SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA -- THIS JUST IN
Major police raid targets L.A.'s notorious Avenues gang
September 22, 2009 | 4:58 am
Hundreds of police officers and federal law enforcement agents
launched a major assault on the Avenues gang this morning,
hoping to deal a blow to an elusive group they say is responsible
for some of Los Angeles' most notorious street crime.
Under the cover of darkness around 3 a.m., roughly 1,200
heavily armed officers from the
Los Angeles Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration
and several other agencies dispersed from a command post near
the LAPD’s training academy in Elysian Park.
Warrants in hand, they descended on dozens of homes in search
of 53 alleged members or associates of the Avenues gang wanted
on an array of federal charges related to extensive
drug dealing, unsolved murders and other crimes.
Forty-three suspects already are in custody on unrelated charges.
The operation was aimed to bring new charges against 88 Avenues
members or associates, a significant share of a gang
that is believed to have about 400 members.
Some suspects were sought elsewhere in the city,
but the sweep focused on Glassell Park and
other neighborhoods in the northeastern reaches of Los Angeles
-- the center of Avenues territory
since the gang first surfaced in the 1950s.
There were no reports of officers encountering armed resistance.
San Bernardino sheriff's officers say they shot two aggressive dogs
they encountered at one location.
It was not immediately clear how many of the suspects had been
found at their homes and taken into custody.
The names of the suspects and the crimes they were accused
of also were not immediately known, pending the unsealing
of the indictments.
The arrests culminated a yearlong investigation of the gang
run by a unit of LAPD detectives that specializes in gang-related
homicides and a DEA task force.
The Avenues came under scrutiny in the wake of the
August 2008 slaying of Juan Abel Escalante,
a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. Escalante, 27, was gunned
down outside of his parents’ Cypress Park home early in the
morning as he headed to work as a guard at the Men’s Central Jail.
LAPD detectives led the murder investigation into the killing
because it occurred within city
boundaries. Within days of the shooting, agents from the
DEA task force, which had previously investigated the Avenues,
came to the LAPD with information they had gathered that indicated
members from the gang may have been responsible.
That tip led to the arrest in December of two Avenues members
in connection with the murder.
Months later, a third member was taken into custody,
and charges were brought against a fourth,
who remains a fugitive. In the course of investigating the
Escalante killing, however, the LAPD detectives and DEA agents
delved into the inner workings of the Avenues and began
compiling evidence related to a host of other alleged crimes.
Some of the information was collected during interrogations
of Avenues members and others from the neighborhood
who had been arrested by a special team of 54 uniformed gang
officers deployed in the area. Much of the incriminating information,
however, came from the suspects themselves as DEA agents
secured approval from federal judges for an array of wire taps that
allowed them to listen in on gang members’ phone conversations.
"They could have just stuck with Escalante," said LAPD Capt.
Kevin McClure, who oversees the detective unit. “They could have
said, ‘We got what we came for,’ packed it up
and moved on to something that would have been easier.
This operation was not a result of me
telling them they have to do this. It is a result of this unit saying,
‘There is more here, let’s keep going.’ ”
Over the course of the investigation, cases were built
against Avenues members for their alleged roles
in six other unsolved murders and four attempted murders,
said a top LAPD gang detective involved
in the operation. He requested that his name not be used
because of concerns over retaliation by Avenues members.
The bulk of the charges are for extortion and other crimes
that Avenues members and associates
allegedly committed as part of the gang’s extensive drug
trafficking in the area, police say.
Most of the Avenues members included in the indictment
are being charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows prosecutors to
pursue more serious prison sentences. At a planning briefing
last week with representatives from the agencies involved,
there was little question as to what had kept the group motivated.
With the auditorium at LAPD headquarters filled with a few hundred
officers, a recording was played of the phone call Escalante’s
wife made to a 911 dispatcher after discovering him
in the street. “If anyone has any doubt about the rationale
or reason behind this operation, it was this,” a detective said.
At the meeting, officers reviewed the complicated logistics
involved in a gang sweep of such a large magnitude.
With more than a dozen targets located on one street alone,
the routes each team of officers would take and the order
of their deployment had to be painstakingly planned.
Officers were instructed to bring suspects back to the
command post for processing wearing only clothes and a
pair of shoes. Any jewelry, cellphones or other belongings
would clog up what promised to be an already hectic assembly
line of alleged criminals.
Staff from the state’s Child Protective Services department
would be on hand to handle children found in any of the homes,
officers were told.
The gang, named for the avenues that cross Figueroa Street,
has a long, ugly history dating back at least to the 1950s,
when it was linked to many shootouts and killings.
It is thought by some that the group’s origins can be traced
back to some of the hundreds of families displaced from
Chavez Ravine, now home to Dodger Stadium, and the
Rose Hill areas.
The group’s insignia, which many members have tattooed
on their bodies, is a skull with a bullet hole, wearing a fedora.
Various cliques of the Avenues claim Highland Park and
parts of Cypress Park, Glassell Park and Eagle Rock as
their territory. It is linked closely to the
Mexican Mafia prison gang, which demands that the
Avenues and other Eastside gangs
send up a share of the taxes they collect from low-level
drug dealers and others selling goods on their turf.
Today’s sweep is hardly the first time law enforcement has
taken on the Avenues.
In 2002, the city attorney won an injunction against the gang,
making it illegal for members to congregate throughout
much of Highland Park, Glassell Park, Cypress Park
and Eagle Rock. A few years later, federal prosecutors
won hate-crime convictions against Avenues members
for the killings of three black men between 1995 and 2000.
Government attorneys argued that the Avenues launched a
campaign of violence to force black people out of the
Highland Park area in the 1990s and targeted the men simply
because of their race. In 2007, the city used a
narcotics-abatement lawsuit to shut down
the home of a family at the center of the Avenues'
Drew Street clique.
At the time, then-City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo called the house
the gang’s “mother ship.”
In February of last year, the gang re-erupted into the
city’s public consciousness when policy say Drew Street
members gunned down a man as he stood on a curb holding
his 2-year-old granddaughter’s hand.
They brazenly took on police in a running gun battle,
firing at officers with an AK-47 assault rifle in broad daylight.
Most recently, in June 2008, the DEA task force that
came to LAPD detectives with information on the
Escalante killing conducted a similar, but smaller, operation
to the one carried out today. That investigation named
70 defendants.
At the time, LAPD officials assured residents of the area
that they would work to keep the gang from reclaiming
control of the neighborhoods. Drug activity in the area has
slowed considerably in recent months, the detective said,
but considering the size of today’s operation, the gang
clearly has maintained a commanding presence in the area.
"They’ve owned that community for a long, long time,"
the detective said. "Only time will
tell for sure, but I think this will be a blow that will
finally make a lasting impact."
-- Joel Rubin
Photo: Several men suspected of being members or associates of the Avenues gang are held in a booking area after being arrested during a predawn raid. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
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