LA Street Gang MS-13 Leader Arrest in Richmond (Video Link)
KTVU.com, July 27th 2006

Link:
http://www.ktvu.com/news/9588890/detail.html">http://www.ktvu.com/news/9588890/detail.html

Summary:
On Thursday, July 27th 2006, Richmond authorities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the FBI arrested Jose Santos Bonilla. Bonilla is considered to be a “shot caller” or leader of the MS-13 gang. Several other gang members escaped when the 6 A.M. raid failed to capture them. The raid took place on the 1500 block of Monterey Street, and was the culmination of a 6 month investigation. Local authorities were taken by surprise at the MS-13 presence in their community, though there were indications in the form of graffiti tagging, and violence between these MS-13 members and the RST (Richmond Sureno Trece), another area Latino gang.

Analysis:
It is unclear from the news articles on this arrest how much control Bonilla had over the groups. He is over 30 years old so this puts him towards the top of your typical gang demographic. So, he certainly had seniority. One interesting aspect of this report is that local authorities apparently had no idea MS-13 had moved to Richmond. Apparently, though it’s not mentioned in this article, Bonilla moved to Richmond from San Francisco 6 months earlier. So, perhaps this investigation began outside of their jurisdiction. Though, the article does mention indicators in Richmond such as graffiti tagging, which should have been noticed by Richmond criminal analysts, if they have any.