View Full Version : California LEO news item
incarcerated
12-31-2009, 15:15
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20091231/NEWS01/91231025/-1/newsfront/Explosive-device-found-disarmed-at-gang-task-force-office-in-Hemet
Explosive device found, disarmed at gang task force office in Hemet
Desert Sun wire services • December 31, 2009
Investigators with the Hemet/San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force today found an explosive device rigged to blow up their unmarked building in Hemet, but managed to disarm it, police said.
"It was basically designed so that once somebody came in and moved around a little bit, it would have gone off," Hemet police Lt. Duane Wisehart said. "At the very least, it would have leveled the building and killed whoever was inside."
The nondescript building, in the 500 block of St. John Place, was evacuated so experts could do a thorough search for possible additional explosives, Wisehart said.
incarcerated
12-31-2009, 15:33
http://www.swrnn.com/southwest-riverside/2009-12-31/news/breaking-news-hemet-san-jacinto-valley-gang-task-force-targeted-by-explosives
BREAKING NEWS: Hemet-San Jacinto Valley gang task force targeted by explosives
According to a news release, unknown persons manually rigged the building in an attempt to cause an explosion.
By Jose Arballo Jr., SWRNN
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Members of the Hemet/San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force were the apparent targets by someone who rigged the group’s building to explode, said Hemet police Lt. Duane Wisehart.
The building is located in the 500 block St. John Place although there are no signs that the group in housed there, Wisehart said.
According to a news release, unknown persons manually rigged the building in an attempt to cause an explosion. Officers arriving for work Thursday discovered the plot and vacated the premises.
“We are lucky they found what they did,” Wisehart said by telephone. “Otherwise someone could have been seriously hurt or killed.”
Wisehart said there is no doubt the task force members were the target. He declined to describe how the building was rigged to explode, but said it was armed to go off by movement within the structure, rather than by a timer.
Emergency crews and the Sheriff’s Hazardous Device Team are in the process of making the building safe, so that the investigation can continue.
Wisehart said the task force includes members of the Hemet Police Department, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Riverside County Probation Department and others.
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http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/hemet/article_dbdbbdcd-ddbd-50f2-a7f6-fae7dfbea3a7.html
HEMET: Gang task force building rigged to explode
No one was injured; officers are investigating who left device
By TERI FIGUEROA - tfigueroa@californian.com
Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:50 pm
Someone tried to rig a bomb inside the nondescript building that houses the Hemet/San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force, officials said Thursday morning.
Gang task force members heading into the Hemet office around 8:30 a.m. "sensed that something wasn't right," said Lt. Duane Wisehart of the Hemet Police Department.
"They immediately stopped and backed out," Wisehart said. "They were able to recognize right away that something was wrong."
Wisehart declined to say what exactly had tipped off the officers.
Hemet police Capt. Tony Margis stated in a news release that someone had "manually rigged the building in an attempt to cause an explosion."
As of noon, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department's bomb squad was at the building, searching for any other devices.
Wisehart said the officers were combing the building ---- which is considered a crime scene ---- for clues as to who may have left the device. As of noon Thursday, however, officers had no leads.
"It would be conjecture to think it was gang-related," Wisehart said, "but we are working with that in mind."
Wisehart said more than 10 gangs operate in the area.
The building houses gang task force members hailing from the Hemet Police Department, state parole, county probation, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's office, Wisehart said.
"Because of the nature of the building and who occupies it, we have a lot of resources working on this," Wisehart said.
The building, in the 500 block of St. John Place, sits about a block north of Florida Avenue, which is also Highway 79. The building ---- a former home, converted into office space ---- is a block or so from the Hemet Police Station.
The task force has worked out of the building since March 2006.
The area the Hemet/San Jacinto Gang Task Force targets stretches from the Beaumont city limits to the north, to the south rim of Diamond Valley Lake. It runs east to the mountain communities of Pine Cove and Idyllwild, and west to Menifee and Perris.
