55 charged in massive gang roundup
TEAMS WITH SWAT MEMBERS HEADED OUT TO SEVERAL CITIES, INCLUDING SAN DIEGO AND EL CAJON STARTING AT AROUND SIX IN THE MORNING. OFFICIALS ARE CALLING THIS A “MAJOR GANG PROSECUTION.”
Accused of execution-style murders, robberies, prostitution and drug trafficking
A longtime San Diego gang known for its ruthless violence received a dismantling blow Thursday with federal and state charges unsealed against 55 people that accuse them of everything from execution-style murders and the shooting of a pregnant woman to armed robberies, prostitution and drug trafficking.
More than 500 law enforcement officers fanned across the county Thursday morning in dozens of pre-dawn raids, culminating various investigations involving the West Coast Crips.
Nine defendants remained fugitives, but one of them, so-called “original gangster” Randy Alton Graves, was arrested about 6 p.m. Thursday in Las Vegas by FBI agents, FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth said. Graves was one of the lead targets in a racketeering investigation.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has charged 35 of the defendants in three separate complaints, while the District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting 22, with some overlap.
Investigators conducted surveillance, made undercover drug buys and intercepted some 73,000 phone calls over the past year, revealing the broad reach of the gang and the brutality expected of its members, according to detailed court records released Thursday.
The intercepted wiretap calls showed that the gang members “think nothing about murdering rivals in San Diego and they think nothing of executing their own, when their own are even suspected of being disloyal,” U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said at a news conference downtown, alongside several other law enforcement leaders.
During the course of the investigation, authorities seized about 16 guns, 4½ pounds of meth, 4,400 pounds of marijuana, and $300,000 in counterfeit bills.
In a federal complaint charging 12 people, authorities accuse a methamphetamine supplier of using students from El Cajon Valley High School to smuggle the drug from Mexico into the U.S.
The largest federal case accuses Graves and 16 others of participating in a criminal enterprise that includes five murders, numerous attempted murders, armed robberies, prostitution, money laundering and trafficking of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana.
Prosecutors are using the federal racketeering statute known as RICO, which is usually reserved for organized crime and Mafia cases. The law is being used more frequently in cases such as these because, officials say, gangs are operating as sophisticated, wide-ranging enterprises.
The gang, which has been in the county for more than 30 years and boasts hundreds of members, typically claims an area in San Diego bordered by state Route 94 and National Avenue, and state Route 15 and Interstate 5, including the neighborhoods of Sherman Heights, Grant Hill and Logan Heights. Authorities on Thursday said the arrests will have a positive effect on a much larger section of the county, especially east San Diego, Spring Valley and El Cajon.
“Today we cut off the arm of the West Coast Crips,” said District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who called the group “one of the largest, most violent street gangs in the U.S.”
Graves’ comments in one recorded phone call, in which he reacted to the possibility that a female gang associate was going to talk to police about a murder, seemed to confirm that reputation.
“You run your mouth, you die, period. You run and hide, we get the next closest thing to you, period, no ifs ands or buts,” he said, according to the complaint.
Authorities said such talk was often backed up by action, as shown by the five murders the gang is accused in court documents of committing:
- Three younger members, referred to as “babies” — Marcus Anthony Foreman, Wilbert Ross and Terry Carry Hollins — were involved in the Dec. 2, 2012, fatal shooting of a random Latino gang member, Andres Caldera, as revenge for a carjacking.
- On April 6, 2013, West Coast Crip member Meashal Fairley was shot in front of a San Diego nightclub during an argument over Fairley’s suspected cooperation with law enforcement. One of the participants, Ross, was wearing a court-mandated GPS ankle bracelet at the time, court records say.
- On October 25, Ross and other gang members attacked a man in a dispute over a rental car in a parking lot. The victim fatally stabbed one of his attackers, Jeffrey “JJ” Rees, in self-defense, the complaint said.
- At a Halloween party Nov. 1, Chyrene Borgen, a West Coast Crip associate, was shot while wearing a French maid costume after she had criticized the gang for what she believed was their involvement in Fairley’s murder, the complaint said. Afterward, four of the defendants posted “selfies” on Facebook from the murder scene, along with a cellphone video boasting they are willing to anybody, including women, authorities said.
- A pregnant woman who later criticized the gang for the killings of her friends, Fairley and Borgen, was also shot. She and her fetus survived but gang members continued to look for her in the hospital.
- When the gang learned through documents that one of its members, Paris Hill, gave a statement to police about the Rees killing, he was murdered on March 1, investigators said.
The investigation began as a drug probe by the El Cajon Police Department, then grew to include the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the FBI. Other parallel investigations by San Diego police, the Sheriff’s Department and La Mesa police were then rolled in as the connections between the players and the conspiracies became known.
