Manhunt Hobbles Gang Activity

The two-week manhunt for suspected police killer David A. Garcia ended with the fugitive’s Thanksgiving Day arrest in a run-down colonia near Tijuana.

But the intense pressure authorities brought to bear on Garcia’s Sun Valley neighborhood produced another boon for police: the hobbling of the Vineland Boyz, the violent street gang that Garcia was associated with.

The search for Garcia, which involved as many as 1,000 officers, included numerous sweeps of the northeast San Fernando Valley, where he was initially thought to be hiding.

Authorities arrested more than 60 of Garcia’s friends and family members, about a third of them on suspicion of helping him evade police. Many of those arrested were members of the gang, Burbank Police Capt. Gordon Bowers said.

As of Friday, prosecutors had charged five of those arrested, but Bowers said nearly all would eventually face charges, ranging from accessory after the fact of murder to weapons and parole violations.

The crackdown led some Sun Valley residents to complain that police were harassing innocent people as they took Garcia’s neighbors in for questioning and used SWAT teams to raid homes. But police defended the strategy, saying the sweep made the neighborhood safer because of the blow it dealt to the Vineland Boyz, a 300-member gang specializing in the trafficking of illegal narcotics and weapons.

“This has definitely put a dent in their activity,” said Officer Dan Fournier, a gang specialist with the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division.

Police consider the Vineland gang to be one of the most dangerous in the working-class barrios of Sun Valley and North Hollywood.

The gang has been involved in a number of high-profile drive-by shootings, including the 1998 slaying of Saul Santiago, a San Fernando High School senior who had been accepted to UCLA and had no gang connections. Vineland gang member Juan Corral, 20, was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison for the crime and an earlier drive-by in which a teenager was shot six times.

In 1988, Vineland member Robert Steele, 16, shot rookie Los Angeles Police Officer James Beyea during a burglary arrest in North Hollywood, LAPD officials said. Officers shot and killed Steele three hours later after they say he brandished Beyea’s service revolver.

The new scrutiny has been particularly unwelcome to the gang, which prefers to keep a low profile.

Vineland’s penchant for anonymity arose out of necessity. In the early 1990s, the Mexican Mafia, the powerful, prison-based gang, issued a so-called “green light” order against Vineland for failing to hand over a portion of its drug profits, Fournier said.

The order, which lasted four or five years, meant that any gangster claiming affiliation with Vineland would be subject to attack if he went to jail or prison, Fournier said. It also allowed rival street gangs to target Vineland members in drive-bys, despite a Mexican Mafia-imposed moratorium that was in effect at the time.

Like a number of other Los Angeles street gangs in recent years, the Vineland Boyz eventually realized they could operate more effectively by shunning such gang fashions as shaved heads, baggy clothes and large tattoos.

The search for Garcia “has attracted more attention than they ever wanted,” Fournier said. “It’s not good for business.”

Burbank police said Garcia had been living in a Ramada Inn near Burbank Airport, possibly dealing drugs or weapons out of a room there. Los Angeles County prosecutors’ complaint against Garcia, which was filed Monday, alleges that Garcia’s crimes were committed “for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in association with a criminal street gang.”

According to police, Garcia, 19, and another gang member, Ramon Aranda, 25, opened fire on Burbank Officers Gregory Campbell and Matthew Pavelka on Nov. 15, as the officers approached Aranda’s sport utility vehicle, which was parked in the hotel lot.

Pavelka and Aranda were killed in the ensuing firefight and Campbell was wounded. Garcia fled on foot.

Pavelka, a 26-year-old rookie officer and son of an LAPD detective, was the first Burbank officer to be fatally shot while on duty.

The search for his alleged killer was as extensive as it was emotional.

In the first hours of the hunt, authorities focused on the vicinity of the hotel, scouring the area with foot patrols, police dogs and a helicopter. Later, a multi-agency task force spread across Los Angeles County, hauling in suspects from Sun Valley, North Hollywood, Burbank, Lancaster and Bell.

As gang associates and family members were being detained and interviewed by Burbank police, others with tips about Garcia’s whereabouts were being tracked down.

Garcia’s twin brother and father were arrested on suspicion of helping him evade police. The brother, James Garcia, 19, and a neighbor, Erwin De Leon Jr., 20, were charged and pleaded not guilty to being accessories after the fact of murder and are being held in lieu of $600,000 bail each.

Garcia’s father, Ernest Garcia, was released, and had not been charged as of Friday. Garcia’s mother was briefly detained.

The trail led investigators across the Mexican border. As the scope of the investigation grew, Chief Inspector John Clark of the U.S. Marshals Service said it was akin to having a contiguous police force from Los Angeles to Tijuana. On both sides of the border, police conducted surveillance on people, locations and vehicles and information was relayed between investigators, Clark said.

A number of residents detained in Garcia’s neighborhood said police kept their cell phones after they had been questioned and released. Law enforcement sources said seized phones can yield a treasure trove of information, including inbound and outbound numbers, address books and text messages.

After Garcia’s capture in Mexico, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged him with capital murder and attempted murder, making him eligible for the death penalty. Police searching the SUV discovered methamphetamine, an assault rifle and a submachine gun, resulting in felony charges for illegal drug and weapons possession.

Garcia, who is being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail, is awaiting a Dec. 23 arraignment.

Back in his neighborhood, some friends and residents are angry about the way police treated them.

A 25-year-old parolee, who did not give his name for fear of further trouble with police, said officers picked him up the day after the shootout and detained him for 10 days. He said he knew Garcia but had no information about the shooting.

“I was just scared,” he said. “I didn’t know anything -- and I wasn’t violating parole or nothing.”

Neighbor Erwin de Leon Sr., an insurance broker, said he and his family were helpful when police entered their home, searched son Erwin Jr.’s room and took him away. His wife even served police coffee.

But a few days later, a SWAT team returned to the house, searching for signs of Garcia. De Leon said the officers pointed their weapons at his 15-year-old daughter and handcuffed him in front of his neighbors.

“I told them, ‘Please, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to my family?’ ” he said. “They knew we were not a threat....The way they threatened me, I felt like they were violating my human rights.”

Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Wes McBride, the current president of the Assn. of California Gang Investigators, defended the massive show of force in the dragnet for Garcia, saying it was appropriate in dealing with someone who has shown such disregard for human life and with those who have provided aid and comfort to that individual.

“He’s already shot two police officers, he’s armed and particularly dangerous,” McBride said. “He’ll kill anyone to get away and the idea is to get him off the streets as soon as possible.

“If they are assisting a murderer, they are guilty of a crime regardless of whether they are family or friends,” he said.

It is not unusual, McBride said, for police to pressure a gang by making dozens of arrests in the days after a homicide, whether it was of a civilian or a police officer.

“The idea is to put as much legal pressure on [the gang] as you can,” McBride said. “Anyone who is involved with assisting the murderer is fair game.”

Now that authorities have the Vineland Boyz on the defensive, Fournier hopes to keep up the pressure and finish the job.

“We want to dismantle them,” he said. “The heat’s going on.”