Multi-Agency Group Puts Oxnard Gangs on Notice

Over the years, Oxnard Police Det. Terry Burr has grown accustomed to the onslaught of complaints heard at regular meetings of Ventura County’s gang intelligence officers:

Oxnard gang members assaulted locals in Ventura. Oxnard gang members took off on a weekend car-stealing spree in Thousand Oaks. Oxnard gang members fought with rivals at a Santa Barbara street festival.

“Everybody has something to say about Oxnard gang members,” Burr said.

But Burr and others are confident things are about to change, thanks to the efforts of a multi-agency task force formed last year to zero in on the city’s most active and violent gangs.

The Violent Crime Task Force, which will be a year old in July, boasts 16 members, made up of five Oxnard officers, four county probation officers and a representative from the Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office, Immigration and Naturalization Service, state parole, U.S. attorney general’s office, U.S. marshal’s office and the FBI. Each department covers personnel costs, while federal grants pay for equipment and overtime.

Operating out of a secret location in Oxnard, the task force has become a powerful weapon to combat gang activity. The team has stepped up gang surveillance, improved record keeping of gang movements and made several key arrests.

Moreover, every officer on the task force has been deputized as a federal agent. That means many of the arrests made by the team can be prosecuted in federal court, bringing much stiffer penalties. It also allows officers to follow Oxnard gang members when they cross city and county borders to commit crimes.

“The gang members just don’t know what’s hit them,” Burr said. “This is unheard of. They are used to seeing one gang investigator. They give them some misleading information, and that’s it. That’s not happening now and it’s just paralyzing them.”

It didn’t take long for the task force to swing into action. Just a few weeks after the new unit was started, informants in the County Jail tipped authorities about a hit being arranged by two jail inmates on an Oxnard detective, also a task force member.

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After one of the inmates involved was released, he was kept under tight surveillance. Four days later he was arrested on parole violations, including continued association with gang members, authorities said. The task force also worked successfully to get his accomplice--who was in the country illegally--deported before he could be released from jail.

“That really brought the team together right off the bat,” said FBI Agent Richard Kelly, who heads the task force. “It showed how successful we could be.”

Since then more arrests have followed, including those of five so-called shot-callers--or influential gang members, authorities said.

“Once you eliminate those guys,” Kelly said, “the entire structure falls apart.”

INS Agent Brandon Currie is also making life tough for criminals operating in La Colonia. With a stack of files kept at his fingertips, the officer knows in a matter of minutes whether someone who has been stopped is in the country illegally, which could result in immediate deportation.

And if they have already been deported once, the offenders can be arrested and charged with a federal offense that could garner prison time.

Over the past 10 months the team has helped deport nine people. Another eight have been charged with the federal crime of illegally reentering the country--at least one a shot-caller, a distinction that in August earned a five-year prison term.

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But so far the task force’s most effective tool has been increased surveillance. Team members, dressed in plain clothes, now have enough manpower to cruise the streets following probationers or suspected criminals.

“Gang members are used to driving around, committing their crimes, then maybe weeks later a gang officer asks about it.” Burr said. “Now, we’re right there, right away, sometimes even before the crime happens.”

In one recent case, undercover officers working in La Colonia were keeping surveillance on three teenagers who were throwing gang signs at passing cars--apparently looking for a fight.

The teenagers later attacked a man on a bike wearing a Red Sox cap--the symbol of a rival gang. The teens attacked the man, kicking, punching and yelling gang slogans before they let their victim go.

Detectives called for backup and stopped the attackers as they sped through a nearby residential neighborhood. The victim was too terrified to press charges. But with a carload of detectives seeing the events as they unfolded, it didn’t matter.

“We just watched their facial features as we told them we watched the whole thing,” Burr said. “They said, ‘My gosh, you’ve been following us for the last two hours.’ You can’t fight a group of detectives who watched you do the crime.”

All three pleaded guilty. One was sentenced to three years in prison for violating parole.

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The multi-agency task force is the brainchild of FBI Agent Kelly, who has spent the past several years working with Oxnard’s Weed and Seed Program, a community-oriented policing project that brought a police storefront to La Colonia and helped start tutoring, child care and housing assistance programs.

But Kelly was frustrated with the pace of progress, often seeing the same gang members victimize a neighborhood struggling to clean itself up. So he went to Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez with a request for five gang enforcement officers to participate in the task force.

Lopez was enthusiastic about the plan and immediately committed five officers to the team. The chief remembered a similar project in Los Angeles--where Lopez was a deputy chief before moving to Oxnard--that was largely credited with reducing the number of homicides in the early 1990s around one southeast neighborhood.

For much of the past decade, Oxnard held the distinction of having the most homicides in the county. In 1996, half of the county’s 17 homicides occurred in Oxnard. Most were gang-related, authorities said.

That year the department created a seven-member team dedicated specifically to dealing with gang activity. In 1998 authorities turned the department’s SWAT team into a 14-member Special Enforcement Unit, assigned to attack gang crimes. Three detectives, including Burr, were assigned to conduct gang investigations.

Homicide rates have since fallen, with only four reported in the city last year. Overall violent crime also continues to fall, which Lopez and others credit in part to the new task force.

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Meanwhile, the task force’s victories have piqued the interest of neighboring departments. Kelly said he has talked with the chiefs of several county police agencies who would like to join the team in exchange for some coverage in their cities.

That is good news, said Kelly, who envisions his team eventually growing into a countywide task force. Already the team has been called on to help on cases in other areas. Most recently, Kelly’s officers helped with surveillance in a gang shooting April 28 that left one man dead at the Conejo Creek condominium complex in Newbury Park.

“Eventually,” Kelly said, “I’d like to see our name change from the Oxnard Violent Crime Task Force to the Ventura County Violent Crime Task Force.”

Though they work hard to keep a low profile, word is getting out about the team’s efforts.

“Gang members now are already looking over their shoulders,” Burr said. “They’re starting to talk about it. They know something’s going on.”

Although authorities believe the task force has helped combat the gang problem, they know the problem is not going to go away entirely. Police estimate there are several thousand gang members in the city.

“We won’t be out of work any time soon,” Kelly said. “But we’re making an impact.”