citywide crackdown on gangs and guns, teams of law enforcement officers made 129 arrests in the Tulsa area in May, authorities announced Thursday.
Operation Triple Beam II was patterned after a similar crackdown last summer that was credited with a reduction in violent crime. The term “triple beam” refers to a scale used in illegal drug sales.
The goal of both operations was to investigate gangs, arrest fugitives and take guns off the street.
Chad Hunt, deputy U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Oklahoma, said Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan approached him about doing another Operation Triple Beam after a spate of shootings.
Jordan called it a perfect example of successful federal and local law enforcement collaboration.
“I will say there is one good reason for the success of this, and that is we targeted the right people. If we start having an uptick, we will do the same thing again,” he said.
On May 2, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Tulsa Police Department and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched Operation Triple Beam II. It ended after two weeks.
Hunt said officers focused on high-crime areas and known gang members. One of the main goals was to collect current information about gang members.
“We wanted to know who are the worst of the worst gang members who are there causing all of these violent crimes,” he said.
The officers fanned out across the city and patrolled areas that crime analysts have identified as having gang and violent crime. They also responded to crimes in progress to aid patrol officers.
One evening on patrol at several apartment complexes, Officers Heath Cannon and Shawn Hickey pointed to several shooting scenes in the space of a few blocks. The crime scenes exemplified why Operation Triple Beam was needed, police said.
Flowers sat in an empty lot in the 2000 block of N Quaker Avenue, where school kids found the body of Kendrich A. Shelton, 19, in March.
Then, officers passed the vacant Chicken Hut restaurant near 1500 E Apache St., where Valentino Verner, 27, was killed Feb. 28, 2010.
Witnesses stepped over his body to get their food, and more than 100 people witnessed the shooting, but only one came forward. The gang-related case, like Shelton’s killing, remains unsolved.
On another street, the officers pointed out a house that was a known gang hangout. Young children in the yard watched as the officers drove by. On another street, the officers noted a house where cars had been known to line up to buy drugs.
Jordan said firearm assaults have been halved since the crackdown.
Other agencies that participated in the sweeps include the Broken Arrow, Claremore and Pryor police departments, the Tulsa and Rogers County sheriff’s offices, the Secret Service, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control.
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