WEASEL WOBBLES AND FALLS.
As a lot of cops have been warning for years, Hector "Weasel" Marroquin has finally been exposed as gaming the system and working both sides of the street. As LA Times and LA Weekly articles this week reported, Marroquin has been arrested in an ATF undercover buy operation. He allegedly sold full auto weapons and suppressors to an ATF agent at his Marrokings restaurant in Cudahy.

The founder of No Guns, a gang intervention program funded with public money, Marroquin has basically been shoved down the throats of gang cops by their commanders for years as a person they should work with to quell gang violence and divert young people from the life. Even though these street cops knew full well that Weasel was a phony and reported it to their superiors, the brass hats and politicians disregarded the warnings and continued to bring Hector around to lecture cops on how to do their jobs.

According to the LA Times article by the energetic Sam Quinones, it wasn't just gang cops that suspected Marroquin of less-than-virtuous intentions. The Times quoted Connie Rice,"I never for a moment believed he ever left the life. I always thought he was using the system." Rice was on the Police Commission at one time and if the city fathers paid no attention to her, for sure they wouldn't take the word of street cops. The LA Weekly article has ten photos of Marroquin and his son and in almost every picture, Hector is flashing 18th Street. He could not have made it more obvious.

In the same article, Tom Hayden stated, "These guys perform a service. If they backslide, well, who doesn't?" The difference in attitude betweeen Rice and Hayden could not be more dramatic. Rice obviously isn't blinded by ideology. Hayden, a friend and supporter of Marroquin's, is still whipping that dead horse in an effort o reanimate it. For one thing, in order to backslide, someone must abandon the old life. Hayden still can't recognize the fact that Marroquin never actually abandoned his ways. He's been an operator for the Meros since day one and Hayden can't or won't admit that he's been played, suckered and hung out to flap in the breeze. Loyalty is a fine thing. But carried too far there's the danger it could turn you into a collaborator and enabler.

For Hayden to actually consider the possibility that Marroquin did "backslide" is in itself an indication of progress. When Ernie "Chuco" Castro was arrested on weapons charges and flipped in 1992, Hayden suggested in his book that the guns were planted on Castro to turn him as an informant. So far, Hayden hasn't raised the possibility of an elaborate conspiracy to bring Marroquin down.

Unfortunately for our city and county, No Guns isn't the only questionable program receiving public funds. There are some out there still operating and doing a better job of deflecting scrutiny. Maybe in the fullness of time, our elected officials will catch a clue.

BACK IN THE SADDLE.

I know you've been wondering what hole swallowed me up. Contrary to speculation that I've been on a drunk or in WIT SEC, the truth is more prosaic. I've been hammering down the final details on the long-awaited book. Here's what the cover will look like. Look for it in bookstores around mid-July. If you absolutely can't wait, you can pre-order online at the usual places. But you'll still have to wait until July to have it in hand.

The worst of the pre-pub drama is over so I'm hoping I'll have more time to post.

As with most books, there was more manuscript than there was room between the covers. So a lot of stuff had to be pruned away. But I've been assured that if the book sells well, future editions will provide more room for expansion and elaboration. Here's hoping.

If it doesn't do well, it's back to sweeping floors and selling oranges at the off-ramps.

G-RIDE GOING UPSCALE.
You know you're doing something right if your G-ride is a Mercedes. While going through some recent documents, we came across an incident in which a Reseda SS was busted in the act of tagging a wall by undercover West Valley cops. What surprised the cops was the twenty-something tagger's ride -- a three-year-old Mercedes 320 SUV. Very clean. Freshly detailed. And not stolen. It was registered to the tagger. The giant RSS he hit the wall with exceeded the $400 threshold of misdemeanor vandalism so the Mercedes owner/tagger is facing felony vandalism. Apparently the tagger already had an I-card on file and was not a wannabe.

This incident has to tell you something about 1) The state of the economy when even local G-Sters can afford rides the average citizen cant't 2) The amount of money available on the streets or 3) Poverty may not be a significant causal component of illegal activity. Take your pick. I'm confused.

TWO YEARS IN THE SHU AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.
If there's any doubt that the gangster mindset has become a bankable commodity, you don't need to look any further than the record business and the clothing industry. I won't mention the name, but there's a clothing line based in the greater LA area that markets what they call "authentic jailhouse street wear." The T-shirts, jackets and hats sport the label's logo in addition to things like "186.22" (the California Penal Code section that covers gang membership), "LA County Jail 1750" (the High Power Module) and "P-Bay SHU" (Pelican Bay's Security Housing Unit).

While I fully understand the concept of wearing something ironically and the idea of reverse cool (hip young mothers, for instance, dressing like Doris Day and Lucille Ball) there doesn't seem to be any ironic content in this clothing line. It appears to be a flat out glorification of jail life and gangsterism. I don't know who's buying this stuff, but I can almost guarantee that nobody who's been in the SHU or the high power module would wear a T-shirt to fondly commemorate the event.

I would bet that this clothing is aimed at the wannabe fringe, young people who probably haven't got a clue what prison life is really like. And frankly, it's a bad message.

Unfortunately, this bad message isn't restricted to wannabe gangsters. Some gang cop groups are also marketing clothing that looks an awful lot like classic gang wear. These guys should know better. When the good guys and the bad guys start looking the same, it's time to re-examine your premise and figure out who you really are.

MAYBE WE NEED A CORRUPTION CZAR TOO.
As if on cue, the LA WEEKLY and the LA TIMES published stories of local political corruption right after the issue was raised here in connection with gang cops and disclosing their personal finances. The Weekly story focuses on Bell Gardens Councilman Mario Beltran, his connection to the 740 Club's owner Ralph Verdugo and La Puente City Councilman John Solis. According to the accompanying piece in the Weekly, Beltran is a protege of State Senators Gil Cedillo and Ron Calderon.

In the Times piece, Lynwood Mayor Louis Byrd and Councilman Fernando Pedroza were charged by LA DA Dave Demerjian with misappropriating city funds by taking personal trips on Lynwood's dime. Pedroza apparently even charged lap dances in Guadalajara to the city. A year ago, Paul Richards was sentenced to 16 years in the Feds on charges of public corruption. Former Lynwood council members Armando Rea, Arturo Reyes and Ricardo Sanchez are also named in Demerjian's filing.

The Weekly story was written by the same Jeffrey Anderson who wrote the pieces on corruption in Cudahy and the Marroquin/No Guns scandal.

There's obviously a pattern of illegal behavior and corruption in these little cities. It looks like they're being run like Medieval fiefdoms with the guys in the castle raking in the booty and the Dukes in Sacramento backing their play. While it appears that the legal system is working to put these bandits in suits out of business, the big question is, "Where's the public outrage and the big media coverage?" The Weekly's coverage, while excellent, isn't exactly big media. Where's the call for Federal supervision of these towns? Maybe we need another Christopher Commision to ride herd on these people complete with compliance certification from Kroll just to make sure the lap dances aren't paid for with public money.

WHO'S GOING TO BLINK FIRST?
Gang cops are apparently showing no inclination to have their personal financial information open to public scrutiny. On the other side of the issue, the opposition also shows no indication that they'll abandon efforts to require that gang cops reveal their financial records. A number of veteran gang cops have already asked for and gotten reassignment and the rest are ready to do the same if they're ordered to reveal their records.

This looks like a classic standoff with neither side willing to compromise. This also appears to be a case of double, triple and quadruple standards. The rationale for revealing a gang cop's records is the suspicion that they may be more likely than the average patrol officer to be corrupted by access to dope and large quantities of cash in the course of their daily work. As we've said before, that rationale of potential corruption could apply to thousands of civil servants, elected officials, recipients of public funds and virtually any private entity that does business with local, state or the Federal government.

Why focus on gang cops for this selective scrutiny? The simple answer is Rafael Perez. While on the face it it appears to make sense, you can also point to dozens of cases of corruption and nefarious backscratching much further up the food chain. Just to review, there's the DWP and cozy deals with PR firms and massive overtime fraud, elected officials hiring their girlfriends who have no campaign experience as campaign advisors, others exchanging guns for dope with known street gangsters, others getting hit with huge fines for illegal campaign financing, flying around the country on private planes owned by companies doing business with the city, others buying cocaine and using it in their own offices, others looking the other way when pet intervention programs are infiltrated by an organized criminal enterprise -- need we go on?

