation when their criminal activity escalated to homicides, law enforcement officials said.

Only four months ago, the gang--which claims territory within steps of City Hall and the county Hall of Administration--was linked to the murders of two men late last year.

The arrests of four 6th Street members in those December killings, including a 15-year-old boy who allegedly pulled the trigger, sounded an alarm among police that the gang’s alleged violent acts were increasingly claiming victims outside the daily warfare involving only rival gang members, law enforcement officials said.

At its height, the gang numbered about 50 hard-core members drawn from the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Police Chief Paul M. Walters said that in numbers alone, the gang would be considered small in comparison to other local groups whose memberships can include more than 100 people. But in action, the chief said, no gang in the city was participating in the kinds of crime that marked the 6th Street group.

“Easily, they had become the most violent gang in the city and maybe the county,” Walters said. “Carjackings, armed robberies, assaults of all kinds. People in the community were living in fear.”

And that fear was creating more trouble for police, officials said.

Increasingly, Walters said, victims of 6th Street gang crime would be too frightened to serve as witnesses or pursue charges for fear of retaliation.

“Numerous members of this gang are responsible for violent felonies, and many have been arrested, but few are convicted due to the gang’s intimidation of witnesses,” the chief said.

Walters said that of the gang members arrested on narcotics charges in Santa Ana’s Operation Roundup, many could be implicated in dozens of other violent crimes as well.

Police said that between last Nov. 1, and Feb. 25, for example, the gang had been linked to five fatal shootings and 14 robberies.

Among the most violent of the gang’s alleged acts were the murders of Rogelio R. Millan, 20, and Benton C. Dunscombe, 25.

Millan was shot to death Dec. 17 while sitting with friends on the porch of his fiancee’s house on Walnut Street. Police said the motive was robbery.

Six days later, Dunscombe was shot to death while trying to flee from gang members attempting to rob him, police said.

Amazingly, police said, the gang had been able to operate in neighborhoods bordering the Civic Center, where the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and seats of both Santa Ana and county governments are located.

“They just thumbed their nose at us,” Helton said. “We would go into the neighborhoods with our uniforms and marked cars and they would just run inside and hide. Others who went in there ran the risk of getting robbed, raped or shot. They really did hold the neighborhood hostage, and we had to find a new way to deal with them.”