For decades, Mike’s Market at the corner of 37th Street and Ocean View Boulevard, had been an open wound for the residents of the Mountain View neighborhood in Southeast San Diego.
It was well-known as a front for drug dealing and other illegal acts. But then in 2022, coming out of the pandemic, the crime and violence exploded.
The crime surge included murders, attempted murders, assaults, sales of firearms, robberies and narcotics sales, according San Diego Police Department records. The SDPD fielded thousands of calls from the immediate area around Mike’s Market in the two years prior to an investigation being launched.
The market had been under the control of the 59 Brim street gang for decades, multiple law enforcement sources and community members told KPBS. The gang was an off-shoot of the infamous Bloods.
The gang's increasing violence was a deadly serious threat to the community and led to a significant change in how local law enforcement confronted the ongoing problem, according to documents in the case filed by San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office.
Dubbed “Operation Mic Drop,” the investigation ultimately led to the indictment of 22 people involved in the drug sales operation and welfare fraud, according to the DA’s Office.
It also represented an unusual partnership between law enforcement and the historically marginalized neighborhood, Stephan said.
"Unlike task forces that are created to address a certain issue, like drug cartels, overdose deaths, or human trafficking, (this was) a community-driven operation,” Stephan said. “They want to see you take action and prioritize their community."
Central to the success was the involvement of the Bridge Church. It sits directly across Ocean View Boulevard from the market. Its parishioners had a front row seat to the violence.
Steve Marron, a former educator and businessman, was named the pastor of the church in 2021. It didn't take him long to recognize the seriousness of the criminal activities going on across the street.
"You would see police coming through and making arrests" but the crime never abated, Marron said. The gang seemed impervious to police activity, nothing seemed to slow them down.
The Pastor recalls the time his congregation was having a prayer circle on the church's patio when two juveniles started "running up the street right next to me on 37th, 36th shooting at each other with .22's."
Another time, his wife Lisa was cleaning and vacuuming the children's area of the church when a drive-by shooting took place in the market parking lot.
"I was upstairs in the kids ministry kind of just picking up and I just heard some gunshots and people screaming, not sure if they would run here or what would happen," Lisa Marron said. She would ask her husband later "should I be wearing a bulletproof vest to church?"
‘A piecemeal response’
Amid this explosion of violence around the store, there was the recognition that traditional policing and prosecution methods weren't working. Police patrolled the neighborhood, responded to calls for service and made arrests. But nothing was really changing.
Stephan describes it as a "piecemeal response" to the ongoing crime. "It's the same people who are going to just come out of jail, and start over." Stephen said.
They needed a different approach, and support from the community — which was not a given. Tension between law enforcement and the Mountain View neighborhood has existed for decades.
In 1967, young activist Henry Wallace joined the original San Diego Black Panther Party. His experiences at the time convinced him that “the whole establishment was racist." Wallace recalls pitched battles between the SDPD and residents of Mountain View.
"They had a stereotype about what blacks do and how they should treat black people as well as Hispanics,” Wallace said.
Relations have improved in recent decades, but a lot of residual mistrust remains, he said.
In 2022, a key connection was made between Marron and SDPD Community Relations Officer Omar Luzuriaga. Marron brought Luzuriaga to the Bridge Church's roof top. They looked down on the parking lot of Mike’s Market and Merron described the regular scene.
“People would bend over to tie their shoes and you would see that they're packing guns and openly selling drugs," Marron said.
Luzuriaga remembers the desperation in Marron’s voice.
“It was almost like a cry for help,” Luzuriaga said. ‘You know what’s going on down there,’ he told me. ‘What’s the police department going to do about it.’”
Luzuriaga says he’ll never forget his response to Marron. “I’m like Pastor, we cannot do this alone. We need the community’s help.”
And Luzuriaga also knew the community needed more than just the police. Stephan agreed.
"The best of law enforcement happens through collaboration, partnership with the community, listening to the community, working with law enforcement, bringing the right partnerships to the problem, and solving it," she said.
A drive-through drug operation
The Operation Mic Drop investigation began in the Summer of 2022. It was led by Deputy District Attorney Miriam Hemming, a veteran prosecutor with the gang unit.
Hemming remembers the intensity of the 90-day surveillance operation. "Pretty much what our law enforcement team did is they just watched this for hours, all day, every day."
Hemming said Mike’s Market “operated like a drive-through” at a fast food restaurant.
“So a car could pull in, approach a gang member that was there to sell drugs, pull up alongside him, the gang member would reach in, conduct the sale and then people would go on their merry way," Hemming said.
The dealer's belief was law enforcement wouldn't search body cavities. "A lot of the customers were buying drugs that were coming out of (a dealer's) backside," Hemming said.
The customers, as well as the gang members running the operation, came from all across San Diego County. The buyers were "every age and every race from the very young to the very old,” Hemming said.
In addition to the drug dealing, the investigation (which included agents from the FBI and U.S. Department of Agriculture) also focused on welfare fraud.
The investigative team found it interesting that the market sold groceries and liquor but "over the month and a half that we were doing surveillance at that location, we never saw anybody actually leave with a grocery bag," Hemming said. "At most, people would leave with a soda."
They found that some customers who received their CalFresh benefits through EBT accounts were conspiring with gang members and store employees to commit fraud. Hemming said the EBT card holder would get $100 cash for a $200 "purchase." The money received would then be used to buy drugs in the store or in the parking lot.
A six-month comparison done by the USDA during the investigation found the market had $1.3 million in EBT transactions from January through August of 2022. When compared to other similar markets in the area, the transactions were four times the amount of all the others combined, according to investigators.
Officers were going inside the market wearing wires to capture the gang members’ interchange with customers.
A lead gang member would ask "are you a cop?" Or if they were a member of an opposing gang. In one case, a female undercover officer was turned away, but most were successful. Instagram posts shown to the grand jury featured gang members and employees flaunting their operation.
When the market was raided, Hemming found "the entire store was covered in mold." She adds, "I went through the shelves one by one. I had never seen expired pasta before. I had never seen expired Stover's stovetop stuffing before ... it was pretty clear [the store] wasn't in the business of selling groceries."
In the three years since the conclusion of Operation Mic Drop, there have been no homicides or robberies in the immediate area surrounding Mike’s Market. Calls for service have dropped by 75%, and there’s been a 50% decrease in arrests, according to SDPD records.
The last of the 22 defendants was sentenced last November. Stephan says they could have prosecuted up to 170 people, but chose to focus on the leaders of the operation rather than low-level offenders.
“It was [the] targeted people that are really at the heart of this in order to send a deterrence message that allows our streets to be safe again,” she said.
