Lungren Bids for Project That Targets Repeat Felons : Legislation: Praising six-month pilot in L.A. and Orange counties, official seeks lawmakers’ OK for statewide effort.

California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren asked for support Friday for legislation to expand his Violence Suppression Unit, which he said has already produced dramatic results in a six-month pilot effort to capture career criminals in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

“The results we’re seeing from both our L.A. and our Orange County Violence Suppression Units are very impressive,” Lungren said at a news conference.

The program targets crimes committed by habitually violent criminals, particularly those carrying guns while committing crimes. Unit members work with local police departments to identify offenders in neighborhoods, Lungren said.

By focusing on released felons, investigators are able to quickly remove them from the community, officers at the news conference said. Accused probation and parole violators face Department of Corrections hearings, rather than trials.

“Last November we put together this pilot project with state and local officers working together to get the most violent, most crime-bent people and their weapons off the streets--and it’s working.”

Statewide, there were 439 arrests and 376 weapons seized, Lungren said.

Flanked by Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi and half a dozen local chiefs of police, Lungren said that in the six-month period, the unit had made 44 arrests in the county, most of which were for felons in possession of a gun or for selling drugs.

Capizzi applauded the program, which assigned three state agents to the county full time, saying “you can always use additional resources.”

Orange County arrests took place in La Habra, Buena Park, Placentia, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Newport Beach and other areas of South County, according to Tom Wadkins, a unit member assigned here.

“We’ve been just about everywhere,” Wadkins said.

Lungren asked for support for a bill offered by Assemblyman Charles S. Poochigian (R-Fresno), appropriating $5.9 million to make the Violence Suppression program permanent and statewide, raising the number of Justice Department agents from 24 to 55. Lungren said the bill has the support of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

“This is something that no one else in the state is doing,” Lungren said. “We are targeting people who are committed to crime, and we’re committed to catching them. We are committed to making quality arrests, not quantity arrests, where the people we put away are responsible for a large number of violent crimes.”

Placentia Police Chief Manuel Ortega said that the program was “extremely successful” in several neighborhoods in his city.

“It reduced gang activity and enhanced the comfort of the people in those areas,” he said.

The neighborhoods, Ortega said, “were made a little more safe, a little less violent.”