‘Operation Rose Bud’ nets multiple gang arrests
Mexican Cartel Taken Down by Feds
By Terry Miller
Pasadena Police Officers and Federal Agents with the San Gabriel Valley Safe Streets Task Force (SGVSSTF) arrested multiple area gang members and associates early Thursday morning morning “Operation Rose Bud,” a multi-agency investigation targeting members of drug trafficking organizations operating in the San Gabriel and Antelope Valleys.
During the Thursday morning press conference Pasadena Police Department, Chief of Police Phillip L. Sanchez; DEA, Acting Associate Special Agent in Charge Steve Woodland
Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, Sheriff Lee Baca and FBI, Special Agent in Charge Timothy Delaney spoke with media about the joint task force and the end results.
At the press conference, law enforcement officials said the operation has resulted in multiple arrests, two dozen federal indictments and seizure of $2.5 million in illegal drugs.
Pasadena Chief of Police Phillip Sanchez said that officers from the Pasadena Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies served warrants throughout Los Angeles County at 5:00 a.m. this morning.
The warrants were generated following an 18-month narcotics operation which was initiated in Pasadena when members of the San Gabriel Valley Safe Streets Task Force received information that Edwin Benjamin Ayala was selling methamphetamine in the Pasadena and Altadena area.
That intelligence, Sanchez said, was the starting point towards the identification of a large-scale narcotics distribution network actively supplying methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin into the Pasadena and Lancaster regions.
The network hierarchy included deliveries into the United States from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, then bifurcated into two regional distribution rings and street level sellers.
Working closely with the United States Attorneys’ Office, law enforcement officers secure 24 federal indictments resulting in multiple arrests. Many of the arrests are active gang members or associates of a Pasadena Latino gang known as the Vario Pasadena Rifa, VPR.
These VPR gang members are directly responsible for drug trades in Pasadena, Sanchez said.
