Gangs
Pacheco is credited with developing and pushing a plan to create a gang task force designated to cover all of Riverside County. After gathering a coalition of law enforcement officials, Riverside County developed a countywide regional strategy for combating the increased gang activity occurring in Riverside County communities. The Riverside County Gang Task Force (GTF) was created in late 2006 and fully staffed with roughly 70 sworn law enforcement officers from 22 different law enforcement agencies by early 2007. The GTF strategy is to combine resources from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to create eight (8) separate gang task force units across the county. The strategy involves a three-prong approach involving prevention, intervention and suppression.
Pacheco issued the first ever gang injunction in Riverside County history in August 2007 against the largest Riverside County criminal street gang, East Side Riva. In response, an East Side Riva gang member who was an employee of the Press-Enterprise newspaper threatened to kill Pacheco. The newspaper employee took out a classified advertisement in the Press-Enterprise newspaper with the threat, and Pacheco’s personal address and cellular phone number, which was obtained through the Pacheco’s newspaper subscription records. The employee, Chandler W. Cardwell, was prosecuted by the California Attorney General and convicted of threatening a public official.
Pacheco announced a second gang injunction against the Barrio Dream Homes criminal street gang in Cathedral City, CA on June 12, 2008.
The third and fourth gang injunctions were announced in accordance with Operation Falling Sun on March 27, 2009 in the city of Desert Hot Springs against the True Crime Boys and West Drive Locos criminal street gangs.
Beginning in December 2009, there were numerous attempts to kill gang task force law enforcement officers in the city of Hemet. On July 7, 2010, Pacheco announced the filing of charges against two men involved in those attacks. Nicholas John Smit, 39, of Hemet was charged with nine counts while co-conspirator Steven William Hansen, 36, of Homeland was charged with three counts involving attempted murder of a peace officer.
Read more about this topic: Rod Pacheco
Famous quotes containing the word gangs:
“Word’s gane to the kitchen,
And word’s gane to the ha’,
That Marie Hamilton gangs wi’ bairn
To the hichest Stewart of a’.”
—Unknown. Mary Hamilton (l. 1–4)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)