largest gang takedown in US history.

Dozens Arrested in LA
Gang Sweep
It was largest gang takedown in US
history.

Updated: Thursday, 21 May 2009, 12:35 PM PDT
Published : Thursday, 21 May 2009, 12:04 PM PDT

* Posted by: Scott Coppersmith

Hawaiian Gardens (myFOXla.com) - In what prosecutors are calling the "largest gang takedown in United States history," dozens of Los Angeles Latino gang members accused of attacking blacks and law enforcement personnel have been rounded up.

Watch Chris Blatchford's report in the video player.

The gang members and associates are charged with federal racketeering and drug-trafficking.

The FB I, DEA, ATF and sheriff's department also participated in this morning's raids in the Hawaiian Gardens area.

A total of 63 people were arrested in the gang sweep, according to US Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien.

He says the raid involved 1,400 law enforcement officials, including 17 SWAT teams, who were serving warrants stemming from a series of federal indictments targeting 147 members of the Barrio Hawaiian Gardens gang.

According to O'Brien, plans for the operation began four years ago after the killing of LA County sheriff's Deputy Jerry Ortiz.

By Frank Girardot on May 21, 2009 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | ShareThis

While local public officials continue to deny the existence of brown on black hate crime, the FBI cracked down on a Hawaiian Gardens gang responsible for several heinous crimes.

From the Associated Press:

Federal and local agencies were conducting a series of arrests targeting members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens street gang, U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

A series of federal racketeering indictments was due to be unsealed later Thursday, detailing firearms, narcotics and other charges related to the attacks, Mrozek said.

Further details were not released, but Mrozek said the indictments would detail the attacks on several black victims.

The indictments mark at least the second time in less than two years that federal authorities have alleged that Latino gang members attacked black residents because of their race. Local officials have tried to downplay any racial tensions.

total of 63 people were arrested in the gang sweep, according to US Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien.

He says the raid involved 1,400 law enforcement officials, including 17 SWAT teams, who were serving warrants stemming from a series of federal indictments targeting 147 members of the Barrio Hawaiian Gardens gang.

hahahahahaa...fail...1400 cops lookin for 147 peeps...catchin less than half...

FAIL!!!

LOL!


fail is right.....wow...

147 Gang Members Charged After Inquiry in California

By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: May 21, 2009
LOS ANGELES — Federal prosecutors have charged 147 members of a predominantly Latino street gang that has long ruled the streets of Hawaiian Gardens, a city of 14,000 east of Long Beach, through racial attacks on African-Americans and drug dealing.

Prosecutors said the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang, with approximately 1,000 members and associates, carried out racially motivated shootings to enforce its territory and to intimidate black residents.

Gang members were also responsible for shooting to death a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy in 2005, according to a 193-page indictment released Thursday.

Federal and local law enforcement officers have arrested 99 Varrio gang members in raids and said that they had confiscated $100,000 in cash and dozens of firearms. Forty-eight are fugitives being sought.

The sweep this week brought to a close a nearly four-year investigation of a gang that the authorities described as a disciplined organization that follows a centralized leadership and that itself takes orders from the Mexican Mafia, a powerful gang based in prison with ties to international drug cartels.

Prosecutors said the Varrio gang had its own code of ethics; drive-by shootings from moving cars are forbidden and breaches of gang hierarchies are brutally punished. Members also broadcast animosity toward blacks by regarding themselves as the “Hate Gang.”

“Their general message was that if you were in this city, you’d better not be African-American,” said Thomas P. O’Brien, the United States attorney for the Central District of California.

The federal investigation began in 2005, after Jerry Ortiz, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, was killed by a Varrio gang member named Jose Luis Orozco, who was a suspect in the shooting of a black man.

The indictment describes how a gang member told investigators that the killing of Deputy Ortiz put the Varrio gang “back on the map” and earned the respect of rival gangs.

Mr. Orozco is on death row for the killing, the only member prosecuted so far in the killing.

Federal agents used hundreds of hours of wiretaps and other surveillance to map the gang’s leadership and illicit enterprises, said Daniel McMullen, head of the criminal division of the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“We established their leadership, how they organized, their code of conduct and how they enforced it,” Agent McMullen said. “The point is to cut off the head. Will it grow back? Maybe, but we knew that, and we’ll continue to investigate. All of this leads back to the Mexican Mafia."

Law enforcement officials said the gang had operated in Hawaiian Gardens for more than 50 years and was in its third generation of membership.

The authorities said they had arrested more than 10 percent of the organization on suspicion of selling cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin.

The federal indictment also describes shootings into the houses of black residents, kidnappings, carjackings, robberies, witness intimidation and at least one assault on a sheriff’s deputy.

Some of the crimes were committed as gang members shouted racial epithets, according to federal authorities.

In the indictment, prosecutors described how the gangsters used codes in an effort to avoid detection while conducting illegal deals over the phone. They refer to crack cocaine as “cookies” and to one another with names like Buddha, Catfish, Hamburger, Milkbone, Sketchy and Wimpy.

theres gotta be hundreds maybe thousands of gang members in the H.G. area.....is it just me or does 63 people seem like a drop in the bucket?

63 sounds like a pretty big amount of people even for a big gang.

Got Yo I.P. wrote:63 sounds like a pretty big amount of people even for a big gang.

ya cray but the amount of cops used compared to the amount they arrested, plus the fact they got less than half of the peeps they was lookin for

u finna die wrote:

Got Yo I.P. wrote:63 sounds like a pretty big amount of people even for a big gang.

ya cray but the amount of cops used compared to the amount they arrested, plus the fact they got less than half of the peeps they was lookin for

was it confirmed that they really didnt get all them dudes. I heard the cop on the news sayin that they did catch almost 150 dudes.....

and they always use a shit load of cops

Got Yo I.P. wrote:

u finna die wrote:

Got Yo I.P. wrote:63 sounds like a pretty big amount of people even for a big gang.

ya cray but the amount of cops used compared to the amount they arrested, plus the fact they got less than half of the peeps they was lookin for

was it confirmed that they really didnt get all them dudes. I heard the cop on the news sayin that they did catch almost 150 dudes.....

and they always use a shit load of cops

i doubt it....maybe in the days after...but that specific mission....never have they used that many juras...thats why it was the largest in the country ever....and they pretty much failed...

THEY HAD TO GET MORE THEN 50 DUDES TO BE THE BIGGIST GANG TAKE DOWN IN CALI...I SEEN BIGGER EVEN IN MY OWN BACK YARD.

DICER wrote:THEY HAD TO GET MORE THEN 50 DUDES TO BE THE BIGGIST GANG TAKE DOWN IN CALI...I SEEN BIGGER EVEN IN MY OWN BACK YARD.

thenumber of juras used made it the largest