If you aren't going to trust cops because they "might" get corrupted conducting their business, then we shouldn't trust anybody who might be exposed to the possibility of corruption. Whether they do it with a gun screwed into a drug dealer's ear or by cutting a purchase order for a new construction project, using the yardstick for the pontential of corruption is a huge club that could be swung at a lot more people than gang cops.

PUBLIC SERVICE OPPORTUNITY.

The message below is fairly typical of a lot of the comments that get bounced. It was always a policy to keep this blog from turning into a netbanging site and over time I rejected thousands of these. I thought I'd try an experiment and run this one.

I'm assuming this commenter is genuine. If he isn't just yanking my crank, maybe somebody out there who's been there and back and lived to tell the tale may want to compose a few thoughts to set this guy straight on the realities of where he appears to be headed. Think of it as your good deed for the day.

THIS IS BIG BAD ASS BLYTHE STREET GANGX13 RIFANDO HASTA LA MUERTE LEVAZ!!!...FUCK ALL PINCHE ENEMIGAZ OUT THERE!!YOU FUCKEN LENGUAS FUCK YOU LAME ASS CHAVALAZ!!...TRYING TO BE ALL HARD CON NUESTRO BARRIO N SHIT THIS PURO BLYTHE STREETGANG X13 REPRESENTANDO HASTA LA MUERTE LEVAZ!!!!FUCK ALL PINCHE ENEMIGAZ!!!AND Q'VO TO ALL THE HOMIESAND HOMEGURLS FROM THE BARRIO!!! THERE'S NOTHING SWEETER THAN A BLYTHE STREETER QUE NO??...THAT'S RIGHT LEVAZ!!!...PUES ALRATOZ AND DON'T FORGET THAT THIS IS BIG BAD ASS.....BLYTHE STREET GANG X13

ROCKY SHUTS DOWN ANOTHER ONE.
Making good on his promise to dismantle local gang "headquarters" and dope emporiums, Rocky D. shut down a dope house in Pacoima yesterday and forced the owners to take down hardened and soft covers that were erected to prevent visual observation. The last one he took down on Drew Street seemed like a PR stunt and some of you wondered aloud if that take down was one-time phenomenon. Apparently not. The Harvard grad and former resident of HP who grew up being regularly robbed and tormented by Avenues seems to be dead serious about his job. It looks like Rocky wants to acquire his cape and utility belt the old fashioned way - he wants to earn it.

While Rocky is getting the face time in the media, you have to wonder about the total absence of DA Steve Cooley. Traditionally, felony prosecutions are generally the domain of the DA's office, not the City Attorney's office. After doing a little snooping, there appears to be a revolt in the DA ranks. Cooley has been missing in action and the deputy DAs, according to some, have been actively discouraged from filing cases. One rumor is that Cooley issued orders to DAs to reduce their filings by 20 percent. In addition, Cooley and his minions are encouraging DAs to plead cases down to absurd levels, essentially giving good cases away just to get them off their desks. This is not only making DAs crazy, it's also demoralizing cops who see their work in putting strong cases together vanish in a weak plea agreement. The only people who seem happy with this trend at the DA's office are the public defenders.

We've heard some incredibly strange tales coming out of Cooley's office that we can't report on until they're verified but they sound scary. More on this later.

On an unrelated topic, many thanks to the commenters who are maintaining an elevated level of discourse. For the disgruntled who are seeing their comments bounced, please reflect not on what you say, but how you say it. Telling somebody that he has his head up his ass is not an argument. It's an ad hominem attack that does nothing to advance the discussion. Also, we're getting sharper on detecting people posting under other people's handle. We're getting wise to that and bouncing those too.

ANOTHER ONE FROM THE VAULT.

In case anyone still has lingering illusions about the power projection out of the jails and into the streets, here's the first greenlight list ever uploaded to the web. It's quite old and most of the information is no longer valid, but you can get a sense of how these things sound. It's puzzling how after all the information made public and boatloads of evidence presented in thousands of court cases, some people still refuse to acknowledge the influence of prison gangs on street gangsters. Here you see nothing less than assassination orders on the unfortunate individuals and gangs that got on the wrong side of the brothers. These lists are generated on a daily basis and sometimes you'll get two or three revisions a day. Sort of like a morning, afternoon and evening edition of a newspaper. The changes reflect the latest available intelligence fed into the prison and jail system by operators on the outside by means of third party calls, mail, legal documents and personal visits.

On another topic, some of the commenters are get out of control. If I reject your comment, go to your corner, think about what you said and see if you can say it in a less disrepectful way. I'm getting tired of being a referee and Miss Manners. I'm instituting a MANO DURA policy and if you can't play nice, don't play.

IT CUTS BOTH WAYS.
So now it appears that gang cops have to produce their financial records if they want to stay on that assignment. The officers concerned are indignant because they feel it infringes on privacy rights and frankly makes them feel like the department and the city doesn't really trust them. On top of which, they're only allowed to stay on gang assignments for three years and then rotate out to other assignments. Which in itself is counterproductive because it takes about that long for a gang cop to get to know the players in the division. So just when a gang cop gets good at it, he's gone.

There appears to be a double standard at work here. Without mentioning names, the city has been giving money to less than completely trustworthy gang intervention programs with virtually no oversight. Even after red flags began waving in the wind, these programs were never investigated and oversight was virtually non-existent. And the money kept flowing. It was only when the "questionable" behavior became egregious that investigations were launched. We haven't seen the last of them, by the way.

Partisans on the side of the questionable programs are quick to point out that "one bad apple doesn't spoil the barrel." Fair enough. It isn't fair to tar everyone involved with the same smut brush. But couldn't the same thing be said about bad cops. One Rafael Perez doesn't spoil the entire department. If you're going to cut the questionable programs that kind of slack, the same reasoning, it would appear, could apply to cops.

And in truth, the same reasoning could also apply to our elected and appointed officials. When Mike Hernandez got nailed for dope use, he apologized, kept his job and was re-elected. We didn't see a full throttle investigation into the financial records of all the city's elected officials. Was there a Christopher Commission type of investigation and consent decree to make sure the rest of the city fathers weren't more Mike Hernandez' waiting in the wings?

If you're going to look into gang cops' bank accounts, let's make it fair and look into the bank accounts of all our law enforcement people and all our city and state stewards. After all, isn't it just as likely that a government functionary in charge of public spending be corrupted by sweetheart deals and kickbacks as a working gang cop?

WELL, THAT WAS UGLY.
As predicted, the freaks came out and demonstrated to the world how truly screwed we are. The language was bad enough, but the spelling was atrocious. It would be easy to blame the school system, but you can't educate a kid who doesn't even show up. And clearly a lot of the comments were from school dropouts and unfortunately, life dropouts. Apologies to all who had to endure the hate fest but we're back in the saddle and moderating again. Call it censorship if you will. I call it the crap filter. While I believe in free speech, very little of what appeared could be characterized as speech. It was more like Tourrette's syndrome. Glad it's over.

COMMENT AMNESTY.
Starting right now until the middle of next week, I'll be away from the computer. Therefore, I can't post or even moderate comments. But since I don't want to leave you voiceless or cause a spleen backup, I turned off the comment moderation. I know for sure this will turn the comments section into a freak show. So be prepared. Before I return next week, please put the funiture back where it belongs, throw out the beer cans, clean up the ashtrays and wipe the blood off the walls. To the readers who aren't completely insane, accept my apologies. The comments do not reflect the opinions of this blog and the opinions expressed are strictly those of the commenters. See you next week.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE LA MEDIA.
Since I already had something in mind about this issue, I'll start off with a comment from one of our many anon. commenters. I wish you guys would invent some interesting handles so I can keep you straight in my head, but whatever.

"To Wally,You used to tell us how the L.A. times did not cover gang news or racial motivated shootings but lately it seems they are giving a lot of coverage to all these topics. I’m not sure if it is because Mayor V., Chief Bratton, and Rocky D. are all trying to make gangs high priority and profile."

The commenter goes on to link the latest Times pieces on crime and gangs. Obviously, it's not just me that's noticing an increase in crime and gang coverage. And it's not just the Times. It's all the media in LA. I still stand by what I said back when this blog started. There was precious little coverage of the subject. There were stories (like the racial killings, the Eme's vertical integration initiatives, neighborhood expansions and various beefs) that were totally below the radar. This was one of the reasons I started blogging. It was to publicize stories that were being ignored.