Call staff writer Teri Figueroa at 951-676-4315, ext. 5442.
incarcerated
12-31-2009, 18:21
This turned out to be less dramatic than originally suggested. Though the Los Angeles Times is currently reporting an explosive device was involved, such was not the case. NO explosive device was used. A rooftop gas line was cut and re-routed into the building interior.
Still, out of the ordinary.
Now, the Gang Unit will need a new home.
I guess that they will have to look for another unmarked building.. seems that they possibly did something wrong at the last place which enabled the bad guys to target them.
mojaveman
01-01-2010, 16:59
Those officers probably smelled gas as soon as they entered the building. Had one of them done so much as turned on a light switch it could have caused a tremendous explosion.
incarcerated
03-19-2010, 04:09
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/18/local/la-me-hemet-brown19-2010mar19
Brown calls anti-police booby traps in Riverside County 'urban terrorism'
The California attorney general seeks the public's help in solving the attacks, so far without injuries, targeting an anti-gang task force and police officers in Hemet.
March 18, 2010|By David Kelly
Reporting from Riverside — Describing it as "urban terrorism," California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown joined with Riverside County officials Thursday in asking the public to help find those who tried at least three times to kill officers assigned to a Hemet-based gang task force.
"It is incredible and even unprecedented for police officers here to be subject to terrorist attack," Brown said at a Riverside news conference. "We have seen it south of the border, but not here yet."
,,,,So far there are no suspects, but on Wednesday authorities said they led raids on the Vagos outlaw motorcycle gang, which has a large presence in Hemet. Thirty people were arrested on charges that included possession of drugs and weapons.
"They aren't your typical street gang hanging out on a corner slinging rock cocaine," said Riverside County Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco. "It is a well-established pattern of the Vagos to infiltrate police departments. They do a lot of surveillance."
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http://www.theledger.com/article/20100319/APA/1003190593
Calif police department on alert for deadly traps
By THOMAS WATKINS Associated Press Writer
Published: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 4:39 a.m.
HEMET, Calif. - Police in this picturesque city in rural Riverside County have been on edge in recent weeks. Someone is trying to kill them.
First, a natural gas pipe was shoved through a hole drilled into the roof of the gang enforcement unit's headquarters. The building filled with flammable vapor but an officer smelled the danger before anyone was hurt.
"It would have taken out half a city block," Capt. Tony Marghis said.
Then, a ballistic contraption was attached to a sliding security fence around the building. An officer opening the black steel gate triggered the mechanism, which sent a bullet within eight inches of his face.
In another attempted booby trap attack, some kind of explosive device was attached to a police officer's unmarked car while he went into a convenience store.
"There's a person or people out there, a bunch of idiots, trying to do damage to us," Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana said. "We can't expect our luck to hold up, we need help."
Since New Year's Eve, there have been several other booby trap attempts to kill officers, Dana said.
"The only reason they haven't killed an officer yet is because we've been observant enough to see devices planted around the station and in cars and different places," he said.
Gang enforcement officers appear to be the target of the assassination attempts, though Dana noted the devices were indiscriminate by nature and could have killed any police or law enforcement officer.
The incidents have shaken a close-knit police department already demoralized by steep budget cuts that last year saw its officer numbers slashed by a quarter to 68. Officers are checking under cars for bombs and scouting for other potential hazards.
"I would call the mood tense," Capt. Marghis said. "Everyone is being very vigilant about their surroundings and the environment."
Dana said officers have seen gang members carrying out counter-surveillance, studying police behavior. He often looks in his rear view mirror when he drives home at night to make sure he is not being followed.
In the attack with a ballistic contraption, the officer only avoided being shot in the head because the wheels on the sliding gate were wonky so he had to angle his body to open it.
"He had to push it to the right, the bullet went by to the left," Dana said.
Hemet, surrounded by the snow-topped San Jacinto Mountains about 90 miles east of Los Angeles, was traditionally known as a quiet retirement community. The population has grown in recent years to about 75,000 but the once-booming housing market has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.
Investigators are still trying to determine why officers are being targeted. A prevalent theory is that members of an outlaw motorcycle gang - the Vagos - were angered when members of Hemet's anti-gang task force monitored them at a funeral in a church opposite the task force's former headquarters.
