Over 75 people were arrested and more will be criminally charged as part of a joint operation targeting gun, drug and property crimes in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, Bay Area, state and federal law enforcement officials announced Thursday.
The two-year effort, titled “Operation Cold Day,” led to the largest number of arrest warrants issued in the history of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to Jill Snyder, ATF special agent in charge of the bureau’s San Francisco division.
The operation began in the summer of 2015 after a spate of Zipcar thefts in San Francisco, officials said. The California Highway Patrol and San Francisco District Attorney’s Office reached out to other jurisdictions and eventually assembled a team led by the ATF that included the California Highway Patrol, San Francisco, Redwood City, San Bruno and Daly City police departments, and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.
“This is really law enforcement at its best,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said. “This is everyone coming together, putting your egos at the door, not being concerned who’s going to get credit for what.”
Snyder said the operation began by targeting people known to have “street gang affiliations, violent criminal histories and those who were conducting firearms and narcotics trafficking,” and it involved undercover officers.