When the city was looking for a new police chief, Rick Caruso said that addressing the issue of gangs and crime should be the new cheif's first priority. Dead silence. When Chief Bratton was hired, he said in one of his early public announcements that his first priority was addressing the same issue. Some of our local papers derisively started calling him Bill "War on Gangs" Bratton. As if trying to reduce the body count was something bad.

Now those same papers are writing stories about the Mexican Mafia being the 400-lb. Gorilla in the room, greenlight lists, taxation, regulation, shot-callers and, of course, ethnic cleansing. Big turnaround in attitude.

What happened?

Several things, the most prominent being the Federal hate crime indictment of Bird, Lucky, Sneaky and Dreamer from Avenues 43. Regular readers will recall that prior to that indictment, this blog was the only source of information about the Wilson, Bowser and Prudhomme murders. And it was the only source on similar events in Pomona, the SF Valley, Compton, Watts, Long Beach etc. When I approached some of the local papers about these homicides, I was given a less than enthusiastic reception. They basically showed me the door. That's a long story that will eventually be told.

It's easy to ignore one guy. It's impossible to ignore a Federal indictment. The media was frankly overwhelmed by events. When a release from the US Attorney's Press Office hits an editor's desk, you can't pretend you don't know. And you suddenly have to start caring.

Honest to God true story. I was sitting with a Northeast Homicide cop one day soon after the Avenues indictment came out. This cop knew I'd been trying to sell the thing to the media for years. It was somebody from a local free paper wanting to know about the Avenues case. He chatted with the person for a few minutes and when he hung up he looked at me and said, "Where they f*** have they been for the last three years?" Good question and rich irony. I'd been in the caller's office a month earlier in a futile and what proved to be my last ditch effort to get that paper to run my piece.

The truth is, I wasn't alone in banging on doors and rattling media cages. The families of murder victims were doing the same and getting the same "Not interested" response. Tony Prudhomme's mother got herself knocked silly having various media doors slammed in her face.

Over the next week, this cop's phone started ringing and wouldn't stop. The LA Times, Newsweek, CNN, Fox News, CBS, BBC, the local free papers (natch), and various freelancers all wanted in on the Avenues case. Then in the last week of the Federal trial, a Hispanic football player was shot and killed defending his black teammate on Avenue 40.

By then of course, after the world learned that "Avenue 43 Kills for Thrills," the media had given itself permission to go ahead and write about the thing that could not be named. In rapid sequence we had the Connie Rice report, the spike in gang crimes, four Hispanics executed Sadr City style on Harvard by black shooters with AKs, Kaytlin Avila wantonly shot in the chest by a guy who went out of his way to come back and kill her, the cop conference with LE from south, way south and way, way south of the border and then there was Cheryl Green. And after that we got Najee Ali with the phony truce, Bob Mueller, a Task Force, Feinstein asking for $1 Billion for gang suppression/intervention, Rocky sort of wanting and not wanting a gang Czar, the Drew Street dope house slamdown, Shadow Cambero from 43 making it to the Ten Most Wanted list, Garcia extradited back to the US, LA Bridges under scrutiny, Weasel getting shot, Tony V. lobbying the AG for money and bodies and now the Guv and Rudy G. meeting to get something done. That's not the exact order, but you get the picture. This confluence of events resulted in what the commenter has accurately assessed as increased coverage of the subject. "Holy cow, Batman. We got a real problem."

Is all this coverage a good thing or hysteria? I say it's about time.

SAM'S THE MAN.
I have to publicly credit Sam Quinones at the LA Times for single-handedly re-orienting my attitude about the paper. In the previous post, I expressed some concern regarding Jill Leovy's take on the significance of the racial component to the homicide rate. While I agree that the racial aspect isn't "driving" the homicides to a huge degree, her opinion leaves one wondering what's the bodycount threshold for starting to take the racial aspect seriously? Is ten percent not enough? At what point in the stats does race homicide become worthy of James Byrd or Matthew Shepard levels of public outrage?

In the Sunday edition, Quinones revisits Harbor Gateway, digs deep, and comes up with the real goods. Unlike a lot of what we see in print, it's clear Quinones didn't phone it in. Having been there and done that, I know you can spend a week working your jaw and knocking on doors to come up with one good quote. And he's got lots of them.

Clearly, the staff at the Times is not monolithic in perception and attitude and I can only assume, based on these dissimilar stories, that there's some healthy dialogue happening on Spring Street. All the for the better. Quinones, by the way, is the first reporter I can think of that makes an unequivocal connection between Eme policies and the race homicides. Read the story, download it and save it. This one is a seminal piece of reportage that, in light of the inevitable future events, will prove to be spot on the money.

RACIAL KILLINGS NOT TOO BIG A DEAL.
Jill Leovy, the LA Times crime reporter and homicide blogger, made what has to be one of the oddest observations I've ever read in our hometown paper of record. Her claim is that racial animosity is not driving the homicide rate up to any significant degree. Leovy made a calculation based on homicides in four LAPD Divisions - Shootin' Newton, Southwest, Southeast and 77th. The murders in those Divisions totaled 236. Of that number "just 22" were between Blacks and Latinos as either shooter or victim. That represents roughly 10% of the total. The other 90% involved shooters and victims of the same race or ethnic group. In her opinion, that small percentage really doesn't amount to a huge problem.

While no one would want to accuse the LA Times of cherry picking facts, a more accurate barometer would have included not only other LAPD Divisions such as Northeast, West Valley and Mission but also other towns in the greater LA area like Pomona, Colton, San Bernardino, and Riverside. An even finer tuning of the data would also include not just homicides, but hundreds of assaults, intimidation and what the Penal Code calls terrorist threats. A close look at the court documents in the Avenues Federal trial would reveal that there were dozens of assaults and/or threats against Blacks in Northeast but they only resulted in two homicides -- Wilson and Bowser. There was a third homicide, that of Anthony Prudhomme, but that one is still hanging and waiting for more evidence to be developed.

The attitude of the Times on this hometown issue stands in stark contrast to its attitude during the James Byrd truck dragging death in Jasper, Texas. The Times ran a handful of stories on the Northeast killings, but only after the Federal filing. The original homicides and the Superior Court cases that ensued were almost totally ignored by the Times. It only became a story when the US Attorney entered the scene.

Compare this to the 56 stories that the Times ran on the Jame Byrd homicide. The paper covered the initial homicide, the investigation, the trial and then the verdicts. That coverage was fleshed out by a number of Op-Eds and columns. Those 56 stories in the Wally files don't include the articles that ran in the Times calling for more hate crime laws in the wake of the Byrd homicide and the issue that it became in the 2000 presidential election. If those were included, the stories would run into at least 100. In re-reading some of those pieces that ran in the Times, I never came across one that said the Byrd homicide was "marginal" as Leovy states of the LA homicides. Statistically, of course, the Byrd case was far more marginal than the LA race killings. That was an isolated murder committed out of personal racial animosity, not part of a pattern of assault and intimidation sponsored and mandated by an organized criminal enterprise. Once Byrd's killers went away, they didn't have a group of associates to continue their work.

Strange are the ways of the Times. In the case of James Byrd, one racial homicide is apparently one too many. In the case of the LA race homicides, 22 is apparently not enough.

CUDAHY IS NOT UNIQUE.
Now that the cat's out of the bag on Cudahy, I guess it's time to elaborate on the dynamics as explained in the excellent article in the LA Weekly. We can thank the new editorial management at the Weekly for the straightforward delivery of facts without the usual navel gazing and spin.

If you haven't read the piece, do it.

To put it bluntly, Cudahy has been thoroughly corrupted by criminal forces from south of the border. And it wasn't an accident. It was an organized and well-planned campaign to take control of the city government, neutralize the police force and create legitimate front businesses for illegal activities. It's a model that, over the decades, has been field-tested, refined and honed to perfection in Mexican border towns. The goal is to spawn replicants of those towns on this side of the border, create safe havens for the importation of drugs and organize launching pads for other forms of illegal activity. Weasel's presence in Cudahy is no mere coincidence. In the fullness of time, the moves behind the attempt on his life will probably reveal some interesting connections.

In addition to Cudahy, there are a few other municipalities that need to be closely scrutinized. If their offices don't get fired bombed first, maybe the Weekly can be induced to publicize more of these cartel outposts.

HIGHLAND PARK GETS AN INJUNCTION.
The LA Times reports today that Highland Park (aka HLP) got slapped with a gang injunction. According to the article, this brings the total number of injunctions in the city to 50 and we can see how well that's been working. In its own way, Avenues has had an injunction against HLP (which stands for Helpless according to Avenues) for years. The difference is, Avenues enforces its injunction with bullets.

