Inter-Agency Raid Busts Up Pawnshop and Nets Two Dozen Arrests

Editor’s note: the caption to the attached photo was corrected to read, “Pacific Pawnshop in San Pedro, after Operation Safe Harbor raid.” While arrests were made during Operation Safe Harbor on Oct. 2, none of those arrests took place at Pacific Pawnshop.

After a brutal month in which the parents of a year-old child were murdered in Harbor City, several other homicides and shootings in Wilmington and San Pedro, a bevy of talking heads from the California Attorney General’s office and Homeland Security on down to the LAPD’s Harbor Division announced the arrest of 27 people from the Central Valley to the Harbor in a multi-agency effort, dubbed Operation Safe Harbor.

The operation included the seizure of 30 firearms — including ghost guns — more than 72,000 fentanyl pills, 1.7 pounds of fentanyl powder, 143 pounds of methamphetamine, other drugs and more than $44,000.

The law enforcement heads said the arrested were connected with a Mexican cartel-affiliated criminal operation based in the Harbor Area, but that the tentacles of the organization extended to the Central Valley.

Homeland special agent Eddy Wang noted that “These gang members continue to wreak havoc by flooding their communities with dangerous and illicit narcotics, including fentanyl”

Councilman Tim McOsker decried the recent uptick in violence in the Los Angeles Harbor Area.

“Over the last nine months, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a vigil, gone to rosaries, been in church services, sat in living rooms of widows and children and (other) folks who have lost their loved ones to illegal guns on the streets and drugs,” said Los Angeles Councilman Tim McOsker. “We are all in support of this effort, these joint activities. We are so grateful to LAPD and its partners who have taken these guns off the street.”

Harbor Division Captain Brent McGuyre noted that in terms of violent crime, “We’re in a better place today than we were 10 years ago but we still have far too much violence in the city at the hands of another and often more than half of it is result of gang violence. 

Make no mistake about it, this organization has strategies to rebuild and replace, which is why it’s so critical that it’s not just being an enforcement-based effort. 

McGuyre highlighted the importance of city support of gang intervention, youth development, and safe passage programs in cutting the flow of recruits in these criminal organizations and that it’s just as important as taking the head of the leadership within the organization.

“I look forward to us continuing as a city to invest in every aspect of this,” McGuyre said. “And that means a full spectrum, both prevention and intervention.”

He said he also looks forward to the district attorney’s office using every lever available, including gang enhancements to disrupt the street-level orchestration of the trafficking of drugs and guns impacting safety in the Los Angeles Harbor Area. 

The operation, which began in June, ended on Sept. 28 after authorities served seven search warrants in San Pedro, Wilmington, and Torrance resulting in 10 arrests, along with the recovery of 14 firearms — including two ghost guns and one short-barreled rifle — and two stolen vehicles and the seizure of approximately $4,000.

The suspects were referred to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for potential filing of felony charges that include transportation of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for sale, conspiracy to commit crime, and felon in possession of firearms.

This marks the third big gang bust carried out in the Harbor Area this year, with two previous operations, one in February and another in May, that resulting in the arrests of nearly 30 suspects.