FEDS CONVICT VINELAND BOYS
When we first posted on the killing of officer Matt Pavelka and the ensuing GREENLIGHT that the Boys put on all cops, we knew there was going to be some serious fallout. Yesterday we saw the final result of that fallout in Federal court. Law enforcement sidestepped State prosecution and instead dropped the biggest bomb in the Federal arsenal -- RICO statutes. It looks like they invited everybody to the pile-on party including the Internal Revenue Service. Ouch!

Yesterday, nine Vinelanders were convicted on racketeering charges and will eventually land in a Federal prison someplace far, far away. Oddly, David Garcia, the guy who is accused of pulling the trigger in the murder of Pavelka, will face State charges in a few months. We can only speculate that they want to save him for the State court for a one way bus trip to San Quentin.

The point of all this is clearly to send the strongest message possible that you can't shoot a cop and greenlight the juras and expect to be treated like a common killer. According to US Attorney Debra Yang, "This is the first time in Southern California that the RICO statute has been used to dismantle the leadership of an entire street gang." And it probably won't be the last. In SOCAL, Federal law enforcement has gotten better and becoming more educated in prosecuting street gangs. Witness the Avenues racial homicides they successfully prosecuted two months ago.

For history fans, the Vineland Boys were started as an offshoot of 18th Street by two homies, Teddy "Greeneyes" Lopez and his brother Hilario. The 18th Streeters saw that as set jumping and have been feuding with them ever since. Because they wouldn't follow the rules, Vineland was greenlighted by the Eme in the late 1980s but since then, they've tried to mend fences and become loyal Surenos. Apparently the turning point came in January 1998 when Teddy "Greeneyes" was killed in a nightclub called "Baby Doe's" in Monterey Park. The killers in that case shouted "Pacoima" when they cut loose. Somebody got the message and since then, Vineland has joined the fold.

HE MEANT TO SHOOT HER.
I wasn't going to post anything about this but with the new revelation regarding the man who shot 5-year-old Kaytlyn Avila goes right to an issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not going to mention this guy's name. According to what LAPD has determined after this guy shot up Cesar Avila, Kaytlyn's father, he turned around and was ready to leave. Then he changed his mind and went back to the car and fired directly at the little girl. This is just pure evil.

What's significant about this is the difference in public reaction between this shooting and the infamous Stephanie Kuhen shooting in 1995. If you're a student of this sort of thing, Kuhen's killing at the hands of the Assassins clique of the Avenues in HP made headlines all over the country and a lot of European papers and electronic media. It even prompted then president Clinton to pledge money to put an additional 100,000 cops on the nation's streets.

Notice the almost complete lack of urgency in the wake of the Avila killing. Certainly the LAPD is doing what it should by increasing patrols and hammering on the P-Stones and 18th Street to short-circuit the inevitable payback. But outside of that and the usual suspects making their inevitable appearance and making their usual noises, there's been nothing like the moral outrage that broke out after the Kuhen killing.

You have to wonder why. Could it because Kuhen was white and the shooters were brown? Or was it that the victim in this case is brown and the shooter is black? It looks like only a very specific combination of race qualifies a killing for moral outrage and this one doesn't seem to contain the correct ingredients to fulfill the formula.

And for all those people out there who don't like snitches, keep in mind that somebody dropped a dime on Kaytlyn's shooter. If that hadn't happened, chances are this guy would still be in the wind. Why is it nobody likes a snitch unless he's ratting out somebody you don't like?

Needless to say, the shooter is as green as a shamrock right now and he's probably in the deepest, darkest PC module there is. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out when the case goes to trial.

CAN'T KEEP A GOOD EMERO DOWN.
Here's a blast from the past. RUBEN "NITE OWL" CASTRO was one of the many Emeros rolled up in the three RICO cases that came out of the LOS ANGELES METROPOLITAN TASK FORCE ON VIOLENT CRIME. Students of history will remember that the Task Force, with the help of big time dropout ERNIE "CHUCO" CASTRO put away a lot of brothers and Associates in the mid and late 1990s. But as anyone familiar with the subject already knows, going to prison, even Federal prison, doesn't necessarily put you out of business. Going to prison just means you're reassigned to the home office. A change of address, not a change of operations.

Today's LA Times carries a story on a Federal indictment charging NITE OWL with running 18th Street dope operations out of his Supermax cell in Florence. We're shocked, shocked! True to form, NITE OWL was using codes and a third party on the outside to run his neighborhoods, collect taxes and generally regulate offenders and interlopers.