ANOTHER ONE FROM THE VAULT.

Due to popular demand for more pictures from the Fortress of Solitude here's one for your files. What we have here was taken in 1994, ancient history by some standards. The subject is Alex "Pee Wee" Aguirre standing on the balcony of a motel in La Mirada doing some counter-surveillance on the parking lot. In the background is the room where he and other carnales were holding one of the many meetings that were videotaped and recorded by the Task Force. Those meeting tapes served as the backbone of the US Attorney's case against Aguirre, Cowboy, Huero Shy, China Boy and the other defendants in the first of three RICO cases. According to people on both sides of the issue, Pee Wee was probably one of the smartest operators ever to come out of Avenues. There wasn't one drop on ink on him and he never dressed down. He was also a phenomenal earner and knew how to keep the troops happy. Had he directed his talents in a different direction, he could have made of himself anything he wanted.

FAIR WARNING.
Some commenters are getting dangerously close to being banned. Healthy discusssion about ISSUES is always welcome, even if the opinion is over the top. I'm drawing the line at personal attacks. Some of you are walking the fine line and scrapping in the dirt. It's okay to disagree strongly with an opinion as long as you keep the comment above the personal level. Within those limits, there's plenty of room to call a person's sanity into question in a creative or humorous way. By now you should know where the line is. I've let a few wobblers get through and I'm regretting that decision. Since I started moderating the comments, the hits are steadily increasing because the non-participant visitors are genuinely interested in the topics discussed here. They're not here to witness digital bitch slapping. Many of the regulars, of course, deserve huge credit for maintaining the elevated tone and for responding to outrageous comments in a clever, non-confrontational way. You know who you are, so thanks very much. End of Sunday morning sermon.

HAZARD GRANDE BACK IN THE NEWS.
Today's LA Times carries a story about the legendary Ramona Gardens Housing Project, also known historically as Big Hazard or Hazard Grande. It's your typical piece about the residents being stuck between a rock and a hard place - gangsters on one side and the cops on the other. What prompted the story was the recent death of Mauricio Cornejo, a resident of Ramona who died while in police custody. The cops are under suspicion that they beat the guy to death but the prelim autopsy doesn't show evidence of blunt force trauma. So we'll have to wait to see the cause and manner of death in the final Coroner's report.

The Times piece leaves a lot to be desired for those hungry for information and context. There's a little timeline at the end of the piece that's titled, A History of Tensions. This "history" is way short of definitive. There are only three items in that "history." So for the benefit of the reading public, here's what you're not getting from our leading urban newspaper.

For decades, Hazard was an R&R stop for paroled felons, even if they didn't originally come from that neighborhood. It was a place where the newly returned decompressed, kicked back and got their marching orders. Hazard had an on-and-off relationship with the Carnales. Some Hazard alumni include "Charlie Brown" Manriquez, "Sluggo" Pineda, Manuel "Rocky" Luna, Roy "Sonny B" Balesteros, Daniel "Danny Boy" Pina and Richard "Chico" Cruz. This is not a definitive list by any means, but noteworthy players.

Some of these names are still in good standing while others have met their end for various transgressions.

Charlie Brown, Rocky and Sluggo all went down. Rocky was a tecato collecting without authority and allegedly consulted with Edward Olmos in American Me. Charlie Brown apparently got his for also consulting on the film. Sluggo was found near the train tracks stabbed 40 times with a screwdriver and his throat ripped open with a torn up beer can.

In February 1992, Juan "China Boy" Arias (from Artesia) and David "Smilon" Gallardo got into a big shootout right in the middle of the projects over Hazard's failure to regulate four of their own. Taxation and all that. Arias took one in the chest but survived and Smilon was arrested soon after in Vegas. Both of them were rolled up in RICO case number one in 1995.

Then on May 13, 1992, Ana Lizarraga was machine gunned on Lancaster by Jose "Joker" Gonzalez. Joker claimed Hazard. Lizarraga in her own way also claimed Hazard as a gang intervention and drug rehab worker. She too allegedly consulted with Olmos on the film. A year later, Joker was sentenced to life for her murder and is apparently still in up status.

Now you know, so there you go. You'd think with all the resources at the Times they could maybe dig a little deeper.

THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG.
It appears the LAPD is making good on its promise to bring down the hammer. Last week Chief Bratton and the Mayor released its list of the top eleven gangs targeted for suppression and a list of Most Wanted fugitives. Yesterday, they put teeth into the initiative by scooping up 110 suspects in the San Fernando Valley and arresting 64 of them on various charges. According to the Daily News, there's a 50-member Task Force roaming the Valley and that's the entity responsible for these arrests.

Careful readers of the gang initiative will realize that the gangs they swooped in on yesterday - notably Blythe and Van Nuys - are NOT on the list of top eleven gangs. So what's the story?

If history is any indicator, the people scooped up yesterday are the easy fish. The point is to get these guys off the street and in front of investigators who will probably press them for information. Out of any population of recently arrested, you will invariably bag a few who are looking at a second or maybe even a third strike. Those are the folks more likely to give up a little information in exchange for certain considerations.

That information of itself isn't all that useful. But what it does is provide enough probable cause for a judge to agree to wiretaps and other forms of surveillance to go after the shot callers and multi-jurisdictional operators. Keep in mind that the Valley Task Force includes Federal agents. The Federales have a lower threshold than local judges for obtaining wiretap orders. Not to mention more money for assigning bodies and using better gear.

The track record for this type of Federal and local cooperation is spectacularly good. Diligent students will recall the three big RICO cases of the mid and late 1990s that started precisely with this scenario. Sweeps of the low hanging fruit that yielded intel followed by surveillance and ultimately followed by Federal indictments.

Just to round things out, another sweep took place further east in Chino Hills, Fontana, Bassett, West Valinda, Pomona and West Covina. The sweep netted six arrestees, dope, guns and over $30K in cash. Coincidence? You be the judge.

SHOULD WE BRING BACK THE CODE DUELLO?
A round of interesting comments from some of the more thoughtful commenters set me off on a train of thought. The question bouncing back and forth addresses the issue of street shootings involving non-players and civilians. I was going to post some thoughts on the LA Times' recent addition of a Homicide Blog to its web page. This is a good idea that's been long overdue. It was something I wanted to do here, but as a one-man-band lacking the resources of the Tribune empire, it was beyond reach. The Homicide Blog, as some readers have pointed out, underscores the vile nature of kids shooting kids based on the question to which there is no correct answer - "Where you from?"

The son of an old friend of mine was shot and killed in front of a movie theater ten years ago after two guys rolled up on him and his girlfriend and asked that infamous question. The kid said, "I don't bang." It was the last thing he ever said. Trust me. I watched this kid grow up. He learned to swim in my pool, I cooked him and his friends burgers and we watched my Monty Python videos. He didn't know one end of a gun from the other and he was walking the straight and narrow.

His girlfriend said that when the two guys pointed the gun, he didn't run. He threw himself on the girl and they back shot him. Not real sporting. It doesn't take much courage to shoot an unarmed non-player in the back. It takes even less to shoot girls in Highland Park or Harbor. Ultimately, it's this type of episode that has finally motivated our politicians and law enforcers to bring out the heavy hammer and start using it. Even Barbara Boxer is calling for a nationwide anti-gang Task Force. And she wants enforcement, not midnight basketball.

My sense is, if you want to play at being a gunslinger, go find another gunslinger to play with. Don't ruin innocent lives and shoot the defenseless. That's not courage. It's slaughter and it brings shame, not respect.

When Jimmy "Character" Palma shot and killed the 5-year-old and 9-month-old Moreno children after he took care of Tito Aguirre and Lido Moreno, the Brothers had no stomach for that. Character got his in SQ as soon as they could get their hands on him. The outrage over killing innocents obviously isn't reserved strictly for the law abiding. Unfortunately, that message isn't being sufficiently enforced.

In the old days, some people invented logical ways of dealing with personal or factional enemies. In Europe, they even published books and manuals on how to do it right -- the Code Duello. They met at dawn with loaded pistols and settled problems face to face at 25 paces. May the best man win.

According to those old manuals, the choice of weapons was up to the challenger. It was guns, knives, swords or whatever. One of the wierdest duels ever took place inside a moving horse-drawn coach. The challenger chose knives and the opponent accepted. The terms were that the two would climb in and stab it out for the length of time it took the coach to circle a small park.

