24 Are Arrested in Countywide Gang Sweep
A multi-agency task force arrested 24 in a countywide gang sweep Thursday morning, a sheriff’s spokesman said.
More than 200 Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and officers from the county Department of Probation, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the California Youth Authority and the Department of Corrections made arrests starting in Compton and spanning to 70 locations across the county.
The busts, among occasional operations by the county’s Safe Streets Gang Enforcement Unit, turned up a number of handguns, an assault rifle and an illegal chop shop, Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Pena said.
Sheriff Lee Baca expanded the anti-gang unit to the north end of the county in 1999. The unit has been compared to the Los Angeles Police Department’s troubled CRASH units.
Pena said the team does not often conduct sweeps such as the one Thursday, and that the unit “has a lot of accountability”
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