Some law enforcement officials (aka Bill Bratton), "activists" (aka Greg Boyle, Connie Rice) and sociologists (aka James Diego Vigil, Joan Moore, et al) still have their heads firmly planted in the sand when they maintain that street gangs are "disorganized crime." Street cops and homies, the people on opposing sides of the front lines, know better. As current events continue to demonstrate, there is no longer a clear line of demarcation between Sureno street gangs and the Eme. What we have now is a near total vertical integration between the streets and the prisons. Clearly, it's not in every single barrio and every single click. There are still resisters, pecetas, greenlight clicks and assorted independents. But the tide of history is going in one direction and those who stand in its way will be steamrolled.

You've all noticed the lack of posting lately. I've been traveling and working feverishly on the Big Project. Posting will be very light until October 1. Big news to follow after that.

MEET THE NEW CZAR, SAME AS THE OLD CZAR. AGAIN.
Oh, boy. Here we go again. After a study by Connie Rice's nonprofit group, The Advancement Group, (yeah, she's cousin to the other Connie Rice that's running the State Department), our city leaders are once again dragging that tired old beast - a Gang Czar - out of the attic and hooking him (or her) up to Dr. Frankenstein's re-animation surgery table. Yeah, it's deja vu all over again.

After a very long study Rice's group came to the conclusion that gang intervention efforts (as opposed to LE gang suppression efforts) are (trumpet flourish) too scattered and totally lacking in oversight. Did we really need a study to tell us that? Back in November of 2005, Tony Cardenas came to that conclusion. And years before that during the Riordan years, any number of civil servants came to the same conclusion. They held a few meetings, threw some ideas around about a gang Czar, couldn't figure out how to appease all the special interests and then they went home. And years before that, we heard -- well, you get the drift.

So here we go again. The last time around we heard that after spending $26 million dollars on intervention, no one was able to produce a single homie who was diverted away from his neighborhood and put on the straight and narrow. That was Cardenas' conclusion.

Well, guess what? The same people who couldn't produce a single body after pounding $26 million down a rat hole will probably be brought on board to craft new ways of spending even more money. This time, however, a figurehead will be installed to take all the blame when programs fail and kids continue to drop out of school.

Here's a suggestion. Appoint Connie Rice as the gang Czar. Give her five years and all the money she asks for. If she can't show results verified by the same people that are monitoring the LAPD's consent decree, pull the plug and forget about a gang Czar forever.

CPA TAKES A HIT
Last week a CPA paid the ultimate price for his neighborhod. This could be payback for that Haskell who went down a month ago or it could be something even deeper. There's a persistent rumor that all of CPA has been greenlighted for failure to file their 1040s. More as things develop in the West SF Valley.

SCHOOL DISTRICT SMUTS UP VICTIMS.
In the aftermath of the homicide and ADW on Avenue 40 last week, the LAUSD is smutting up the victims. The simple truth is that the victims were not gang members or associates. And they weren't a tagging crew. They were just casual high school kids.

Word from the school they attended, however, tries to paint a somewhat darker picture of these kids. First, certain school reps are saying that this homicide was not racially motivated. You can sort of understand that because the school disctrict doesn't want to deal with another round of black/brown mini riots. They should have left it at that. However, they went on to suggest that somehow the victims were associated with a gang or crew. This is total nonsense. When you run for cover, the first to do is blame the victims.

BANS ARE NOW UP TO 12.
A number of IPs have been banned but certain individuals keep popping up with the same log on name but different IPs. What's happening here is that some person (or maybe more than one person) continues to make the same idiotic comments from different machines. As the comments appear, they'll be deleted and the new IPs banned. Eventually, this knucklehead, or knuckleheads, will run out of available IPs to use. Until then, just ignore the jerk(s).

43 STILL ACTIVE.
More bad news coming out of Northeast. It hasn't made the papers or other media yet, as far as I know, but there was a shooting on Avenue 40 this weekend that resulted with one dead and one wounded. The way it pieces together is that a Lincoln High football team was having a party on Ave. 40. The team is composed of Blacks and Hispanics. While the party was in progress, it's alleged that Avenue 43 homies showed up and started a beef with one of the black players. A couple of the Hispanic players came to the guy's defense. A fight broke out, a gun was produced and one Hispanic ball player was shot and killed. Another was wounded. They were both hit defending their black team mate.

