LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of federal and local law enforcement officers fanned out across Los Angeles in predawn sweeps, serving arrest and search warrants as part of a three-year investigation into the ultra-violent street gang MS-13.
Federal prosecutors unsealed a sweeping indictment Wednesday morning charging dozens of members and leaders of the brutal street gang with a variety of crimes, including murder.
Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown said the 127-page anti-racketeering indictment targets 44 members and associates of the gang, including the one-time leader of a Los Angeles faction of MS-13. Three people accused of murder could face the death penalty, she said.
Twenty-one people named in the indictment were arrested in pre-dawn raids across Los Angeles, and Brown said warrants were served at more than 50 locations. Jail officials around the region also conducted cell searches, as some of those indicted already were in custody on unrelated charges. About a dozen of those arrested were so-called “shot callers” for the gang. At least three people were still at large Wednesday.
“It’s one of the largest and most entrenched gangs in Los Angeles,” Brown said. “Today’s actions will deal a critical blow to the top leadership.”
Brown said MS-13 is responsible for killings of rival gang members, drug and human trafficking, prostitution and illegal alcohol sales, among other crimes. She described the racketeering case as one of the largest single cases targeting MS-13, a gang that started in Los Angeles but has expanded to nearly every state and El Salvador.
Because of the group’s propensity for violence, federal and local agencies used tactical and Special Weapons and Tactics teams to serve some of the warrants, including at a storefront along a strip of dilapidated buildings near downtown that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said was being used as a “casita,” or sort of clubhouse, for one group of gang members.
The raids and the indictment are part of a multiagency case led by the FBI that started in 2014.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said this latest indictment and raid mark the seventh time that local, state and federal authorities have targeted MS-13 and its leadership. That law enforcement pressure, he said, has led to a steady decline in the gang’s influence in the Los Angeles area. In 2012 and 2014, his department ranked the group as the No. 1 street gang in the area, but the group has since dropped to seventh, Beck said.