A memorial service was held Dec. 29 in the Hemet Christian Assembly church and upward of 100 members of the gang attended, said Riverside County sheriff's Capt. Walter Meyer, who oversees the regional gang task force.
Officers monitored the memorial but did not attend the service. Some of the Vagos members were questioned or followed as they left town.
Two days later, the gang enforcement unit's black shingle roof was drilled through and the single-level house, converted for police use, filled up with gas.
"Which would obviously leave a reasonable person to ask: Are they involved?" Meyer said.
One of the church's pastors, James McKiney, said a group of motorcycling friends mourning the death of a prominent Hemet man asked if he would conduct a memorial service.
"When a family is crying and asking for a service, you don't say no to them," McKiney said. "I said that's no problem, I'll do that."
McKiney declined to discuss the service or if he recalled any gang officers monitoring its attendants.
Authorities said about 30 members of the Vagos, California's largest motorcycle gang, were arrested in Riverside County on Wednesday, as part of a crackdown across the state and in Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Prosecutors don't have a total number of arrests yet.
Meyer said there are about 200 Vagos members in Riverside County. The gang specializes in methamphetamine sales, identity theft and violence, he said.
Law enforcement officials from around the state on Thursday appealed for the public's help in solving the case. Several state, local and national agencies have banded together to put forward a $200,000 reward.
"It is incredible and I think unprecedented that police officers in the line of duty could be subjected to these kind of terrorist attempts on their lives," Attorney General Jerry Brown said.
Maybe Barry's good buddies Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are back in the game or they never got out??
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_%28organization%29
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization (abbreviated WUO), was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)[2] composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. Their goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the violent overthrow of the US government and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.[3]
With a charismatic[4] and articulate[5] leadership whose revolutionary positions were characterized by anti-imperialist, feminist, and Black liberationist rhetoric,[2] the group conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970s, including aiding the jailbreak and escape of Timothy Leary. The "Days of Rage," their first public demonstration on October 8, 1969, was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, under the name "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO). The bombing attacks mostly targeted government buildings, along with several banks. Most were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with communiqués identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. For the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, they issued a communiqué saying it was "in protest of the US invasion of Laos." For the bombing of the Pentagon on May 19, 1972, they stated it was "in retaliation for the US bombing raid in Hanoi." For the January 29, 1975 bombing of the United States Department of State Building, they stated it was "in response to escalation in Vietnam."[6]
The Weathermen grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of SDS. It took its name from the lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows was the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical movements[7] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism."[8]
The Weathermen largely disintegrated after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973, which saw the general decline of the New Left.
Park Place Police Station bombing, February 1970 Main article: San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing
On February 16, 1970 a nail bomb placed on a window ledge of the Park Police substation in the Upper Haight neighborhood of San Francisco exploded at 10:45 p.m. The blast killed police Sergeant Brian McDonnell. Law enforcement suspected the Weather Underground but was unable to prove conclusively that the organization was involved.[53] A second officer, Robert Fogarty was partially blinded by the bomb’s shrapnel.
We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. We never intended to spend the next five to twenty-five years of our lives in jail. Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we've been trying to show how it is possible to overcome frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn: revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.Bernardine Dohrn[66]
Widely-known members of the Weather Underground include Kathy Boudin, Mark Rudd, Terry Robbins, Ted Gold, Naomi Jaffe, Cathy Wilkerson, Jeff Jones, Eleanor Raskin, David Gilbert, Susan Stern, Bob Tomashevsky, Sam Karp, Russell Neufeld, Joe Kelly, Laura Whitehorn and the still-married couple Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Most former Weathermen have successfully re-integrated into mainstream society, without necessarily repudiating their original intent.
Names in the news,, keep an eye on them...
Sounds like the gang-bangers have been sober long enough to pay attention to some of the lessons offered in the Die Hard and Shooter genre of movies.