You would think that with five 43s currently on trial for killing blacks the ones still on the street would try to fly low. Apparently not. More to come.

NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS FOR NEWS PEOPLE.
It appears that Avenues is once again making national news. Since the Federal hate crime case started downtown, the Avenues' ethnic cleansing policy has so far made it to the LA Times, Newsweek, got a mention on Drudge and will soon be appearing in the LA Weekly. Information has filtered into In The Hat's vast underground intel bunker that Fox News is actively looking for informed people to talk to about this case. They haven't called here, of course, but what else is new?

For the benefit of out of town, and out of country In The Hat readers who have expressed an interest in this case and have contacted me privately, here's the case in a nutshell. This will spare me the time of answering each query individually. Apparently, the Mideast isn't the only item of interest to the foreign media. So here goes.

The US Dept. of Justice unsealed an indictment last year charging five members of the Avenues gang with conspiracy to deprive blacks of their civil rights. We guess shooting and killing non gang-affiliated Blacks qualifies as depriving people of their civil rights.

The five defendants are Alejandro "Bird" Martinez, Gilbert "Lucky" Saldana, Porfirio "Dreamer" Avila, Fernando "Sneaky" Cazares and Merced "Shadow" Cambero. All except Cambero are in custody and on trial. Cambero is in the wind and a fugitive. The victims in the case are three male Blacks - Christopher Bowser, Anthony Prudhomme and Kenneth Wilson. All three were shot to death within a short time period in mid-1999. All the victims had a documented history of being harassed, assaulted and robbed by the defendants. Several witnesses who knew the victims have come forward and testified that this harassment had been going on for some time prior to the murders.

The prosecution's two main witnesses are Jessie (aka Jesse, depending on which document you read) "Listo" Diaz and Jose "Clever" De La Cruz. Both are serving a very long time on state, not Federal, charges. Diaz went away on four counts of attempted murder (not related to this case) and De La Cruz is doing time for his part in the Wilson homicide. The motivation of these two informants is to get the US Attorney to petition the State to reduce their sentences. The defense, of course, is doing its best to paint these two as untrustworthy bottom feeders who would put a case on their gandmothers to go free.

What's interesting here is the motivation. What prompted these guys in this part of town to ethnically cleanse their neighborhood of Blacks? Let's face it, that's what it is. So far, the prosecution hasn't touched that subject. It may do so further into the case.

According to the original IOs in Northeast and Hollenbeck who first investigated these cases, their belief is that Avenues and many other neighborhoods all over SOCAL have been given orders by the Brothers to broom the blacks out of the varrios. This was not a bottom up policy, but rather one that came down from on high. Shoot a black, earn a stripe. You're in up status with the carnales. That's the theory of law enforcement.

There's more than a little truth to that according to the files locked deep in Wally's Fortress of Solitude. Similar racially motivated shootings, assaults and murders have happened in Pomona, Riverside, San Bernardino, Compton, Venice, Santa Monica, San Diego and San Pedro among others. There are at least two that may go that way in the San Fernando Valley if the IOs ever get the cases solved. These are notoriously hard to solve without a confidential informant (snitch to the unitiated). And, of course, we're all familiar with the dust kicked up regularly in County, the CDC and the local high schools between Blacks and Hispanics. This is not a new phenomenon. This has been brewing for decades.

This trial is setting off some interesting issues. One is retaliation. The murder of the Marcials and Cervantes in South LA two weeks ago sounds an awful lot like payback. Like the victims in the Federal trial, these victims were non gang-affiliated. Casual people as the homies call them. And then there was the death threat made against one of the defense attorneys. There's also a lot of talk as to why the US DOJ is even prosecuting this case. Observers are asking each other what's to be gained from this, especially since all the accused are already doing lots and lots of time? One of the defense attorneys inexplicably blamed the Bush administration for filing this case. Frankly, this accusation doesn't make any sense.

If you're following current events, GWB is, if anything, pro-Latino and in favor of very liberal immigration policies. This has gotten him in trouble with his base and with other GOP politicians. Goosing the DOJ to go forward with this reflects badly on W's immigration policy. If anything, it would make more sense for W to try to sweep something like this under the rug rather than put it up in neon. If you're opposed to illegal immigration, you can use this entire Brown on Black issue as one more reason to clamp the borders shut if for no other reason than to spare the lives of innocent blacks. Granted, the accused aren't all illegal immigrants, but they could be used as a foil to demonstrate how unassimilated Hispanics are negatively impacting society's march towards color blindness, tolerance and ethno-diversity. So this defense attorney's argument is dopey and doesn't make the slightest sense.

