Reward offered in brazen attacks on police
Reward offered in brazen attacks on police
By JOHN ASBURY The Press-Enterprise Two recent assassination attempts on Hemet gang task-force officers add to a national trend of more brazen and sophisticated attacks on police, often by gang members, law enforcement experts say. The attacks on the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force headquarters come amid an increase of violence against police nationwide this year that could reverse a trend of declining officer deaths. Both attempts in Hemet failed, but were characterized as unusually violent. Last week, a bullet fired by an altered gun narrowly missed an officer opening a parking lot gate at the task force's building, a block from the police station. On New Year's Eve, the same building was targeted when a gas line was rerouted to rig the building to explode when officers stepped inside. Experts say attacks on a police facility, such as the ones against the Hemet Gang Task Force building, are nearly unheard of. The FBI has joined the task force in the investigation of the attacks. While Hemet police have not identified any suspects, they believe the threat may involve area gang members now under investigation. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved up to a $100,000 reward for information in the case that leads to an arrest or conviction. The gang task force includes Hemet police, Riverside County sheriff's deputies, district attorney's investigators and probation and parole officers, and is one of eight teams throughout the county. Nationally last year, 125 officers were killed, the lowest number since 1959. Already this year, 34 officers have been killed in the line of duty in shootings and traffic fatalities, including three in California in the past week. That is more than double the rate of slain peace officers in the same period last year, according to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund. "Right now we are averaging an officer dying in the line of duty just about every other day," Law Enforcement Memorial Fund spokesman Kevin Morison said. "We still have men and women get up and know their next call could be potentially life-altering or life-ending." Criminals have stepped up their attacks on officers who may be cracking down or moving in on their territory, said California State Sheriff's Association Executive Director Jim Denney. Booby traps have been planted to defend marijuana fields. Tripwires have been connected to explosives or shotguns. A suspect with a live grenade was captured in Northern California before an attack was carried out, Denney said. One of the greatest concerns for police is the recent attacks on several officers at once, as in the four officers fatally ambushed in November in a Lakewood, Wash., coffee shop. Last year's shooting deaths included 15 officers killed in five separate incidents. Law enforcement is now concerned that recent coordinated attacks on officers may be spawning copycat plots, Morison said. "The planned assault on peace officers has become more prevalent and is definitely a cause of concern," Denney said. "As law enforcement becomes more active in enforcing criminal activity, criminal organizations are becoming more sophisticated in avoiding detection and organizing assaults on police." Officer deaths rise Officer deaths this year have jumped by 112 percent over the 16 fatalities nationwide through March 1 last year. Three deaths have come in California in the past week. Two Fresno County officers were killed during a shootout while serving a search warrant. A San Diego County deputy died Sunday while in pursuit of a wrong-way driver. Authorities say there has been an increase in the violence of the attacks on police. Shooting deaths increased in 2009 by 23 percent, taking a toll of 49 officers across the country, compared with 39 officers killed in 2008. More officers have died from on-duty traffic collisions than any other cause for the past 12 years. The last Inland officer killed was U.S. Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas, who was ambushed in July in El Centro near the Mexican border. Previously, Rialto police Officer Sergio Carrera Jr. was fatally shot in 2007 while serving a search warrant. Hemet police and San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies in Highland came under fire in December during separate shootings that struck patrol cars. Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana said the gang task force has not been deterred by the assassination attempts. "It's a very real threat. Someone is actually seeking to kill our officers," Dana said. "This required some real time and effort to potentially kill a police officer. It's not OK." Increased penalties Authorities have improved training and procedures to reduce fatalities from the numbers of decades ago. In the 1970s, police averaged 228 deaths annually, while this past decade the average has been 162 officers killed each year. On Sept. 11, 2001, 72 law enforcement officers were killed in the terrorist attacks on the United States. It was the single deadliest day for authorities. Additional training, body armor and protective equipment and less lethal options, including Tasers, have better protected officers and helped keep situations from turning deadly, Morison said. "The reality is with all those protections, when you get people hell-bent on killing police officers, there's no magic wand to protect officers from those types of attacks," Morison said. Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco said gangs have become more aggressive in carrying out attacks on law enforcement, which Pacheco compared to attacks on Mexican authorities on the border. Additional threats have been made against the district attorney's office and prosecutors. The district attorney's office has a prosecution unit dedicated to peace officer assaults, attempted murders and murders. In each case, prosecutors have imposed a hard-line, no-plea-bargain policy and pushed for the maximum sentence. Two state laws increased the penalty for assaults on peace officers, following the deaths of Riverside County sheriff's deputies Michael P. Haugen and James Lehman Jr. in an ambush in 1997 near Whitewater. The two bills, authored by Pacheco, require 15 years to life in prison for attempted murder of an officer, and at least life without parole, or eligibility for the death penalty, for a murder conviction. "It's honorable work. Every member of law enforcement accepts that risk," Pacheco said. "You address it aggressively. It's not a casual occurrence; it is in essence a nuclear attack. You don't tolerate it; you respond with everything you've got." http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/s...3.4644056.html |
This breaks my heart.
