Analysis: ‘Consequences’ teams nab 373 guns, slew of drugs in 2021 High Desert-area raids

Charlie McGee, Victorville Daily Press
·5 min read
Sheriff's, state and federal agents seized 373 guns and drugs worth tens of millions from the High Desert and San Bernardino area in three months.
Sheriff's, state and federal agents seized 373 guns and drugs worth tens of millions from the High Desert and San Bernardino area in three months.

A sheriff’s team-up with federal agents and the California Highway Patrol seized hundreds of guns and tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs from the High Desert and San Bernardino-city area in three months of ramped-up raids and street enforcement that are set to continue in the new year.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department-led “Operation Consequences” logged at least 373 gun seizures – including 100 so-called “ghost guns,” meaning a legally-required serial number has been scratched off or doesn’t exist to be effectively untraceable – and 347 arrests from Oct. 1 to Dec. 30 in Victorville, San Bernardino and surrounding communities, according to a Daily Press analysis of public sheriff’s disclosures.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Investigations arm, the state CHP, the San Bernardino County Probation Department and San Bernardino’s city PD are among agencies that have joined the sheriff’s Gangs-Narcotics Division, specialized SWAT teams and multiple patrol stations in aspects of the sweeping operation.

The sheriff’s department has said the aims of the multi-agency crackdown, backed by tax dollars from the county’s general fund, are “to curb violent crime,” “dismantle targeted criminal street gangs,” and “arrest criminals who are illegally possessing, manufacturing, and trafficking firearms.”

In an email to the Daily Press, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said “Operation Consequences is not focused on a specific street gang.”

“We are targeting felons and criminal street gang members involved in the drug trade, firearms trade, and human trafficking that use firearms and violence to further their influence and business,” she wrote.

The vast majority of Consequences detainments have been cited by authorities as “felony arrests,” meaning the people in question were booked on suspicion of felonies, but it’s unclear how many will translate to actual criminal cases.

As of Jan. 3, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office had filed charges against 64 people linked to an arrest that’s been cited in the sheriff’s public disclosures, according to a review of county court records that cross-reference to Consequences arrest-case numbers.

“We have made arrests for various crimes, including but not limited to felon in possession of a firearm, narcotic sales, trafficking, robbery, attempted murder, possession of narcotics while armed, and several parole/probation violations,” the spokeswoman wrote.

Sheriff's, state and federal agents seized 373 guns and drugs worth tens of millions from the High Desert and San Bernardino area in three months.
Sheriff's, state and federal agents seized 373 guns and drugs worth tens of millions from the High Desert and San Bernardino area in three months.

The sheriff’s Consequences teams served 165 search warrants from the operation’s Oct. 1 launch to Dec. 30, per the sheriff’s disclosures.

With that, Consequences has been driven by enhanced “parole and probation compliance checks, traffic stops, and pedestrian checks,” as described in the sheriff’s first periodic public disclosure. That fueled the operation’s first two weeks until Oct. 15, when authorities “worked into the night arresting 22 suspects and taking 25 guns off the streets of Victorville” via seven search warrants.

“Watch for more to come,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus said in a tweet announcing the operation’s launch the next day. “#CrimeHasConsequences.”

One aspect of the operation that can’t be precisely measured using public disclosures is the total volume of black-market drugs and other illegal products – including gambling machines and at least one 3D printer for ghost-gun manufacturing – that have been seized by the Consequences teams.

But the value of those seizures had likely reached a vast dollar figure by the three-month mark of Operation Consequences, based on a few examples the sheriff’s public disclosures have cited from individual busts.

After a Nov. 10 traffic stop led sheriff’s Gangs-Narcotics investigators to serve a warrant at the 200 block of East Ninth Street in San Bernardino, they seized more than 104 pounds of fentanyl pills and five ounces of methamphetamine along with one gun, per a sheriff’s press release at the time.

Various online estimates pin the street value for a gram of fentanyl anywhere from $100 to $200, which would translate to a value ranging from more than $4.5 million to $9 million for the load seized by sheriff’s operators Nov. 10.

Over a series of raids in Victorville, San Bernardino, Lucerne Valley, Fontana, Yucaipa and Norco between Dec. 3 and Dec. 9, the sheriff’s Consequences teams seized more than 32 pounds of methamphetamine, two pounds of cocaine and 1.42 pounds of fentanyl-laced oxycodone pills, according to the periodic public disclosure.

Sheriff's, state and federal agents seized 373 guns and drugs worth tens of millions from the High Desert and San Bernardino area in three months.
Sheriff's, state and federal agents seized 373 guns and drugs worth tens of millions from the High Desert and San Bernardino area in three months.

The operation focuses specifically in the rural High Desert and San Bernardino-area jurisdictions that fall under the sheriff’s policing purview.

That’s a lot of jurisdictions. The Sheriff’s Department holds “law enforcement services” contracts totaling more than $191 million for the current fiscal year with the towns of Apple Valley and Yucca Valley and the cities of Adelanto, Big Bear Lake, Chino Hills, Grand Terrace, Hesperia, Highland, Loma Linda, Needles, Rancho Cucamonga, Twentynine Palms, Victorville and Yucaipa. That’s separate from unincorporated communities such as Lucerne Valley and Phelan where the sheriff also function as the local police.

The presence of outside agencies in the sweeping San Bernardino County law-enforcement operations isn’t totally new. The sheriff’s spokeswoman told the Daily Press that “a DHS agent has been assigned to our gang intelligence task force for some time.”

County, state and federal agents have concentrated their first three months of raids and street-enforcement ramp-ups in Victorville and San Bernardino. The amount of arrest cases that have been logged in each city and town are ranked as followed, based on individual addresses cited in the sheriff’s disclosures as the location of Operation Consequences-arrest cases:

  • Victorville: 85

  • San Bernardino: 36

  • Apple Valley: 9

  • Hesperia: 9

  • Highland: 8

  • Colton: 6

  • Fontana: 6

  • Rancho Cucamonga: 5

  • Yucaipa: 4

  • Adelanto: 2

  • Upland: 2

  • Beaumont: 1

  • Lucerne Valley: 1

  • Muscoy: 1

  • Norco: 1

  • Ontario: 1

  • Oro Grande: 1

  • Phelan: 1

  • Rialto: 1

Charlie McGee covers California’s High Desert for the Daily Press, focusing on the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities. He is also a Report for America corps member with The GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.

This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Analysis: ‘Consequences’ teams nab 373 guns, slew of drugs in 2021 raids