147 Gang Members Indicted In California

HAWAIIAN GARDENS, Calif. — A Latino street gang waged a racist campaign to eliminate the city's black residents through attempted murders and other crimes, according to federal racketeering indictments unsealed Thursday.

Five indictments charged a total of 147 members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang, and federal and local agencies arrested 63 of them by early Thursday, U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said at a news conference.

Another 35 defendants were already in custody on unrelated charges. Weapons and drugs worth more than $1 million also were seized in what O'Brien called "the largest gang takedown in United States history."

The indictments detail attempted murder, kidnapping, firearms, narcotics and other charges related to attacks by the gang, which is predominantly Latino and mainly operates in Hawaiian Gardens, a city of about 15,000 in southeastern Los Angeles County.

"(Varrio Hawaiian Gardens) gang members take pride in their racism and often refer to the VHG Gang as the `Hate Gang,'" the main indictment said. "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 African-Americans."

The indictment alleges a string of attacks on black residents, including a shooting into a home with eight people inside. The indictment does not say if anyone was hit.

In another instance, two gang members allegedly chased a black man, yelled a racist epithet at him and then beat him with a garden rake. The same man was later repeatedly stabbed by two gang members, according to the indictment, which charged them with his attempted murder.

According to 2000 census data, the latest available, Hawaiian Gardens was roughly 73 percent Hispanic and 4 percent black.

Hawaiian Gardens Mayor Michael Gomez welcomed the crackdown, saying: "Honest residents should not have to live in fear of lawless thugs who act like it's high noon at the OK Corral."

The indictments mark at least the second time in less than two years that federal authorities have accused Latino gang members of attacking black residents because of their race. Local officials have tried to downplay racial tensions.

The investigation of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang began in June 2005 after the murder of Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Luis Gerardo "Jerry" Ortiz. Jose Luis Orozco, a member of the gang, was sentenced to death in 2007 for the killing.

Ortiz, 35, died as he searched for Orozco, who had shot and wounded a man while he did yard work. Orozco was later found guilty of attempted murder in that case.

"It was this hatred of African-Americans that may have spurred the attack on Deputy Jerry Ortiz, who was killed trying to arrest a gang member suspected of trying to shoot an African-American man in the back," O'Brien said.

Comments

[mizzday]

11:28 AM on 05/25/2009

Hmm, sounds like the hutu's and the tutsi's to me!

[1088]

10:51 PM on 05/22/2009

I wonder if the price was right!

http://www.politico.com/

[lgg]

08:22 PM on 05/22/2009

wow this reminds me of that one time when the govt rounded up a hundred or so of those kkk dudes back in the 60's....oh wait that never happened.

[Gasparilla]

10:47 PM on 05/22/2009

It sure did. The Fbi was all over the South.

[nippyfan]

10:50 PM on 05/22/2009

Painfully good one.

[GrainOSand]

07:59 PM on 05/22/2009

Oh, look at the rats scurry to and fro for their petty positions of power and promised prosperity (“I killed a man for the opportunity of an SUV with some tight rims, a gold rope, and a two bedroom apartment" -- Pure Genius). Wholesale selling of the soul all across the planet, and the beat goes on, it does not stop. Weak minded individuals doing weak things and getting weak results. How is this any different than yesterday? How do today’s fools differ from yesterdays’ fools of hate and horror?

Stir the pot my people...keep on stirring the pot. One day the temperature and the content will be just right for mass defeat. A feeble being has the nerve to hate another just like them, has the nerve to somehow think they are elevated? I just “loves” that sort of stupidity. It makes for bigger fires when the pain comes for stupidity unchecked. Fools easily twist in the wind of manufactured worthiness. The people targeted by these fools are not the one’s who are really victimizing them, yet they are too indoctrinated to see the source of their pain.

A whole generation got tough behind the gun. Take that gun away and see the tough wilt.

The rift is not about skin, it is about the nature and the quality of that which resides within. The people in this story have substandard materials they are working with, and perhaps they should look to purge the inner garbage.

[shiv23]

09:40 PM on 05/22/2009

your view of gang members is very one-dimensional. i used to think like that too, a long time ago, before i worked with teens in gangs (including the VHG) on a daily basis.

it took me quite a while to realize that NO ONE WANTS to be in a gang because it's cool, fun or glamorous. children get recruited into gangs because they have NOTHING better to turn to at home. they join gangs out of a need for acceptance and stability that the rest of us got from our families, teachers, coaches, etc. they join out of fear, because they could be killed if they resist.

when people undergo that kind of extreme stress, and then see that they are hated by everyone in the world except their own crew (including, i'm sorry to say, people like you), how are they supposed to react? how would you react? i don't think you know the answer to that. very few of us can fathom what these children actually go through in their struggle to survive.

i appeal to you, and to anyone else who is reading this, to please refrain from judging a gang member until you have truly been able to live their life and look through their eyes. until then, you can never understand how a rational, happy, hopeful little boy could turn into a bitter, hate-filled, hopeless young man. nothing will EVER change if people like us never give these kids a chance.

[GrainOSand]

11:53 AM on 05/23/2009

You presuppose much in your comment. There is no way I could impart to you in a few words what I do know about gangs. I am not judging, I am stating what I know to be fact. I cannot count the people whom I grew up with who were lost to gang violence or gang existence. I cannot count the numerous times where I had to physically resist an attempt to violently recruit me into a gang. I did more than work with gangs, I survived them. I did more than live their life. I lived in their neighborhoods, went to school with them, befriended some of them, dated their sisters, and I went to their funerals and sat at their houses with their grief stricken family after the funeral. I never joined a gang and it was not for lack of the thugs trying. You are correct, often times the difference between gang membership or not is love at home, though I know of several cases of a stable loving home environment still not precluding the loss of a son or daughter to gang life. I give them more than a chance. I give them the same chance I had as a (monetarily) poor minority kid within a system that hates such people.

