Santa Ana Gang Has Been the Target of Second Probe : Law enforcement: Group that claims turf on two blocks of 3rd Street was already the focus of a concerted crackdown before a Sept. 7 police sweep crippled it.

A high-profile police sweep of 3rd Street recently focused a spotlight on the troubled neighborhood in an effort to cripple the gang that claims it, but the same gang has also been the main target of a separate, ongoing law enforcement project.

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On Monday, Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters briefed the City Council on the Street Terrorist Offender Program (STOP) for the first time since its January inception, and revealed that the 6th Street gang, which claims two blocks of 3rd Street as the core of its turf, has been the operation’s main focus.

“We have been pleasantly surprised with the numbers of arrests that we had been able to make in such a short time,” said Capt. Dan McCoy, who coordinates STOP. “The bottom line is it has been effective.”

According to the status report released Monday night, certain street crimes in an area that includes 3rd Street were 54% lower between January and June than in the previous six-month period. Of 119 suspects targeted by STOP as gang criminals, 55 have been arrested. Nineteen have been successfully prosecuted, 36 are awaiting trial, and a charge has been dropped against only one suspect, McCoy said.

Authorities also seized 44 firearms from gang members since January.

STOP was modeled after Westminster’s Tri-Agency Resource Gang Enforcement Team, or TARGET, and combines prosecutors, district attorney’s investigators, probation officers, and federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officials in teams with Santa Ana police officers in a concerted effort to target violent gang leaders. A second STOP team was formed in June, and Walters said he expected a third team would formed by year’s end.

Residents on 3rd Street say their neighborhood had been calm for months before the dramatic police raid on Sept. 7 dubbed Operation Roundup--a calm that authorities now attribute in part to STOP’s activities in the 6th Street gang’s territory.

McCoy said that 40 of the 130 suspects eventually indicted in Operation Roundup on drug charges were arrested and jailed under STOP for other street crimes before the end of Roundup’s five-month undercover operation.

“Our focus has been on violent crime. Roundup was through the narcotics avenue. It was another way of getting to these people,” McCoy said. “Operation Roundup was highly successful. If anything, it makes us very happy in that it validated what we were saying.”

Many of those indicted in Operation Roundup were captured on videotape making drug sales, authorities said.

The district attorney’s office has announced that when those prosecuted under Operation Roundup are released from custody, they will be referred to the STOP program for vigilant parole supervision, said Lt. William Tegeler, who supervised Operation Roundup.

Tegeler said the two operations complemented one another.

“Many of them were the same targets. We would already have a (drug) buy or two from them. STOP would have a robbery case on them, go ahead and indict them and get them off the streets,” he said.

McCoy said that two gangs that associate with the 6th Street gang were also targeted, and that STOP also adopted four cases outside of those gang targets.

Those arrested by STOP include one 18-year old in custody who McCoy said has confessed to 20 gang-related shootings, during which he attacked at least four people; 50 street robberies, and 100 auto thefts from Santa Ana neighborhoods. He said a 14-year-old targeted by STOP has been linked to a homicide and several robberies. He has escaped twice from a juvenile facility and is now at large.