Taking Down Armenian Power, California's Modern Mafia

"It was basically mayhem on a busy street corner," FBI special agent Jeremy Stebbins says.

The FBI learned that the 2008 firefight was dominated by Armenian Power, an international, organized-crime group, which functions more like the mob than like gangsters who flash their signs in the grittier stretches of Los Angeles and its suburbs. Although the FBI has been aware of Armenian Power for years, it was after this very public spectacle that the agency doubled down on its investigation into the group, whose documented population in Southern California is about 250.

The FBI's operations were just part of a massive task force targeting Armenian Power (AP), which also included the Los Angeles, Glendale and Burbank police departments, as well as the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, the U.S. Secret Service and other federal groups.

The two gangs have become so closely knit that AP often is known as AP-13, the number "13" referring to the 13th letter of the alphabet, "M," which stands for Mexico. By forging this relationship, Armenian Power now "had the gang component, because in Los Angeles, to have power, you have to have ties to gangs and the Mexican Mafia and prisons and things like that," Estrada says. "But in terms of what they did, it was an umbrella used to commit every crime you can imagine."

http:// www.laweekly.com/news/taking-down-armenian-power-californias-modern-mafia-4824242

And guess who's district covers Glendale, AS