The coach went around once and stopped. Neither of the bloodied combatants had achieved satisfaction, so they went around once more. Second time around, still no satisfaction. So they went around a third time. At the end of the third trip, both parties had bled out and died. Sure it's crazy, but hey, it was their beef and they both had the courage to handle it mano a mano.

You've got to at least respect them for settling it man to man and having the brass balls to do it without dragging innocent people into their problem.

In the not too distant past, cowboys handled their business at high noon on Main Street with Peacemakers. First hit wins the fight. They had terms like "Bushwacker" for those who didn't handle their business correctly and the citizens strung them up not so much for killing, but for not doing it right.

So you have to ask yourself, is it possible that pasty aristocrats in frilly shirts and powdered wigs had more balls than a backshooting gangster who takes out people who have no part in a neighborhood or personal beef? Just something to think about.

EXPORTING INMATES.
It looks like nobody except the Governor wants to export CDC inmates to other states. Because of overcrowding and the threat of a Federal takeover of the State prison system, the quick solution seems to be sending inmates out of state to privately owned prisons. The activists like the Prison Law Office don't want it. And neither does the correction officer's union. It's rare when those two bodies find themselves in agreement on anything.

The CO's union, naturally, wants California to build more prisons and hire more COs, something that will naturally swell the ranks of the union and make it even more powerful than it already is. The CO union has a lot of juice in Sacramento and calls a lot of shots that shape policy. The activists don't want it because they claim it's runs counter to the State constitution.

And then, of course, the inmates and their overlords don't like it either because it erodes some of their power. A quote from the LA Times article this morning:

"Many others [inmates] were dissuaded from volunteering [for transer out of state], officials said, by prison gang leaders and rumors that a court-ordered prison cap could force the early release of thousands of convicts.

One of the weird wrinkles is that the owners of these out of state prisons played some CDC inmates a 20 minute commercial on how nice their prisons are. The commercial showed the good food, recreational activities, cable TV and other amenities. The pitch sounds so good, you have to wonder if they'll start selling time shares in the tiers. "It's not just prison, it's a vacation." "Tennessee prisons: more than doing time, it's an adventure." "The cells of New Mexico: a land of enchantment." I think we should put our heads together to come up with some catchy headlines and send them to the Governor.

ROCKY KNOCKS ONE OUT.
It looks like Rocky D. meant it. Today's LA Times carries a story about Rocky D. and the LAPD shutting down one of Drew Street's many dope retail and wholesale outlets. For years that particular street was a 24/7 open air drug bazaar. It's also a street that was a center of gravity for Avenues and a thorn in the side of Northeast. The station is just a few blocks away. The king of Drew Street was sentenced on several murder charges last year along with some of his Avenues associates in Superior Court and all the carnales that graduated from AVES are in custody. One of the laws of physics, however, is that nature abhors a vacuum. One irony is that while Avenues takes the PR hit, a lot of the slinging on Drew wasn't even done by Avenues members. Most were BBs and some were pure independents operating under the umbrella. Looks like Rocky is bucking for a cape and a utility belt.

HEADQUARTERS AND UNIFORMS?
Sometimes, you just gotta wonder. In today's LA Times, Rocky Delgadillo says that the wants to put all students in LAUSD in uniforms and shut down the "headquarters" of the ten worst gangs in the city. I'm not sure how he defines the term "headquarters" but in the accepted definition of that word, neighborhoods don't have headquarters. Not sure where he gets his information. Anybody out there have a clue what he's talking about? A public park? Somebody's back yard? Some guy's living room? Beats me. My feeling is that these are announcements made for public consumption addressed at the average citizen who doesn't know any better. It sounds reasonable in a press release but it's totally divorced from reality.

NOT JUST NATIONAL NEWS.
In answer to a comment, I'm assuming it's going to make national news because I already fielded several emails from the heartland as well as NYC media. The BBC and Swedish Broadcasting has contacted me as well. I can only surmise those people are interested as well and that means International news. That's all I know.

EASE UP.
In reference to comments regarding eating cheese and walking that shadow line in the middle of the boulevard, the fact is I catch it from both sides. Two quick examples. I had a Detective 2 tell me I was figuratively performing an act on a guy from the other side of the street. Too friendly with the opposition, according to him. Then a week later, the older brother of a guy I was talking to pretty much accused me of the same thing. Happens all the time. Occupational hazard. I've learned not to jump to conclusions until all the facts are in. Those who know, do know. Those who don't, will guess. Have a great weekend.

HERE COMES THE BIG HAMMER.
Oh boy, here it comes. In case you missed it, the suits and uniforms made their appearance on 204 yesterday after the "Truce" was signed by people who weren't fighting. The attendees included Mayor Tony V., Chief Bratton, Sheriff Baca, Janice Hahn and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller among others. When the head Fed shows up, you know the heat's on. The thrust of the press op was to announce a "campaign for the 'strategic dismantling' of two street gangs" according to the LA TIMES. In addition to the usual law enforcement presence, the Federal authorities will also send in the DEA and ATF. Yikes! One interesting approach is to put LASD and LAPD in the same radio car. It looks like the LAPD and LASD have also signed a truce because those two agencies have never gotten along all that well. The Feds will provide electronic surveillance (wiretaps) and obversation posts (eyeballs on the street). The Mayor offered carrots and sticks in the form of "services and suppression" to put, "you [204] out of business."

Throwing a kink in the works was Aqeela Sherrills who doesn't seem to know what he wants. He wanted after-school and youth programs but then criticized spending money. The Times quoted him saying, "They are going to spend millions of dollars even though Najee Ali already brought about a peace treaty." On the subject of the "peace treaty" Chief Bratton said on TV last night, "I don't believe in fairy tales." From all the indicators, the "truce" sure looked like a fairy tale because the shooters on both sides were no shows. And for sure there are shooters on both sides. Sherrils and Ali are probably a little pissed off they weren't invited to the press op party. In the game of power brokering, those two are more like gate crashers than mediators.

Why all this attention to a conflict that's been going on for years? For one, it's because the cat's out of the bag. The media, politicians and activists could only keep a lid on it for so long. Now it's getting national attention and while all the parties involved are genuinely disgusted with street violence, there's probably the feeling that they don't want this happening on their watch. If you're a politician with aspirations to higher office, you don't want a future political opponent pointing a finger and saying your record as a civic leader sucks. This is what happened to Mayor Jerry Brown in Oakland. Of course, he failed up. He was such a dismal failure riding herd on the street killings in Oakland, that he was rewarded by being elected the State's top cop. Go figure that one out.

Also, regardless of snow in Malibu, summer's coming and that means the kids will be taking the guns out of the gym lockers and bringing them home for the holidays. Is that too cynical? Maybe. But we've got all the ingredients brewing right now for major 415s, a.k.a riots. And riots don't just kill people, they kill political careers.

While the media totally ignored this, one of the flash points of the current race violence was when Demian Williams and his homies dragged Hispanics out of their cars, beat them, robbed them and then spray painted them. These were civilians, not soldados. The Big Homies put a major green light on Football and the Mara was only too happy to pick that up. It was lucky for him the LAPD got to Football first.

So 204 right now is the most recent participant in the whack-a-mole game. Welcome to Gaza.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY TRUCE?
The truce in Harbor Gateway is apparently a flop. The soldados from 204 who were supposed to show up this afternoon to sign a truce never made an appearance. Najee Ali never indicated who the other side to sign the truce was supposed to be. So the only people to sign the truce were people who weren't fighting to start with. In other words, civilians who weren't involved in the friction except as victims of the crossfire. So the truce must have been worded something like, "We promise to continue not shooting you." This is like Iceland declaring a truce with Lichtenstein. As much as we would have liked a different outcome, it looks like the entire peace initiative was a total figment of the public's imagination. Political myth, may we introduce you to reality? Tomorrow Tony V., Chief Bratton and others will travel to that neighborhood and will hopefully apply common sense to the infected area and continue application until the issue is resolved. Maybe.

DELGADILLO HAS DOUBTS.
With all the concerned parties looking hard at Connie Rice's jumbo gang study and more or less mulling it over, Rocky Delgadillo apparently has some reservations. He doesn't want to create a new giant bureaucracy. It's a legitimate concern but it may be a premature concern until they figure out how to run it, where to put it, and how it will work. We wondered why Rocky voiced reservations so quickly until we dug up an LA Times announcement from November 2006 in which Rocky named former Federal Prosecutor Bruce Riordan to head the LA City Attorney's gang prosecution and intervention efforts. When Rocky made that announcement he called Riordan his new "Gang Czar." It appears that Delgadillo was already laying the groundwork to have the new anti-gang organization attached to or under the supervision of the City Attorney's office. We wonder if Rocky would be objecting as strongly to a new bureaucracy if this new entity was placed directly under his supervision? One of the problem with politicians is that they're always looking to carve out little empires for themselves. It's called job security.

