Police Raids

A tiny store in the mid-San Fernando Valley became the latest target of an increasingly aggressive campaign by the film industry to combat video piracy. By the time investigators from the Motion Picture Assn. of America finished sorting through Celebrity Video's inventory, about half of the Arleta store's English-language movies had been removed and packed into boxes marked as evidence.

Gay community leaders and bar owners in the Hollywood and Silver Lake areas are complaining about allegedly overzealous bar inspections by the Los Angles Police Department. At a community meeting with police officials in Silver Lake on Wednesday night, critics said the LAPD and the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control are engaged in a crackdown on gay bars.

Cracking down on a street gang that authorities say has terrorized a Latino neighborhood in South-Central Los Angeles, Los Angeles Police Department officers and federal agents swept through the small community early Wednesday, arresting 21 men and women and confiscating guns, drugs and cash.

Detectives said they had a message for this city's gangs, and they delivered it just after dawn Thursday by storming and searching 30 homes in the largest police operation in Fullerton history. Fifteen suspects were arrested on suspicion of such crimes as armed robbery and drug possession as 137 officers converged on the homes of suspected gang members.

Minutes before sunrise Wednesday, Ramiro Pardo was roused from bed, handcuffed and taken to jail. So were 11 other suspected gang members across Oxnard and Port Hueneme. Police had two warrants for the 20-year-old Pardo's arrest: one for failing to appear in court, another for violating probation. He could have been arrested anywhere, any time.

A man arrested in a gang sweep and questioned in the fatal shooting of Tupac Shakur is the same man who fought with Shakur in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas hours before Shakur was shot, his lawyer said Thursday. Edi M.O. Faal said his client--Orlando Anderson, a reputed Lakewood gang member arrested as part of a massive raid Wednesday--was assaulted by Shakur and had nothing to do with the attack on the rapper.

In a series of gang raids aimed at ending violence sparked by the murder of rap star Tupac Shakur, more than 300 law enforcement officers swept Compton and nearby areas Wednesday, arresting 23 people, including a reputed Lakewood gang member wanted for questioning in connection with Shakur's death. The sweep, which was set in motion before dawn and involved 11 law enforcement agencies, appeared to stem from street rumors in Compton that Shakur was killed in a gang dispute.

A 27-year-old man killed during police raids on suspected Irish Republican Army explosives caches in the British capital was not armed, the Daily Mail of London reported. The Police Complaints Authority said it would investigate the killing at the request of the Metropolitan Police. The dead man was identified as Diarmuid Michael O'Neill of London. During Monday's raids, police seized explosives, weapons and five men, all of whom are still in custody.

U.S. immigration agents, dealing a blow to a multi-state counterfeit document ring, said Thursday that they have seized almost 20,000 fake cards and arrested four people suspected of distributing and selling them on the streets of Santa Ana and elsewhere. In raids and arrests made over the last 10 days, agents seized the fraudulent cards, along with an array of equipment used to make them, from two houses and a public storage facility, all in Santa Ana.

Capping a five-year investigation, federal and local authorities fanned out across Los Angeles County on Tuesday morning--from run-down homes in Downey and Los Angeles to remote canyons in the Angeles National Forest--to bust what is reputed to be Southern California's largest marijuana ring. Investigators identified the ring as the Cardenas crime family, who they say dealt millions of dollars worth of marijuana harvested from farms hidden in the national forest.