18th Street Gang

When a stray bullet from a gang member's gun struck 3-week-old Luis Angel Garcia in the heart and killed him in 2007, police, politicians and ordinary Angelenos expressed outrage over the infant's death. But they weren't the only ones. Members of the Mexican Mafia, the notorious prison-based organization that authorities say controls Latino street gangs, demanded that those responsible be killed, according to an indictment unsealed this week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Eighteen members of a street gang were indicted Wednesday and charged with using violence and intimidation "to control, oversee and direct" cocaine sales in the area around MacArthur Park. The park, surrounded by poor, largely immigrant communities, was the site of the fatal shooting last month of a 23-day-old baby, the unintended victim of what officials called an extortion attempt by street criminals.

Members of the 18th Street gang who claim the area where LAPD Officer Filbert H. Cuesta Jr. was killed as their turf have a reputation for hard-core drug dealing and violence, and have persevered despite intense law enforcement crackdowns. One alleged member of the gang's Smiley-Hauser clique, as it is known, is accused of shooting Cuesta, an anti-gang officer who was waiting for other officers outside a party.

Continuing a crackdown on the 18th Street gang, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge issued an order Tuesday severely limiting the activities of 50 members of two of the gang's "cliques." The injunction by Judge Fumiko Wasserman is the third against the gang in less than a year, said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the city attorney's office.

More than five years after one of the city's worst arson fires killed three women and seven children in a tenement building west of downtown Los Angeles, prosecutors Wednesday filed multiple murder charges against two members of the notorious 18th Street gang. Prosecutors said they will attempt to try Rogelio Andrade and Allan Lobos, both 22, as adults for the fire, which they allegedly ignited to intimidate an apartment manager who had tried to drive drug dealers off her property.

Mayor Richard Riordan, adopting one of his more aggressive tacks against street violence, has called for a court injunction as part of a major crackdown on 18th Street gang members in Los Angeles' most crime-ridden area. Citing the gang's involvement in shakedowns, drug dealing, robberies and vandalism in the Pico-Union area, the mayor, who has made public safety the centerpiece of his reelection campaign, urged City Atty. James K.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Tuesday delayed a hearing on a proposed injunction to curb the activities of one branch of the sprawling 18th Street gang, accused of terrorizing and intimidating residents in a neighborhood east of Culver City. Seventeen of the 18 alleged gang members named in a Los Angeles city attorney's office complaint appeared in court under heightened security that included a metal detector.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office filed a complaint Friday identifying a group of 18th Street gang members as a public nuisance and asked a court to grant an injunction that would prohibit them from congregating in their neighborhood east of Culver City.

In what would be a precedent-setting ruling for Los Angeles, a Superior Court judge Wednesday signaled that he is likely to grant an injunction banning virtually all public gatherings by members of the notorious 18th Street gang, accused of terrorizing a neighborhood in the southwest area of the city.

In what would be a precedent-setting ruling for Los Angeles, a Superior Court judge Wednesday signaled that he is likely to grant an injunction banning virtually all public gatherings by members of the notorious 18th Street gang, accused of terrorizing a neighborhood in the southwest area of the city.