More than 1,300 federal and local police officers descended on the east San Fernando Valley before sunrise Tuesday, arresting nearly two dozen suspected gang members for allegedly operating a criminal enterprise that authorities blame for the murders of two police officers and a 16-year-old girl.
The Vineland Boyz, a tight-knit gang that grew out of a football team in the late 1980s, was one of the most violent street gangs in the San Fernando Valley, but it operated primarily as a business, trading in narcotics and high-end illegal weapons and stealing big-ticket appliances from construction sites, according to a federal indictment made public Tuesday.
To avoid detection, members shunned gang clothes, dressing smartly. They used automotive brands as code names to grade drugs; high-end cocaine was dubbed "Audi," police said.
The gang absorbed several other street gangs, forged an alliance with the Mexican Mafia to boost its narcotics trade, and controlled large areas of the San Fernando Valley and Burbank, the indictment said.
The gang became the focus of law enforcement in November 2003, when reputed member David Garcia allegedly fatally shot Burbank Police Officer Matthew Pavelka near the Bob Hope Airport and fled across the Mexican border. Garcia was captured 13 days later by the U.S. Marshals Service.
During the manhunt for Garcia, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said he had made a pledge to Burbank Police Chief Thomas Hoefel that their departments would join forces to "put the gang out of business."
At a morning news conference, Bratton said he had made good on his promise. The suspects picked up in the raid would become "the poster boys for what would happen to any gang that kills a police officer," Bratton said.
At an afternoon news conference outside Burbank police headquarters, U.S. Atty. Debra Wong Yang said the raids, one of the largest recent multi-agency operations in the region, and the 56-count federal indictment that accompanied it "effectively crippled the gang."
Twenty-three suspects named in the federal grand jury indictment were arrested Tuesday, mostly in the Sun Valley area. The 159-page indictment accuses the suspected gang members of violating federal drug and weapons laws as well as RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), a statute traditionally used to target Mafia organized crime families.
Thirteen other suspects had been taken into custody earlier, while seven remain at large.