Richard's $.02 :munchin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/biker-gangs-suspected-in-_n_504949.html
It seems they think the Vagos MC may be responsible. If so, this could be a very bad trend for LEO's in general. A war between LEO's and 1%ers in SoCal could definitely be ugly.
mojaveman
03-19-2010, 10:55
For years the Hemet San Jacinto area was a quiet place for farmers and retirees but times have changed. The recent attacks on law enforcement have taken things to a different level. It may come to the point where homeland gangs will have to be treated as domestic terrorists. I would like to see much stronger punishment for any gang related crimes. How about a mandatory prison sentence for merely affiliating? We had a few members of a well known biker gang rent a home near where I live but everyone kept an eye on them and it wasn't long before they were rousted by the Sheriff's Department.
incarcerated
07-08-2010, 00:15
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0708-hemet-20100708,0,3068424.story
Hemet police attacks were aimed at single detective
By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times
July 8, 2010
The two men charged in a series of violent attacks against the Hemet Police Department, including rigging a rocket launcher to fire at the main police station, were targeting a single detective who had arrested one of the suspects on drug charges last year, authorities said.
Riverside County Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco, who Wednesday announced attempted murder charges filed against the two men, said he had never seen such an intense campaign of "domestic terrorism" waged against a local law enforcement agency.
One of the suspects, Nicholas John Smit, 39, stalked Hemet Police Det. Charles Johnson for months: He identified the police car Johnson drove, where he lived and where he worked, Pacheco said. Johnson had arrested Smit in June 2009 on suspicion of marijuana cultivation and gun possession.
"It is pretty clear to us that it was part of a larger conspiracy to target that officer, as well as other officers," Pacheco said at a news conference in downtown Riverside. "I've never seen it like this where an entire police department and, quite frankly, an entire city, were targeted."
Both suspects have "extensive contacts" with white supremacists in the Hemet area as well as the Vagos motorcycle gang, although no gang-related charges have been filed against them, Pacheco said. The district attorney said the investigation is ongoing, but declined to say if there are more suspects.
Smit was charged with nine felonies, including three charges of attempted murder of a police officer, assembling a booby trap and possessing a "zip gun.'' He faces multiple life sentences if convicted of all charges.
Steven Hansen, 36, of Homeland was charged with three felonies, including one count of attempted murder of a police officer as well as conspiracy to murder a police officer. A conviction could result in a sentence of up to 30 years in prison.
Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana said that police and the city have been on edge since the attacks began and that he wants everyone to remain vigilant in case other suspects remain at large.
"There's some bad guys in jail. We're happy about that," Dana said. "I've just spent the last seven months not being willing to go more than 50 miles from my city. Not being able to put my phone down and turn it off, because every time your phone rings, your heart starts beating again and you start wondering: What happened now, is somebody hurt?"
DNA evidence collected from the failed rocket attack was one of the critical pieces of evidence that led to the arrests, Pacheco said.
Most of the eight attacks on Hemet authorities coincided with Smit's scheduled court appearances on the drug charges.
"It was the first time Mr. Smit was looking at state prison," Pacheco said. "You can ensure that you don't go to state prison if you murder the officer who's responsible for your case and your arrest."
The two are suspected of being involved in the attacks on Hemet police that started more than six months ago, including arson fires and a booby-trapped zip gun rigged to shoot Johnson.
The arrests came less than a week after a fire believed to have been set by an arsonist damaged a Hemet Police Department building that housed evidence gathered from those attacks and for thousands of pending and past criminal cases....
mark46th
07-08-2010, 08:11
This idiot was facing a Grow with Intent to Sell charge which carries a 6-8 month sentence. Now he is looking at 3 Attemted Murder of a Police Officer charges, each of which carries a 15 years to Life sentence...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0708-hemet-20100708,0,3068424.story
Both suspects have "extensive contacts" with white supremacists in the Hemet area as well as the Vagos motorcycle gang, ....
It sounds like someone has been watching "Sons of Anarchy" a little too much, and taking it way too seriously.
If the suspects thought they had "extensive contacts" with white supremicists and bikers before, just wait until they get to prison. :p