An army of law enforcement officers led by Torrance police arrested 13 reputed South Los Angeles gang members Friday in a massive pre-dawn operation to break up an organized ring believed responsible for some 5,000 residential burglaries in five Southern California counties.

The operation, dubbed “Operation Money Bags,” culminated nearly four years of investigation to not just arrest and prosecute suspected burglars but to tie their crimes to their gangs, using gang-related sentencing laws that could add years to their prison terms, Torrance police Sgt. Paul Kranke said.

“We were looking for ways to solve our residential burglary problem,” Kranke said. “This is our long-term plan we came up with.”

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More than 400 officers from 18 police agencies joined the Torrance police force to raid 28 locations, primarily in South Los Angeles. The locations targeted members of the East Coast Crips gang, tying them to residential burglaries committed in Torrance and other South Bay cities as well as communities across Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Search warrants were served without any problems, Kranke said. Two other suspects were arrested earlier in the week.

“We have 13 arrests today,” Kranke said. “We recovered seven firearms and various amounts of narcotics and U.S. currency.”

The raids were carried out with no problems or use of force, Kranke said.

Others suspects were arrested as the investigation proceeded over the years, including some on other charges, police said. A few suspects are still being sought.

Investigators said the operation was part of what they hope is a long-term solution to a sharp increase in residential burglaries that police officers say began when prison overcrowding relief efforts resulted in shorter sentences for offenders committing nonviolent crimes. The so-called “realignment” has allowed burglars to return to the streets to commit more offenses, said undercover police officers involved in Friday morning’s operation.

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“They are going to be sentenced and assigned to state prison as opposed to being in a revolving door,” one of the officers said.

Additional crimes attributed to the East Coast Crips occurred in Alameda County in the Bay Area, along with locations in Washington and Colorado, police said. Some crimes were committed simply because gang members had traveled to those locations, police said.

The gang members also are believed to be partly to blame for a recent high-profile increase in residential burglaries on the Palos Verdes Peninsula causing angst among residents and demands for a crackdown, investigators said.

In addition to the raids Friday, state corrections officers performed searches in the cells of 50 inmates in prisons across the state. The inmates are suspected of helping to direct the burglaries using illegally held cellphones behind bars or benefiting financially from cash proceeds delivered to them from the crimes, police said.

When Torrance police began noticing the increase in burglaries in 2012, patrol officers studied the numbers and locations, and adjusted shifts to try to tackle the problem. Following some arrests, Torrance police administrators assigned the department’s gang unit to join its burglary investigations team when they found that many of the thieves they were arresting were East Coast Crips gang members. East Coast Crips is a primarily black gang made up of various factions located in neighborhoods east of the 110 Freeway in South Los Angeles.

According to investigators, gang leaders had figured out that developing an organized burglary plan could be extremely lucrative. Each day, burglars had a goal of finding $5,000 and a gun, sometimes heading out to commit crimes four or five times a week. Each gang member targeted Friday was suspected of involvement in 125 to 150 crimes.

Police have tied more than 50 gang members to the crimes.

Gang leaders planned the burglaries in meticulous fashion, picking out neighborhoods to target, dressing professionally and using high-end rental cars in an attempt to not draw attention to themselves. “White pages” apps on their phones were used to call phone numbers along streets to see if anyone was home.

Asians were targeted by the burglary crews. Gang members would check for Asian names on targeted streets and look for shoes left on porches, a sign that an Asian family might live there. Gang members, police said, believed Asians kept money in their homes and “had the best gold.”

Following many crimes, police said, gang members kept their profit and stolen property for themselves to live a luxurious lifestyle. Others fenced stolen goods. Stolen guns ended up on the street and were used in other crimes, police said.

But gang members didn’t stop there. Those involved in the burglaries began flaunting their riches on social media, posting photographs of themselves holding thousands of dollars in cash on Facebook, Instagram and other sites. Sometimes they even recorded themselves committing crimes and put it online to boast, police said.

Detectives paid attention. The posts became tools for gang members to promote their gangs and recruit new members, and detectives and prosecutors decided to use their boastful posts against them, investigators said.

Gang detectives began scouring websites with a new idea. Instead of prosecuting a gang member for a burglary or two, crimes that might get them limited time behind bars, detectives worked to connect burglars to the ring, using their social media boasts to show their crimes were specifically benefiting their gang. So-called “gang enhancement” charges often are tied to murder cases, where prosecutors allege murders were committed for the gang’s benefit.

The District Attorney’s Office signed on to add the gang enhancement to burglary cases.

“Hopefully, it will reduce burglaries,” Kranke said.