Morning Briefs and Outtakes as a Major Gang Sweep Commences

LASD Deputy Juan Abel Escalante, 1981-2008

What started as the mission to find the murders of a fallen comrade has turn into a quest to reclaim a neighborhood.

As night gives away to a Tuesday dawn, LA Times Reporter Joel Rubin gives the details on the pre-dawn raids now underway to round up members of the notorious "Avenues" Gang.

Hundreds of police officers and federal law enforcement agents launched a major assault on the Avenues gang this morning, hoping to deal a blow to an elusive gang responsible for some of Los Angeles' most notorious street crime.

Under the cover of darkness around 3 a.m., roughly 1,200 heavily-armed officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and several other agencies dispersed from a command post near the LAPD’s training academy in Elysian Park.

Warrants in hand, they descended on dozens of homes in search of 53 alleged members or associates of the Avenues gang wanted on an array of federal charges related to the gang's extensive drug dealing, unsolved murders and other crimes.

With 43 suspects already in custody on unrelated charges, the operation aimed to bring new charges against 88 Avenues members or associates, a significant share of a gang that is believed to have about 400 members.

Some suspects were sought elsewhere in the city, but the sweep focused on Glassell Park and other neighborhoods in the northeastern reaches of Los Angeles -- the center of Avenues territory since the gang first surfaced in the 1950s.

The ambush murder of Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputy Juan Abel Escalante, brought renew scrutiny on the Avenues Gang who also had been convicted of hate crimes, in targeting blacks within Highland Park for attacks as a part of a campaign to rid the neighborhood of African Americans.

Rubin reports that the motivation for this morning's raids were made clear during a planning meeting last week.

With the auditorium at LAPD headquarters filled with a few hundred officers, a recording was played of the phone call Escalante’s hysterical wife made to a 911 dispatcher after discovering him in the street. “If anyone has any doubt about the rationale or reason behind this operation, it was this,” a detective said.

OTHER NEWS:

** Los Angeles Times reports that Los Angeles officials may abandon the highly-controversial "Green Path North" transmission line.

The Department of Water and Power's proposed 85-mile-long Green Path North transmission line has faced fierce opposition from more than a dozen community and environmental groups, creating a political chink in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to cast himself as the leader of the "cleanest, greenest big city in America."

Once again, the Oak Glen based "Wildlands Conservancy" stands fast in preserving open space from encroachment for dubious efforts.

** The "Old Gray Westside Hag On Spring Street" reminds us at 6:00 AM, that there is a Special Election in CD 2 today. But they do provide us with this info.

The city plans to spend as much as $1.8 million on the election. If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will face a runoff election Dec. 8. The winner will finish Greuel’s term, which ends in June 2011.

Officials at the Los Angeles city clerk’s office plan to begin posting results by 8:30 p.m. here. The first tallies will be from vote-by-mail ballots. As of Monday afternoon, the clerk’s office had received just 7,386 ballots by mail – a fraction of the 124,955 voters who live in the 2nd Council District.

No need to remind you what fellow Westside native they are endorsing in this election.

** The Daily News expects many to shine on today's CD 2 Special Election.

** Former Mayor Villaraigosa deputy chief of staff Dan Grunfeld has found new employment.

The mayor's former deputy chief of staff Dan Grunfeld stepped down from his post Friday. Today, the law firm of Kaye Scholer announced that Grunfeld, 49, will work in its Los Angeles office representing clients in such fields as green technology, alternative energy and compliance with environmental laws.

** Financial times must be bad when the Los Angeles Unified School District and its bus drivers have to agree on taking six furlough days.

** Los Angeles City Board of Harbor Commissioners "are considering a new plan for improving the San Pedro port, including revitalizing the once-thriving Port O'Call village shopping and dining area".

** Where will State Senator Roderick "Burke" Wright wake up this morning? It seems that the District Attorney is taking a interest on the subject as the Times reports.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has searched two homes in a probe of whether Democratic state Sen. Roderick Wright lives in the district he represents, officials confirmed today.

David Demerjian, who heads the DA's Public Integrity Division, told The Times that investigators searched two residences early Wednesday morning but he would not divulge exact addresses. One of the homes was in Wright's 25th District and the other was in the neighboring 26th District.

This reminds me of a certain ex CD 14 councilman who had a house, once upon a time, in the hamlet of Hermon.

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