TRUCE ON 204th.
There's been an interesting development in Harbor Gateway. After all the airtime and ink in the aftermath of the Cheryl Green homicide, Najee Ali has apparently brokered a truce between 204th Street and parties that to date have not been named. The representative from 204, according to the article in the Daily Breeze, is someone named Jonathan O'Gorman. The Breeze states he's a 16-year veterano from that neighborhood. The details on the "truce" are vague but apparently everybody concerned wants to stop the threatened injunction and use the truce as a bargaining chip to get a community center and jobs. There's an awful lot not known about this. For instance, who's signing for the other side? And what are the penalties for breaking the truce, if any? Will they yank the jobs and demolish the center if somebody breaks the truce? Will they rat him out? And what's O'Gorman's horsepower for keeping the soldados in line? We wish all parties the best of luck and we're keeping our fingers crossed. Here's the link to the story.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/5220486.html?showAll=y&c=y

THIS IS GETTING TO BE A HABIT.

I've been asked this about a thousand times and I'll just get it over with so we can move on. Jim asks:

Wallace, I have two questions, entirely out of genuine interest and not meant to critique my esteemed "pal". I thought that the inclusion of "Southern Soldiers" into your book's original title was sound on several fronts, but I amicably chided you on your decision to have dropped it, and instead go it alone with the ~MM~ Mexican Mafia.What were your reasons, or whims, on deciding this?
2. "Wally Fay", why did you choose the name Wally Fay? Is there any connection here to the Wally Fay character in the Joan Crawford vehicle "Mildred Pierce" of many years past? We are curious Wally, be a sport and tell. Bunch of us old time vatos here in SanFer, Borrego Valley, "Sylmar Ranch" and Kansas are dyin' to know.
Felice año nuevo to all.


Since you're asking, I used the name Wally Fay because every combination of Tony Rafael was already taken when I started using Blogger and Yahoo. A lot of people got there before me and I got shut out. So as I was casting about for some appropriate handle, I went to a default mode and searched the mental memory banks for something that connected the topic with earlier generations of LA noir writers. To me, the one guy that seemed to catch the spirit of this place better than the rest was James M. Cain. And as I started replaying his books and the movies made from them in my head, one guy popped out -- Jack Carson, to my mind, one of the greatest character actors ever to step in front of a camera. There's one other actor, Vito Scotti who ranks right up there with Carson. But it had to be Carson because he was connected to Cain and bingo -- Wally Fay from Mildred Pierce. "You know me, Mildred. I see an angle and I can't help cutting myself a piece of throat." Perfect. All this took about 30 seconds. And nobody had claimed the handle on Yahoo mail so I grabbed it.

So yeah, Wally from the movie and I wear the handle proudly. Send my your info Jim and you'll get a signed copy. You're the first guy to actually make the connection so you get a prize for being so well rounded.

As to the book, I still think Southern Soldiers is a cooler title but I was overruled. It wasn't my call. Those who spend the money call the shots. The publisher and the distributor thought Southern Soldiers sounded too much like a book about the Civil War. They didn't want to confuse the public and having to explain the title just makes the book harder to sell. It was a purely commercial decision.

YOU TALKIN' TO ME?
When covering the topic of race violence, I don't use a bias filter. If it happens, or there's some news item related to it like the city's new "weighted matrix" gang strategy I'll talk about it. But as we all know, the race-biased violence in this city has, for the most part gone in one direction. When the three Hispanic civilians were machine gunned on Central by three male blacks, I talked about that too. The reason I haven't posted more on it is because that case is going nowhere. No good wits, no suspects and no progress. There have been a handful of puzzling homicides of Hispanics in remote parts of the County that may be race related but, like the Central homicides, no strong wits and no suspects. They look hinky to me and they may go that way if the investigations ever bear fruit. But at this point, there's no way I could legitimately call them race related because nobody knows. So I'm waiting until there's something to talk about.

Bear in mind it took almost a year before Northeast had any reliable information on the Wilson killing. And I waited two years before I had enough info to characterize that as a race murder. There's no doubt, even without the shooters in custody that the Central Ave. killings were race-motivated. It's the only way it figures right now.

So does the race thing work both ways? It sure does. And when anything happens on either side of the color line, you'll hear about it without the spin. Just as an aside, there was a time when the Bounty Hunter Crips had Hispanic members and XVIII had Black members. The 18th broomed all the blacks and Bounty Hunters threw out all the Hispanics. Believe it or not, there was such a thing as Hispanic Bloods [I erroneously said Crips, thanks for the correction] and Black Surenos. Can you picture anything like that now? Unthinkable. I'll post something about that whole thing sometime soon.

On the other topic of comments, I don't care what opinions you hold, just don't be stupid or offensive about it. I disagree with a number of comments but I run them because they're articulate and they don't get down in the gutter. The basic rule is, if it adds something to the dialogue, even if it's extreme, I'm okay with it. A foul rant, adds nothing.

COMMENT MONITORING WORKS!
In response to a query from a commenter, I've only had to reject a handful of comments. It appears the loud mouths, bedwetters, cell soldiers and net bangers got the hint they're not welcome here. The quality of discourse and the level of thought you commenters have put into the effort has never been better. As a result, the hits have gone up, we're getting some old commenters back and adding some new ones. Congrats all for keeping the discussions to high level. And as to the number of pix in the book, I submitted "lots." How many will appear is another question. We're working on it.

WE GOT OUR ANSWER.
As if making a direct response to our question in the previous post on how "targeted" versus "blanket" suppression would work, yesterday Chief Bratton and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo unveiled a new strategy for addressing gang violence. The plan is to create a matrix using weighted factors to identify the "worst" gangs in the city and then hit them with a brick.

At first glance, it seems like an interesting idea and something that veteran law enforcement and even activist types have suggested in the past. We'll hold off on commenting about this particular approach until we can get more information on the stuff that can make or break any concept -- the details.

The LA TIMES article on this initiative mentions that one of the neighborhoods under consideration for special attention is CPA, "a relatively small gang that police say is responsible for a disproportionate amount of violence in the Valley." For decades, CPA had a reputation more as a party neighborhood than hard core shooters and looters. Obviously that's changing. The question is why? We a have a few theories but let's let the initiative take its course and see what develops officially. When it's over, we'll compare notes.

The takaway from the LA TIMES piece seems to be that the killing of Cheryl Green finally got somebody's attention and it created the motivation for this new strategy. This phenomenon clearly underscores the fact that it's not a story (in this case, ethnic cleansing) until the big media says it is. The Green case generated lots of ink, unlike almost all the previous cases.

Let's recap some of the racially motivated homicides and assaults and the level of press attention, shall we?
Kenny Wilson, Anthony Prudhomme, Christopher Bowser: Nearly six years after the fact.
Hightower: No press.
Haggins: No press.
Boikins: No press.
Winston: No press.
Mellancon: No press.
The Williams family: No press.
Green: No press.

We got a bunch more. The point is the gatekeepers of what qualifies as news literally have to be overwhelmed by reality before they take official notice of "racially sensitive" issues. In this particular instance, the reality that overwhelmed them was the Avenues trial last September. Once the ice was broken with that case, well, all of a sudden, it's NEWS!

I clearly remember numerous fruitless pitches and serious conversations with the gatekeepers about this phenomenon years ago. They didn't want to know it. They never heard of it. And will someone escort this man out of here?

In the immortal words of one brave editor, "We don't want to start a race war." Using that line of reasoning, no one should have reported the Rodney King beating or Pearl Harbor for that matter because it could raise some eyebrows.

