It is accused of taunting law enforcement with particularly brazen acts, including scrawling "187," the California Penal Code designation for homicide, on a sheriff's patrol car in 2006. Authorities interpreted the vandalism as a reference to Ortiz's killing a year earlier.
Gang members also spray-painted the words "Rest in Piss Ortiz" on a wall, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael S. Lowe, the lead prosecutor on the case.
The gang members, with monikers such as Slasher, Shady, Diablo and Menace, boasted about being racist, referring to themselves as "the Hate Gang," according to a 193-page indictment that outlines the racketeering case.
"VHG gang members have expressed a desire to rid the city of Hawaiian Gardens of all African Americans and have engaged in a systematic effort to achieve that result by perpetrating crimes" against them, the document states.
The indictment details 476 "overt acts" that gang members allegedly committed as part of the racketeering conspiracy since 1992. The crimes include the dealing of methamphetamine, heroin and crack, and the killing of a fellow gang member suspected of cooperating with law enforcement.
The document also details more than a dozen incidents in which African Americans were allegedly beaten, shot at or harassed because of their race.
In one incident, a gang member is accused of using a racial epithet against an African American, yelling at him to "get out of town," then attacking him with a garden rake. The indictment states that one gang member was heard bragging about the murder of Ortiz, saying it had put the gang "back on the map."
As a result of the raids Thursday, about 90 suspected gang members and associates were arrested, including some who were not listed in the indictment but taken into custody for other alleged crimes, authorities said.
Thirty-five of those charged were already in custody for other alleged crimes; 49 either remain at large or have yet to be identified.
During the four-year probe, authorities seized 105 guns and more than 30 pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. The drugs had an estimated street value "worth well over a million dollars," said Timothy J. Landrum, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles.
Dozens of the defendants made their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where most were ordered held without bail.
