Fresno County's MAGEC team conducts gang crackdown

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Several Valley law enforcement agencies teamed up on Saturday to crack down on gangs. Nearly 70 officers and deputies from multiple agencies made arrests on gang members all night. But it was the small towns like Reedley and Parlier that officers were keeping their focus.

Arrest after arrest, it's all the Mutli-Agency Gang Enforcement Consortium -- also known as MAGEC -- was doing on Saturday. It was a random crackdown to check gang members violating parole or any type of court-issued order.

"Maybe not to be in a gang, per se, but to do things for the gang, or if you've been served with an injunction to stay away from the gang members, you're found to be there then yes that would be illegal," said Fresno County Sheriff's Office spokesman Chris Curtice.

The goal, according to Curtice, was to let gang members know they're always being watched. Violators like the ones arrested on Saturday likely won't face jail time, but once they're booked and cited at the jail, law enforcement officers will have their most updated information.

"A lot of these MAGEC guys know where they're going, they know who they're looking for, they study these guys all the time," said Curtice.

He says the smaller outlying towns tend to have a bigger gang problem than most people think.

"It's really important because a lot of these towns right now only have a couple units on duty, so when we send 70 people into these smaller cities it really makes a big impact on gang crime and violence in their cities for tonight," a member of the MAGEC team told Action News.

On a typical sweep, the team arrests around 30 people. The gang busts are random and throughout the year. But this Saturday, there were nearly double the amount of law enforcement units on the streets.