San Diego County police added up to one hundred new prisoners to their jail yesterday in a massive, citywide gang and gang sweep. The five month long investigation, dubbed “Operation Red Sky,” involved a number of crimes from drug trafficking to pimping to murder and resulted in the arrest of 93 people, the majority of whom are known gang members. Many of the arrestees are top-leaders in the Skyline Gang.
Aside from the arrests, officers also confiscated 19 guns, 240 cannabis plants, 10 pounds of marijuana, 20 pounds of cocaine, two pounds of meth, 18 vials of PCP, 3000 tablets of ecstasy and around $60,000 in cash.
Authorities have said this is the sixth such raid on gangs this year and the effect has been a 40% reduction of gang-related crime in the city.
According to SDPD Chief William Lansdowne, “in the last five years, we’ve moved from (being) the ninth-safest city to the sixth-safest city in America.”
Criminal law specialists seem to agree the chances of all of the 93 arrestees being indicted and convicted of a specific crime based on the available evidence is slim, but the gang leaders will likely be put behind bars for a very long time without an exceptionally skilled San Diego criminal attorney.
To learn more about the busts, read the article on San Diego 6. Image Via Scragz [Flickr]