I have a friend who moved out there 9 years ago escaping the gangs of Riverside. She went to Riverside running from the gangs of Lakewood/Bellflower, where she went to escape the hispanic gangs making life miserable in Downey. Where can she go now? She is 65 years old. Her entire life (as mine has been) has been spent one step ahead of gangs, drugs, violence. She thought that Hemet/San Jac was far enough, rural enough, to let her live out her life in peace. Not so. |
I think most of us have come to understand that eventually there was going to be no place to run
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Subject: ALERT! Deported Mexican Alien Charged in Death of Sheriffs Deputy in San Diego
Huge news here in San Diego - a fiery crash and death of Sheriffs Deputy Ken Collier early Sunday morning near Santee after he chased a wrong way driver on Hwy. 52. The drunk and drugged driver is a previously deported illegal alien from Mexico. He's been charged with Manslaughter. First San Diego Deputy killed in the line of duty in 13 years. Story and video here: http://www.10news.com/news/22725703/detail.html The Illegal Alien carnage never ends..... Another needless death in San Diego. Will we ever secure our borders and enforce our laws? How many innocents must die for our open borders? How much longer can we afford this "cheap labor"? Jose Pedro Lopez Jasso, 22 ----- Original Message ----- From: netwebmaster@sdsheriff.org Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 11:54 PM Subject: San Diego County Sheriff - Request for Inmate Charges Requested on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 11:54:51 PM. The data contained in this web site should not be relied upon for any type of legal action. Anyone who uses this information to commit a crime or to harass an inmate or his or her family may be subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability. Extreme care must be taken in the use of information because mistaken identification may occur when relying solely upon a name to identify individuals. ALTHOUGH THE INFORMATION ON THIS SITE IS BELIEVED TO BE CORRECT, INFORMATION IS PROVIDED ON AN AS IS BASIS, AND ACCURACY AND/OR COMPLETENESS CANNOT BE GUARANTEED. NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS GIVEN WITH RESPECT TO THE CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE. Requested charge information for booking number: 10715373 (Only active charges and arrests are shown.) Arrest: 1 Charge#: 1 Bail Flag: Y Bail Amount:$750,000.44 Description: DUI:ALC/DRUG:RSLT:BOD INJ Code:VC Statute:23153(A) VC Arrest: 1 Charge#: 3 Bail Flag: I Bail Amount:$0.00 Description: DRIVE WRONG:HWY:INJ/DEATH Code:VC Statute:21651(C) VC Arrest: 1 Charge#: 4 Bail Flag: I Bail Amount:$0.00 Description: DUI .08 ALCOHOL:BODLY INJ Code:VC Statute:23153(B) VC Arrest: 1 Charge#: 5 Bail Flag: I Bail Amount:$0.00 Description: GROSS VEHICLE MANSLAUGHTER Code:PC Statute:191.5(A) PC Arrest: 2 Charge#: 1 Bail Flag: Bail Amount:$0.00 Description: Rel Dt/Tm: Agency: ICE Code: Statute: HOLD Bail Flag Codes: Y or I - Charge is eligible for bail. H or N - Inmate may not be bailed out on that given charge. B - Bail is not required on this charge. |
The creeps mom will just say that mijito was just having fun. I hate to read these stories.
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The other side of the coin is that District Attorney Pacheco is an A-hole who is incapable of distinguishing between a regular person subjected to a scurrilous police report and a cold blooded serial killer. I believe the "death threat" referred to was a classified ad placed by a brainless Press Enterprise employee which described an estate sale and listed Pacheco's home address. |
The import of attack like this, is that we are increasingly becoming just like mexico with the same kind of attacks on the police that mexico has. No one wants to say that this is the trend, but it is.
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I didn't catch it all, but there seems to have been another attempt in Hemet.
What appeared to me to be a gang task force vehicle had been pulled into a convenience store on Sanderson street, then the officer noticed that a suspicious item had fallen off the underside of the car. So far, gas piped into an anti gang office, a firearm rigged with a trip wire, and now maybe a bomb attached to the underneath of a police unit. The gas thing took some time to do, and the other weapon installs might not have been quick in and out operations, certainly there were some visibility issues to whoever has been carrying all this out. The FBI got involved before the last attempt, and no suspects. Hmmmmm... |
Third Attack Hits Hemet Gang Task Force
KESQ.com News Services HEMET - An anti-gang officer in Hemet discovered today that a device had been attached to his car with potentially deadly consequences -- in what appears to be the third attempt in two months to injure or kill members of an anti-gang unit in southwest Riverside County. According to Hemet police, around 8 a.m., a member of the Hemet/San Jacinto Gang Task Force parked his unmarked vehicle next to an AM/PM store at 298 S. Sanderson Ave. and spotted a threatening device adjacent to the car. The Hemet police officer immediately cleared the area and requested the sheriff's bomb squad to investigate, said Hemet police Lt. Duane Wisehart. Authorities cordoned off the intersection of Sanderson and Acacia avenues and closed access to the area from surrounding streets and parking lots, Wisehart said. "We're not releasing what type of device it was," he told City News Service. "All we can say is it would have killed or injured the officer if it had done what it was supposed to do." According to the lieutenant, the explosive device had been affixed to the officer's vehicle prior to his arriving at the mini mart. The sheriff's bomb unit disabled the instrument, and the area was reopened to traffic around 1 p.m., Wisehart said. No suspects have been identified. The task force, which is comprised of Riverside County sheriff's deputies, Hemet police officers and other law enforcement officials, has been targeted twice before. On Dec. 31, authorities discovered that a natural gas line on the roof of the task force's headquarters building had been redirected into the facility, filling it with gas, which could have caused an explosion. On Feb. 23, an anti-gang officer was opening a gate at the task force's office in the 500 block of Saint John Place when he was nearly struck by a bullet that was part of a booby trap triggered when the gate moved. The task force is now operating from an undisclosed location. On Tuesday, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors approved a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of whoever is responsible for the previous two attacks. "I'd like to think the money will lead us to the people doing this," said Wisehart. "There's no honor among thieves, so hopefully someone will give it up." He said the threats not only create undue stress, but tear investigators away from other cases. "Some things end up on the back-burner when you've got this kind of intense investigation," Wisehart said. Authorities suspect area gangs are behind the attacks. |
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