Photo: Martin Aranda
Ventura County – When you’re known to law enforcement as an active gang member and the cops are looking for you in connection with ongoing felonies, there aren’t many places where you can avoid unwanted contact with the long arm of the law.
But that doesn’t mean that such individuals simply give up the chase and wait at home for the cops to show up. According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Detective Tyler Ebell, some of these folks actually get pretty creative in their attempts to avoid arrest.
Evidence of that came on August 23rd, when VCSD Gang Unit detectives, supported by a team from the Sheriff’s Post-Release Offender Supervision Unit and a K-9 unit initiated a “proactive enforcement effort” in search of individuals wanted for assorted felonies. Pursuant to their ongoing investigation, Gang Unit detectives determined that the suspects they sought were “concealing their whereabouts within the homeless encampments” in a West Ventura dry river bed.
On the afternoon of the 23rd, detectives searched the river area and stumbled upon “a campsite belonging to a local gang member Martin Aranda.” Aranda, who was on active probation for prior narcotic violations, was “found to be in possession of 1.5 pounds of methamphetamine,” which equates to more than 6,000 individual doses of the illegal substance. Along with the meth, Aranda was in possession of “a large amount of U.S. currency and narcotic paraphernalia consistent with narcotic sales.”
Aranda was taken into custody and transported to Ventura County Jail, where he was charged with multiple narcotic violations with his bail set at $75,000, “which he posted” and promptly won his release, with his court appearance scheduled for September 11, 2019.
Photos: Ventura County Jail Booking, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Gang Unit