TONY V. ASKS FOR FEDERAL MONEY.
Today's LA TIMES has a report on LA Mayor Tony V's request to the US DOJ for Federal money and prosecutorial resources to fight LA's gang problem. Our mayor wants the DOJ to prosecute gangs on Federal crimes and focus harder on the Mara Salavatrucha, a gang that the Times calls, "a gang from El Salvador." This is all well and good but the MS (aka MS-13, dutiful tax-payers and occasional shock troops for the Eme) isn't the heart of the problem. That's like starting a fight with a big guy but you decide to beat up his little brother. Additionally, the mayor wants more resources to prosecute racially motivated hate crimes committed by gangsters. After a decade of ignoring the issue, it's refreshing that somebody in power has at last acknowledged that the problem exists. The truth is, the DOJ was already on the case long before Tony V. became the city's chief executive. Three jumbo RICO cases in LA, Black Widow in NorCal, the AB trial down south, the Sana and Nite Owl prosecutions, the Vineland crackdown and the Avenues race murders. It's clear the Federal authorities have been doing their part.

This is not to say that local and State LE has been slacking. All those cases required a tremendous amount of talent from LAPD, LASD, CDC, OC and other departments.

And we haven't gotten where we are by not spending money. In the same article, Connie Rice states that we're spending $82 million a year on gang intervention programs that "are designed to fail." It can't help, of course, when Hector Marroquin is handed a million dollars under those programs and ends up buying a $600,000 nightclub. Rice also states that, "We need smart suppression, not blanket suppression." Rice is a smart lady. We just wish she'd offer some concrete ideas instead of generalities. Connie, if you're listening, please give us a usable definition of smart suppression. And councilman Herb Wesson is quoted. "It's about stopping kids before they join gangs." Absolutely correct. Herb, that's what the $82 million a year is for. Show us results.

The good news is that overall crime is down in LA, but gang crime is up 14%. Most of that is in Valley Bureau. There's a concrete reason the Valley is kicking up dust that has to do with certain moves taking place in County Jail. If Ms. Rice wants to exercise her smart versus blanket suppression concept, that might be a good place to start. Here's hoping for the best.

WE HAVE A WINNER!
Actually we've got two winners. The first in with the correct answer was SOUTHERN GENT. He clocked in with his correct answer - Rafael Sanvodal, Jimmy Coppolla and Robert Salas - at 3:05 PM. But since MAD MEXICAN clocked in at 3:06 PM, it was close enough, and I was in a generous mood to give both of them a signed copy of the book. If you winners want to send me your mailing info back channel, I'll make sure you get the first two copies off the press. If either or both winners want to fill the rest of us in on the background and the relationship among the three at the time the picture was taken, we'll all be the wiser for it. Thanks for playing at home and here's hoping for a more peaceful year.

NEW YEAR'S DAY PUZZLER.
While going through the voluminous InTheHat secret vault deep in the Wally Fortress of Solitude, this ancient Polaroid popped up. Instead of revealing who the three individuals are, I'll turn this over to you all. First person to accurately name all three individuals gets a free autographed copy of the book when it hits the stores in July. All readers, including law enforcement, are eligible.

ARE THE FEDS COMING TO THIS ONE?
In today's LA TIMES, Sam Quinones has a follow up story on the murder of 14-year-old Cheryl Green, a black teenager shot by a 204 gangster a few weeks ago. It was apparent almost from the beginning that this was one of those murders that the media has, up to now, been reluctant to call by its rightful name -- ethnic cleansing. That seems to be changing as a result of this year's Federal trial against members of the Avenues. As we reported years ago when dicussing the Marco Milla murder of Reginald Hightower in connection to over a dozen other racially motivated homicides the media never covered, Harbor Gateway (aka Shoestring) is no stranger to B-on-B killing.

To underscore the utter ignorance and powerlessness of our politicians, the piquantly coiffured City Councilwoman Janice Hahn wants the city attorney to issue - get ready - a gang injunction. That'll put the fear of god into the shooters. The other thing she wants to do is sue landlords who rent to gang families. This is something she should know is as unconstitional as prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal aliens, drug users, Wiccans, the disbaled, crazy cat ladies or Al-Qaida sympathizers. Who elects these people?

During the time that Bird, Sneaky, Clever, Lucky and Shadow were going around Northeast shooting and harassing blacks, there were three separate gang injunctions in effect against the Avenues. You can see how well that worked out. Note to Janice Hahn: for the sake of your own credibility, please check your history and examine your premise. Lucky was living in a house owned by his parents. So what do you do with gangsters who are homeowners and not renters? Burn down the house and put the family on the street? According to the court testimony in his Federal trial, Lucky was also earning an excellent salary working construction at Vandenberg Air Force base.

With two murders and half a score of shootings, assaults and acts of intimidation to that neighborhood's credit, you have to wonder if this is enough to trigger interest by the US Attorney. The USA did it in Northeast and it may do it again in 204. We'll see.

And true to form, the NAACP has been as silent on this latest murder as it was in the race-motivated murders in Avenues, Compton, Watts, Pacoima, Pomona, Colton, San Berdoo and other neighborhoods. I hate to sound cynical but they're planning a march (bring your own candles) and organizing a display of solidarity. Good luck with that. God forbid they should ever tackle the root of the problem.

THE DANGER OF WEB RESEARCH.
During a conversation with a curious civilian the other day he wondered if the membership of the Mexican Mafia was going up or down from the 30,000 members he read about. He was asked where he got this insanely inflated number since the actual membership numbers in the hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands. He said he got it off Wikipedia on the net. A visit to that site confirmed the bogus number of 30,000. In addition there were other errors such as Joe Morgan being one of the "original" members. God knows where hacks get this information and where they get the confidence to blast it to the world. There's an awful lot of good stuff on the net but there seems to be an equal amount of crap.

If we can impose on some of our old friends to bang out a few words on the true birth and original membership of the Mexican Mafia, maybe we can educate some misinformed readers and make this place the repository of correct information. Turning it over to you all for this one.

COMMENTS ARE UP AGAIN.
After consulting with people who know a lot more than I do about the net, the concensus of opinion seems to be that hands-on moderation is the only bulletproof solution to dealing with knuckleheads. So the comments are back up but the catch is I get to approve or reject them before they show up on the blog. That means a lot more work for me but there appears to be no easy digital solution to this problem. There will inevitably be a delay between posting a comment and having it show up in the Comments section because I've got a life. So to those who tried to screw things up, don't even bother. I get to play grand inquisitor so if you act like a jerk, you're just wasting your time.

NEWS OF THE WORLD.
It's always interesting to see how other countries handle gangs and street violence. While going through some downloaded news stories this week, this interesting piece of information left me a little puzzled. Apparently Spain is starting to have a street gang problem as a result of immigration from Central and South America. This is their conclusion, not mine.

Young people are forming pandillas, their word for gangs, comprised of people from the same home country. So they've got Salvadoran and Guatamalan gangs and, of all things, the Latin Kings. The Kings started in the U.S. primarily as a Puerto Rican gang so how they ended up with official chapters in Spain is a story that's probably worth looking into.

While some areas in Spain are using conventional methods to suppress gang activity, others are trying to buy off gangs to get them to stop capering. The way it works is, if your gang swears off violence and drug dealing, the government will "charter" you as a legitimate organization and give you money and benefits. It was unclear from the story what the benefits are but the upshot seems to be that you can get paid in Spain for being a reformed gangster. Depending on how this works out, this can be a brilliant idea or a totally absurd one.

On the one hand, getting paid to be a reformed gangster sounds great for a gangster. Free government money and whatever benefits. And you don't have to risk your hide regulating the neighborhood. But if you're going to be off violence and dope, what's the point of joining in the first place. You might as well join the YMCA or the Boy Scouts or whatever the Spanish equivalent is. So on the face of it, it sounds like a neat idea. Forget the gang, I'm joining the church soccer team.

But as history has shown, there's the little matter of the unintended consequence. Way back in the 1960s, New York City tried a similar approach using the squeaky wheel concept to apportion resources and money. The biggest and most violent New York gangs were flooded with social workers, free clubhouses, meetings with politicians, jobs with the city on gang intervention programs and the like. Smaller, less violent gangs who weren't getting any of these benefits decided they wanted some of that too. But the only way to get the city to pay attention to them was to make some noise and kick up dust. Which they did. And New York found itself in the unhappy position of actually encouraging more violence. It was good idea gone sideways when it hit the realities of the street and the law of unintended consequences.

