Indictment targets violent street gang

LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities on Thursday accused a Los Angeles County street gang of a litany of crimes, including the murder of a sheriff's deputy and racially motivated attacks designed to drive blacks from their town.

The charges, part of a massive racketeering case, were outlined in several indictments charging 147 members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang with murder, attempted murder, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and witness intimidation.

The gang, also known as VHG, is so pervasive in Hawaiian Gardens that one in 15 people living in the one-square-mile city about 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles has ties to it, said Sal Hernandez, the FBI's top agent in Los Angeles.

"Imagine living in a community where one in every 15 of your neighbors swears allegiance to an organization committed to the spread of violence," Hernandez said. "The good people deserve to live in peace."

The probe into the gang began in 2005 after Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Jerry Ortiz was fatally shot by a Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang member he was trying to arrest in connection with the shooting of a black man. The shooter, a veteran gang member with devil horns tattooed on his forehead, has since been convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien, speaking at a news conference Thursday, touted the case as the "largest gang takedown in United States history."

"Today we honor Deputy Ortiz by coming together to crush the outlaw gang that took his life and make a positive difference for the law-abiding people who live in Hawaiian Gardens," said O'Brien, who spoke in front of a memorial to Ortiz and other officers killed in the line of duty.

Authorities said the gang was formed in the 1950s or early '60s and today has more than 1,000 members spanning several generations, many of them with connections to the Mexican Mafia. The gang started out with street robberies, drug dealing and turf wars with other gangs but has since escalated its level of violence, authorities allege. The gang is accused of taunting law enforcement with particularly brazen acts, including scrawling "187," the California penal code designation for homicide, on a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department patrol car in 2006. Authorities interpreted the vandalism as a reference to Ortiz's killing a year earlier.

The gang members, with monikers of 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.