DEVELOPING: Monterey Co. stopping its ‘gang task force’

the early morning. in a little over two weeks, the monterey county gang task force will be no more. that’s word from the gang task force steering committee, who met earlier this afternoon. news channel 5’s mariana hicks was there for the decision. 00-10 salinas 18-23 kelly *trt: 1:34outcue:soc:*dean flippo nats *yays? any nays?* with that, the unanimous decision to dissolve the ten year old monterey county gang task force.much of their work was behind the scenes.. making contacts and collecting intel. however some of it was made headlines.. most recently in may. “all the big operations that people are familiar with by name, like quiet riot, operations snake eyes and so on,” salinas police chief kelly mcmillin explains, “those all came out of the task force and these were all big wiretap operations.”according to the committee that oversees it, there’s just not enough funding or manpower to cover it.at it’s height, this task force was the largest of its kind outside of los angeles. officers with the salinas police department made up the lion’s share of the task force, with eight officers and two sergenants.despite the name going away, salinas police chief kelly mcmillin says he wants to be clear — fighting gangs remains a priority for his department. sot –kelly mcmillin “we lose the task force and the way that task force is operated, but those duties now shift to our patrol folks, our detectives, they’ll be the ones responsible for doing the same work.”while that’s changing, other protocol will remain the same. kelly mcmillin “the collaborations we’ve had are long-standing collaborations with federal, state, local partners, highway patrol, the sheriff’s department, the probation department, the district attorney. those collaborations remain intact and remain very powerful. it’s just a reassignment of the personnel.” monterey county sheriff steve bernal said he would like to revive it once funding is figured out — no word when that’ll be. but it is clear the district attorney as well as chp captain and others involved feel the samein salinas, mariana hicks, news channel