[GrainOSand]

11:54 AM on 05/23/2009

Some, when confronted with the horror of existence go to the darkness and seek to demonize and destroy others to elevate themselves, to feel better about their life situation. I went to the light and realized we are all so very fragile. It is better to love and heal another, than hate and kill another. I am not special, I am not elevated above anyone. I come from the same belly of the same beast. I know the movements of scared rats very well. I have seen the gangbanger rat and the corporate rat. They operate from similar motivations, and they are equally heartless brutal and cold as they chase the cheese for a short life of supposed prosperity. Yet they fall short in their definition of life lived well.

I have love for the gangbanger, but no pity, for have seen people in similar circumstances make different choices -- starting with myself. I did not escape the horrors of ghetto life, I was wounded by the experience. However, I am happy to say my heart and my soul is intact. I learned the lessons and passed the test of strength over weakness long ago. I have no external enemies and I fear no one or no event (death or life). Gangbangers are dancing like puppets to someone else’s sad tune and many are unaware of the source of their perverse groove. Many cannot see the DJ of destruction who plays the death song by which they march and die.

[sfirx]

07:41 PM on 05/22/2009

What are you talking about? You're all over the place. The question is, is this a problem or not. Stop always blaming Whites for manipulating and making things happen. White people are not God, so you have control over your own life. I live in South L.A and that video you're referring to is unreliable because most people, including blacks, don't like illegal immigration, but are scared to speak out against it for fear of being branded a racist. It's like we have now moved from calling people who hate a person for who they are racist, to calling people racist for hating what the person does.

[Judyisacutie]

07:15 PM on 05/22/2009

Now let's round up that M13 gang or whatever stupid moniker they use for themselves.

[Judyisacutie]

07:15 PM on 05/22/2009

Now let's round up that M13 gang over whatever stupid moniker they use for themselves.

[shiv23]

01:34 AM on 05/23/2009

MS 13? i'm not sure it's such a "stupid moniker." it holds a lot of meaning for the people that rally around it. i certainly don't condone being part of a violent gang and/or participating in criminal activities, but gang members are not nearly as stupid or frivolous as the general public thinks.

[jinjinpinti]

06:26 PM on 05/22/2009

Hmmm. Food for thought. We were alarmed for our militantly redneck, but peaceful, neighbor when Latino gang signs appeared on his garage door in full view from our windows. Now as an interracial, black/white family we worry that maybe the graffiti was actually intended for us. As if there isn't enough about which to fret.

[nubret2008]

09:13 AM on 05/27/2009

La Raza wants both of you - the blacks and the whites - out of their territory

[Pharaoh7185]

06:21 PM on 05/22/2009

That's why I always keep the eagle with me...

[TrueThis]

05:41 PM on 05/22/2009

I thought Lou Dobbs was prejudices but this takes the cake.

[bluthboy]

05:19 PM on 05/22/2009

Check out the posts for this same article at breitbart ...SCARY!

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98AUEK01&show_article=1%22

[TrueThis]

05:34 PM on 05/22/2009

Those comments on that website was so..........degrading and very low class. Finally we got an attorney general that's doing his job. This need to stop period. More justice to come.

[lexnekst]

04:52 PM on 05/22/2009

It's funny they can feel that way about (1) Americans and (2) blacks--

But they dont understand why we dont want any more Mexicans in the country (epecially the illegals)

[SNS]

05:32 PM on 05/22/2009

It's too bad it takes this to get Americans to care about black people. It's like racist whites just could not give up their bigoted views of blacks without substituting it for another form of bigotry. It makes me think of Joe Frazier, when white America valiantly rooted for him against Ali. Soon as Frazier and Ali's last fight was over? White America couldn't care less about Frazier. Frazier lives in a beat up, small house now. Now blacks in South Central are suddenly the darling of the minutemen right, even if the black community does not welcome them (see youtube clips of black people confronting the minutemen at their rally in South LA two years ago...."if you care about us, why haven't we ever seen you until now?"). Pat Bucannon, who talked of shooting crips and bloods in the streets while he was running for president during the '92 riots, has now made comments championing the crips and bloods' efforts of fighting immigration. Strange bedfellows, to say the least. And horribly mislead, while we're at it. Crips and Bloods only care about control of their streets, not fighting immigration. If immigrant gang membes high tale it to the next neighborhood, that's fine by them.

[bluthboy]

05:59 PM on 05/22/2009

AMERICAN ARE BLACK PEOPLE. STOP RACE BAITING!

[yappnmutt]

04:40 PM on 05/22/2009

they must be worried about property values.....

[TrueThis]

05:42 PM on 05/22/2009

Why don't you move over there and find.

[Knowledgeseeker]

04:34 PM on 05/22/2009

This kind of hate has not place in America, we don't let people come into this country to kill our citizens. this is why we need strict boarder control.

[PrimusElijah]

04:33 PM on 05/22/2009

There is a little too much Latino hatred going on in these posts. I am black and have felt racism from every other color and my own. I have had my own feelings that I have had to deal with. We cannot divide this nation into colors and expect to survive.
Honestly, don't you think plenty of Latino's cant stand gangs. Really, we all need to get along.

[Knowledgeseeker]

04:42 PM on 05/22/2009

I think for the most part, people who are making the comments are mad with the situation, its just unbelievable, how could we tolerate this kind hate in American. many years years ago we had to deal with the KKK who where killing and hanging blacks. I think the US government needs to pay more attention to these Gangs.

[Knowledgeseeker]

04:50 PM on 05/22/2009

i dont agree with you about the hatred in the comments, people are just mad at the gang problem in California.