You have to wonder if Spain is going to run into the same problem. For instance, why join what is essentially a government sponsored non-violent gang making a little bit of money when you can sling dope and make a lot of it. One could see a situation arising where the chartered gangs may decide that they're not getting enough resources from the taxpayers. Human nature being what it is, once you start getting free stuff, you start wondering if there isn't some more to be gotten. This is the argument that activists and gang intervention people in the U.S. have made for years. As in, why would a kid work at MacDonald's flipping burgers for $10 an hour when he could make ten times that slinging crack? The call here has been to get more money into people's pockets to keep them from capering. So who gets to decide how much is enough to get the Latin Kings or the MS to stop capering? You can only imagine what the negotiating sessions are like.
Govt: "For five bills a week each, you must stop all illegal activities."
LKs: "No way. For five we'll stop BFMVs and home invasions, but we reserve the right to sell dope. If you want us out of the dope business, that'll cost you another five a week."
Govt: "We'll go two fifty. Not a penny more."
LKs: "For that we'll stay out of coke but we're still in the chronic business."
Govt: "Done. Here are the papers. Have you lawyers call our lawyers."

You could see where this starts being more of an extortion racket than social welfare.

The Spanish model seems even more puzzling when you consider that Spain is often held up as a shining Socialist model. Like England, France and Germany, Spain has a cradle-to-grave benefit system. Spanish citizens get near universal health care, free education, generous welfare payments for the unemployed, nearly free housing, six weeks guaranteed vacation every year, a mandated 35-hour work week, generous maternity leave, almost unlimited sick leave and it's almost impossible to fire a worker for poor job performance. If, as many claim, that the seeds of gangsterism are sown in the fertile soil of poverty, then Spain shouldn't have a gang problem to begin with. Go figure.

SANA GETS 14 YEARS.
As a number of SOCAL papers reported this week, Peter "Sana" Ojeda was sentenced to 14 years on various RICO charges having to do with selling dope and collecting taxes. If he serves his entire sentence, he'll be 78 when he comes out. As a lifelong reputed Emero, Sana will no doubt be placed in the Pantheon of legendary brothers along with Huero Flores, Chy Cadena, Joe Morgan, Hatchet Mike and a handful of others. While there's some dispute as to whether the idea of taxation was original to him, there's no question that he was the first to launch that particular initiative and enforce it with extreme measures. History will have to give him the credit for that.

What was a first a mere trial balloon, the idea of street taxes took off and became more successful than anyone on either side of the law had imagined. Frankly, the Emeros really had no idea that the neighborhoods were going to fall in line as quickly as they did. We're at the point now where tax resistance is isolated to a few cliques that, despite all efforts to bring them into the fold, remain holdouts. The overwhelming majority of neighborhoods, however, got with the program and continue to salute the blue flag, happily or otherwise.

The issue of taxation can't be viewed as a standalone phenomenon. With the taxation came a significant consolidation of power, a huge network of intelligence and naturally, large amounts of cash. The concept of consolidation, or as a business theoretician might call it, vertical integration, is one that policy makers, politicians, activists and, to some degree law enforcement, has yet to fully understand or deal with. Some, even when presented with irrefutable evidence, continue to insist on the model of "disorganized" crime. If the planned LA "gang Czar" is ever to succeed, the first lesson he, or she, will have to learn is that the problem has to be tackled from top down. With a combination of suppression at the top and intervention at the bottom, there may be a chance to break the chain of command, disrupt the internal policy structure and enforcement and deprive the mid-level and senior level managers of the next generation of recruits.

NO MORE COMMENTS.
As you'll notice I've taken down the comments section. Frankly, I'm sick of the infantile nonsense that transpired there. I tried to create a forum for intelligent, or even semi-intelligent conversation. And for a long time it seemed to be working. Then the assholes showed up and drove out the smart ones. And the assholes just make everybody look bad. And I don't want to be associated with assholes. I tried blocking and banning and you idiots still snuck in. I apologize to the people who were there at the beginning and had a clue about what was happening here. To the rest of you cell soldiers and net bangers, fuck you all very much. Let me know when you start evolving into something that resembles a human being.

I'll continue to post because this is a topic that deserves attention. I just won't have to read your bullshit anymore.

NEW FACES, SAME OLD STORY.
The recent stories here and elsewhere about Hector Marroquin are a classic example of history repeating itself and our political leaders' inability, or maybe refusal, to learn from previous mistakes.

Let's take the wayback machine to the year 1977. Then, as now, politicians were flush with cash and were looking for "novel" and "innovative" ways to curb gangsterism and drug addiction. And there was no shortage of groups lining up for government money.

Then, as now, politicians were making alliances with people with very dubious histories. Los Angeles had groups like LUCHA (League of United Citizens to Help Addicts), SPAN (Special Program for Alcholism and Narcotics), CCC (Community Concern Corporation) and the Get Going Project. All these programs had one thing in common. They were all being run by "reformed" criminals. The most notorious of these was Get Going located on 127 South Utah Street in Boyle Heights, just a few blocks from Hollenbeck station. Get Going was founded by Michael Delia, a convicted bank robber and associate of Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno and Jimmy Coppola, both Cosa Nostra operators. Delia was also an associate of several high ranking brothers. Get Going's most visible and vocal supporter was State Senator Alex P. Garcia. Garcia ran interference for Delia and greased the rails to get Delia government funding.

Michael Delia had another ally, Ellen Levitt who would eventually marry him and change her name to Delia. Ellen Delia was a brilliant writer of grant proposals. One person who hired her said that when, "she walked in the door, the money would follow."

Get Going was nothing more than a front to rob the government. And the house on Utah Street was nothing more than a heroin distribution center for the Mexican Mafia. When people in the neighborhood complained to the police and Garcia that the "patients" at Get Going we shooting up right on the sidewalk, breaking into apartments and threatening anybody that complained, Garcia told the citizens of Boyle Heights that Get Going was there to stay "whether you like it or not."

When Ellen Delia eventually realized that the project she helped fund was thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by the Eme, her husband conspired to have Alfie Sosa kill her. Ironically, the car that drove her to that drainage ditch on Elkhorn Boulevard in Sacramento was bought and paid for by a government grant. She helped finance her own killing with the help of idiot politicians. Her killing, and a number of other murders connected to Michael Delia and his associates, eventually prompted City Councilman Art Snyder to pull the funding on Get Going and every other program that had questionable directors and missing funds. Of course, Snyder got the usual death threats and the usual invectives about not caring for poor and drug addicted people. According to the estimates at the time, Los Angeles wasted roughly $48 million on these programs. Most of that money just vaporized.

Then, as now, the politicians had ample warnings from law enforcement that all these programs had been infiltrated. Then, as now, the politicians ignored the warnings. Then, as now, the programs ran with almost no supervision or oversight. Then, as now, the program directors put family members on the payroll which is contrary to the directives of the program charter. Then, as now, the politicians looked the other way. Then, as now, the programs never needed to show verifiable proof that the programs were working.

Has the current crop of bonehead pols ever read any of this? Is there no corporate memory?

The concept of turning over drug programs, or gang intervention programs to ex offenders without the slightest level of supervision is criminally negligent. This is worse than pounding money down rat holes. This is handing your tax money to criminal enterprises. And even worse, or course, is that the people who genuinely need and want help get nothing.

DON'T COMMENT UNDER MY NAME.
Okay, it's time for a little housekeeping and some reminders of common courtesy and simple rules.

First of all, don't sign Wally to any comments you post. Let me state this again. I never post comments in the Comments section. Ever. And I take great exception to anyone who signs my name. Veteranos who are regular readers already know this but new people that drop in don't. To avoid confusion and trouble, your comments will be deleted if my name is used as a signature, even if you call me the greatest contribution to literature since Shakespeare. Since I started tracking hits,we're well over 350,000 page views so far but only a handful of that number are regular commenters. I don't want to confuse the occasional drop ins with things I may or may not have said. My voice is the blog, the comments are yours.

As I've said in the past, I've got a high treshold for trash talk and foul language but some of the stuff lately had to be deleted because not only was it foul, it was stupid. I have no tolerance for stupid.

Secondly, I stand by everything I've ever written, here or elsewhere. If you want to argue or cofront me with anything, quote me or ream me, be my guest. Just use a signature other than Wally.

If you want a response to something specific and want it aired out in the blog or dealt with one on one, email me directly -- wallyfay@yahoo.com. The reason is I don't read every word of every single comment. No time. But I do read all my email.

On the subject of the long-awaited book, I just got notice it will hit the bookstores in July, 2007 -- all 700+ pages of it. We're undergoing the tedious but necessary vetting process right now so that every word of it will be verified with facts, dates and the blessing of the people involved. I'm also trying to work out a system so that anyone who wants a personally signed inscription can order a copy, have it inscribed and then shipped to the buyer. For some reason, it's a lot harder than I thought, but I'm working on it to make it affordable and quick.

Thanks for your patience and now back to business.