200 Cops Raid Valley, Target 'Vineland Boys' Gang

This apartment complex next to the NoHo Metro Red Line was rumored to have many gang-related police calls when it opened | Photo by lavocado@sbcglobal.net via Flickr

So that's why cops were all over the Valley this morning. The Daily News is reporting that around 200 cops raided 15 homes, arresting 16, in an early morning operation called "Wild Card" which is "the police department's effort to challenge a particularly active and violent clique of Vineland known as the Jokers."

Part of today's raid was to get stolen guns off the street, especially ones police knew the gang had stolen in a Palmdale burglary. "We don't want them running around with a bunch of guns," Los Angeles Police Detective Dan Fournier told the Daily News. The Jokers clique is also a suspect into the 2003 death of a Burbank police officer and a shootout with two California Highway Patrol men.

Last year in August, the LAPD and other agencies performed "Operation Heatwave," to help decrease Valley gang crime that was on a rise when the rest of the city's related crime was flat.