Police Raids

A hodgepodge crowd gathers here twice a week for handouts just steps from City Hall and an empty kosher deli. Outside the local food pantry snakes a line of Guatemalans wearing court-ordered ankle monitors, imported workers from the Pacific island of Palau and unemployed town natives -- almost all there because of a dramatic raid that has left a deep mark in the way the U.S. views and deals with illegal immigration.

For more than five years, U.S. immigration authorities have touted the success of a national program aimed at arresting and deporting dangerous criminals and fugitives. In frequent early morning raids at homes in Los Angeles and around the country, federal fugitive teams have sought out immigrants with criminal records or outstanding deportation orders. And year after year, the Department of Homeland Security has received congressional support and funds to expand the program.

Nine members and associates of a Bell Gardens street gang, including a suspected hit man for a Mexican drug cartel, have been arrested on drug trafficking and weapons charges, federal officials said Friday. The suspects -- six U.S. citizens and three illegal Mexican immigrants -- were arrested Thursday as agents served search warrants in Bell Gardens and Los Angeles, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. Their arrests culminated a nine-month investigation by the agency of the Barrio Evil 13 street gang.

Todd Camp and some friends had just marked the 40th anniversary of the police raid on New York's Stonewall Inn by screening a documentary on the historic gay riots and then heading for drinks at the Rainbow Lounge. Camp remembered looking across the bar, packed with gay and some straight couples, and marveling how much times had changed since Stonewall -- the spark that ignited the gay rights movement. And then the police came.

Special prosecutors investigating corruption allegations at massive conglomerate Samsung Group raided an office of Chairman and Chief Executive Lee Kun-hee on Monday as part of a probe reluctantly approved last year by South Korea's president, an official said. Government investigators also raided the company's headquarters in Seoul today, said Yim Jun-seok, a Samsung spokesman. He said investigators entered the strategic planning office.

For 15 years, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana has been trying to draw attention to itself and prove that a modest Orange County institution can compete in the major leagues of the exhibition world. Some of the big names of world culture have found their way into its galleries, including fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and an array of ancient Egyptian mummies that have helped draw 150,000 paying visitors over the last 12 months.

American and Italian authorities Thursday swept up dozens of suspects wanted in connection with a transatlantic drug trafficking operation and a string of U.S. Mafia crimes dating to the 1970s. The coordinated operation -- which was three years in the making -- targeted at least 30 suspects in Sicily and 62 in New York, law enforcement officials said. By Thursday night, most of those in New York and New Jersey had been taken into custody.

European Union antitrust regulators raided an Intel Corp. office and computer retailers Tuesday in search of evidence they may have broken rules to ensure competition in the market for computer chips, the European Commission and Intel said. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy confirmed that the company's Munich, Germany, office had been raided and said the company would cooperate closely with the investigation.

Civil rights groups filed a petition in federal court Thursday seeking a restraining order against immigration officials who allegedly blocked workers detained in a raid at a Van Nuys manufacturing plant from consulting with their attorneys.

Even as gentrification swept Venice in the last decade and the district's once notorious gang activity dropped, the Venice Shoreline Crips kept a stubborn hold over the Oakwood Recreation Center, authorities say. According to authorities, the gang exerted a brazen influence over the facility, turning outsiders away and using it as an outpost for drug sales -- particularly within the last several years. On some occasions, the basketball court saw more drug deals than free throws, they said.