60 Held in Raids Aimed at Notorious L.A. Gang

In a massive law enforcement operation aimed at breaking the back of one of Los Angeles’ most notorious street gangs, more than 800 police officers and FBI agents swarmed through South-Central and other communities Saturday morning, making 60 arrests, impounding dozens of guns and seizing large amounts of cocaine.

“We talk about Beirut,” Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams said at a news conference announcing the results of the early morning raids, which officials dubbed Operation Sunrise. “But we have neighborhoods like Beirut right here in Los Angeles, and we’re going to turn that around.”

Charlie J. Parsons, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, said the raids would make a noticeable impact on gang activity and that their effects would be felt beyond the city borders as well.

“If Los Angeles is the gang capital of the world, it is a dubious distinction,” he said. “Los Angeles-based street gangs are spreading across the United States, and it’s absolutely essential that we hit the source. That’s right here.”

Although officials would not publicly disclose the target of the operation, described as the largest law enforcement undertaking of its kind in Southern California history, sources said the raids were primarily directed at the Eight-Tray Gangster Crips, a gang that came to public prominence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Members of the gang were involved in the attacks on truck driver Reginald O. Denny and other motorists at Florence and Normandie avenues during the opening hours of the riots. They were also believed to have stolen thousands of weapons during the riots. In the wake of that violence, local and federal law enforcement officials made investigation of the Eight-Tray Crips a high priority of a special task force that brought together agencies throughout Southern California, principally the LAPD and the FBI.

Both agencies devoted officers and agents to the task force, pooling information and resources to identify suspects and track incidents of alleged gang violence.

One of the group’s earliest moves was to arrest Damian M. Williams, an alleged member of the Eight-Tray Crips. Williams and three other suspects were charged with the attack on Denny; Williams was convicted in that case, although not of the most serious charges filed against him.

In addition to the LAPD and FBI, officials from the California Youth Authority, the state probation and parole departments and representatives of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and a host of Southern California police departments were involved in Saturday’s raids, which began about 4 a.m. and concluded Saturday afternoon.

According to police statistics, members of the Eight-Tray Crips make up less than 1% of the population in the 30-block area of South-Central where the gang is dominant. But the gang members are responsible for 80% of the violent crimes in that area, Williams said.

Saturday’s raids involved searches of 135 residences and other locations, and was concentrated in the South-Central communities associated with the Eight-Tray Crips. But some searches and arrests were carried out in far-flung areas such as Long Beach, Palmdale and San Bernardino.

Dozens of arrest warrants were served, and more than 60 other suspects were sought for probation and parole violations, officials said. By the end of the day, police said they had seized roughly 70 firearms, large amounts of ammunition and 12 cloned cellular phones, which are commonly used by drug dealers. One search yielded 2 kilograms of cocaine, and several others turned up smaller amounts of crack cocaine, police said.

A special command post set up to oversee the operation buzzed with activity all day as suspects were booked on an array of charges, from rape, robbery and assault to illegal possession of weapons and drugs. Members of the task force said they targeted the most violent members of the Eight-Tray Gangster Crips in Saturday’s operation.

The breadth of the operation was so wide and the number of locations so many that by early afternoon, officers found themselves duplicating one another’s efforts. According to one officer, police arrived at some locations only to find that the suspects they were seeking had already been arrested.

Although many of the raids took place before dawn and were made in some of the city’s most dangerous areas, officers said no shots were fired.

The only reported injury was to a suspect who fell through the ceiling of his mother’s home as he attempted to hide from officers attempting to serve a search warrant.

In previous years, the LAPD has embarked on gang sweeps, rounding up large numbers of suspected gang members in an effort to disrupt their activities.

But many of those arrests did not result in prosecution, and the sweeps were heavily criticized by some who saw them as public relations vehicles rather than as effective tools of law enforcement.

The gang sweeps also were criticized in the African American community, where many believed that young black men were unfairly being labeled as gang members by a Police Department bent on increasing its arrest statistics.

On Saturday, police sought to distinguish the current operation from the earlier sweeps. Operation Sunrise, they said, is the culmination of more than two years of investigation into the Eight-Tray Crips and other Los Angeles gangs and involved painstaking efforts to draft and secure warrants.

“This isn’t a sweep,” Williams said. “This is done to put people in jail. We’re not going to make arrests and disappear.”

Street crime is normally the province of local law enforcement agencies, but the FBI has devoted more agents to that task in recent years. The LAPD, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI are partners in a number of squads devoted to rooting out gang violence.

Although most street crime is not a violation of federal law, some weapons and drug offenses are punishable under federal statutes.

Federal prosecutors have brought cases against a number of reputed gang members, and representatives of the U.S. attorney’s office and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office participated in Saturday’s operation.

In addition to prosecuting gang members for federal weapons and drug charges, officials have said they are weighing possible prosecution under federal racketeering laws, which historically have been used to prosecute Mafia figures but occasionally have been used against street gangs as well.

At least 20 of those arrested are possible candidates for prison sentences under the state’s “three strikes” law, but federal racketeering prosecution is also possible, Parsons said.

“They’ll be looking to get the most bang for their buck,” Parsons said.

Prosecutors were not immediately available for comment.

Saturday’s aggressive attack on gangs comes as the LAPD is attempting to build stronger ties to communities throughout Los Angeles, partly by increasing the emphasis on fighting the root causes of crime.

Nowhere has the community policing effort taken on greater significance than in South Los Angeles, where the riots shook public confidence in the Police Department and where police-community relations have historically been the worst in the city.

Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, an enthusiastic proponent of community policing and the commanding officer of the LAPD’s South Bureau, said anti-gang raids are an important element of the department’s overall community policing effort and predicted that the operation would strengthen public confidence in the police.

“When we go after the gang problem, we are going after it because it is the community’s No. 1 priority,” Kroeker said.

“In all our forums, community meetings, surveys and focus groups, the community lists gangs as its major problem. . . . We are orienting our activities based on what the community is telling us it needs.”

Kroeker has supported anti-gang education and ambitious campaigns to eradicate gang graffiti, but he emphasized that those efforts need to be backed by vigorous law enforcement as well. And he said community members were quietly expressing their support for that blend of programs even as Saturday’s operation was under way.

“At almost every location we were at this morning, we had people come up to our officers and say to them quietly, almost secretively, ‘Thank you for being here. It’s been a long time coming,’ ” Kroeker said.