25 Arrested, 5 Guns Seized in Police Raid

Guns drawn, more than 200 Orange County police officials simultaneously raided 60 homes in seven cities in search of weapons, drugs and the gang members they say are responsible for eight shootings--including two murders--since the first of the year.

Although no one was arrested in connection with the murders, a total of 25 suspected gang members were apprehended, including 12 for suspicion of various felony drug offenses. Five guns were seized, along with drugs and “gang paraphernalia,” such as group scrapbooks and baseball bats covered in graffiti, Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Wilkerson said.

Deputies hoped Wednesday’s sweep would net the gun used in a Jan. 19 execution-style shooting of two teenagers in a Stanton parking lot. Tests will determine whether one of the seized handguns is the same weapon used to kill Miguel Fermin, 18, and Miguel Gomez, 16, who were shot at a strip mall at Magnolia and Cerritos avenues. Both victims were suspected gang members from Stanton, officials said.

No arrests have been made in connection to that shooting, but detectives said Wednesday they “are very close.”

Sheriff’s detectives also were looking for a gun used in the April 9 shooting of 21-year-old Manuel Juan Garcia, who died after apparently trying to walk away from a fight at a Cerritos Avenue apartment. Two rival gang members are being held at the Orange County Jail pending trial after being arrested on suspicion of murder.

Evidence also was sought in at least a half-dozen other shootings--mostly drive-bys that did not result in injuries--within the past few months. The shootings have occurred primarily in Anaheim, Stanton and Garden Grove, three cities frequented most often by the gangs targeted Wednesday, officials said. Police from Westminster, Orange, Fullerton, Brea, Santa Ana and Garden Grove assisted in the sweep. Officials from the state Department of Justice, Orange County Probation and Parole Department and the county district attorney’s office also participated.

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The massive early-morning sweep sent clusters of sleepy residents outside in bathrobes and boxer shorts, turning neighborhoods into impromptu pajama parties. They watched officers pound on doors and interview handcuffed suspects. Some neighbors positioned lawn chairs on the sidewalk for a better view and propped yawning children on their laps.

Led by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department gang unit, the sweep took officials from 12 law enforcement agencies into Anaheim, Stanton, Buena Park, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Westminster and Cypress.

The raid concluded a five-month-long investigation that had officers tailing the members of six gangs throughout the county and interviewing “countless associates,” police said. Detectives compiled the information, much of which is specific down to the suspects’ tattoos, and used it to target the homes hit Wednesday.

“The gangs involved here have become very active in the past several months,” Wilkerson said. “We’ve seen some drive-by shootings and a lot of retaliation between two in particular.”

In Anaheim, detectives made three arrests and seized a small amount of drugs and drug paraphernalia, said Sgt. Joe Vargas, department spokesman.

“These types of operations are as much for gathering intelligence information as they are for anything else,” Vargas said. “We seized photographs, pipes, scales, scrapbooks and various other items that will help us get a true picture on these gangs and how they operate.”

Shortly before 7 a.m. on the 10000 block of Rose Street in Stanton, three teams of Orange County sheriff’s detectives spilled out of unmarked vans and rushed single-file down the sidewalk. They surrounded four homes, pounded on the doors and shouted their arrival before pushing their way inside.

At one house, dogs barked and parakeets chirped frantically at the deputies, who picked through piles of car parts and debris strewn on the front yard. About an hour later, they allowed a woman inside the home to walk a young girl to the bus stop nearby. The child, toting a Pocahontas backpack, seemed oblivious to the uniformed men swarming her home.

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Officers received a similar greeting at a house on the corner of Flower Street and Central Avenue, also in Stanton, where a young man started mowing the front lawn while detectives combed through the garage in back. When they hadn’t left by the time he was finished, the man started edging the grass along the sidewalk.

Wilkerson said such massive sweeps are necessary because gang members tend to be transient, moving often between cities. Police last year attributed a 6% drop in overall gang crime to coordinated, aggressive crackdowns on gang members in a number of cities. Gang-related homicides dropped 40% in 1996 from the previous year, a five-year low.