As to why, the US DOJ is prosecuting these Avenues for hate crimes, the answer is simple. The US government is sending a clear signal to the shot callers that this has to stop. Left unchecked, ethnically mixed neighborhoods could turn into little Rwandas or the Balkans. I can't understand anyone even asking that question. Why is the government bothering? Because we're not Bosnia.

One other issue that is notable by its absence is the call for more hate crime legislation. The dragging death of James Byrd made national headlines for weeks. Black activists called for more hate crime legislation and the case even became an issue in the presidential election. Byrd's sister was used in Democratic campaign ads saying that the failure of the Republicans to endorse more hate crime legislation was like having her brother killed all over again.

The point here is that the silence of Black activists on this case, and the others I've documented, is absolutely deafening. Not one peep out of the usual suspects. No Rainbow Push, no NAACP, no Najee Ali, Earl Hutchinson, Maxine Waters, Leo Terrell or Nate Holden. You have to wonder why. If anything, the response from Black civil rights activists should be even louder. Look at the scale. The Byrd murder was an isolated act by individuals out of personal racial animosity. Once the killers went away, the danger from them was over.

These murders, on the other hand, are the result of a policy initiated by a powerful criminal organization. Even after the shooters are put away, there are hundreds, if not thousands more ready to take up where the guilty left off. This is, and will continue to be, a major social problem because the gangs and the carnales aren't going away. If anything, they're getting bigger and more violent.

So, to all the out of town and foreign readers of In The Hat, that's the story so far. Yeah, we've got a big problem here and it's about time we stop pretending it doesn't exist.

RADICAL MUSLIMS IN PRISON.
According to this article
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_sndgs04.html
the prison system is becoming a breeding ground for radical islam. The writer cites the Torrance case and makes an argument that the prisons aren't doing enough to monitor these guys because they generally don't start violence in prison. So they fly under the radar. Just curious to know what you all think.

FINE TUNING.
I thought I'd like the "southside blue" comments section (somewhat appropriate) but it turned out to be as hard to read as the Southsiders. So this morning I selected a neutral white so some people won't have to be reminded of the joint or the sixties. Anybody have problems with access or commenting, let me know.

SOME HOUSEKEEPING.

I'm not crazy about the new comments format but I'm, working on it to make it more readable. As it stands, it's tough to follow and there seems to be some sort of word limit that Haloscan imposes. I'm trying to fix that too. Adding comments to old posts has been shut down. As currently configured, the system won't allow new comments to be added to the "old" comments section. All new comments now have to go to the new comments section that lives at the top of each post. Sorry about this. I tried to keep the site as easy to navigate and accessible as possible but you know who to blame.

BLOCKING IS NOW UP
I didn't want to do this but a few knuckleheads refused to cooperate. So now Haloscan is up and working and your IP will be blocked at my discretion.

As you'll see, the comments section is now at the top of every new post. All comments starting with this post are now being run through Haloscan. That means I'll be able to see your IP and shut you out of commenting forever.

This is a big hammer and I'll use it only sparingly. I've got a lot of patience and it takes a lot to get me riled but the last few rounds of comments pushed me over the limit. You all know who the knucklehead was and we won't give him/her/it added attention by mentioning the name. In case the knucklehead doesn't get it, it works like this. You can change your logon name, but you can't change your IP as easily. For everyone else, have a great weekend.

CONNECT THE DOTS.
Today's LA TIMES carries a story on the public response to the recent assassination of three Hispanics on 49th Street in central LA last week. As you all know by now, Larry and David Marcial and Luis Cervantes were killed by two male blacks using Kalashnikov rifles. The three victims were not affiliated and the murders were dubbed as "senseless." On Saturday, the usual suspects, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Najee Ali and Jan Perry are organizing a "Black & Brown Unity Walk" on South Central Avenue and on Tuesday, they'll have an emergency "summit" of Black and Latino leaders in a coffee house in Leimert Park Village.

The Times quotes Hutchinson, "We're not saying it's [the murders] racially motivated . . . we're calling for a summit to reduce tensions." This is odd coming from a guy who said in the recent past that if Latinos instead of blacks were being assaulted in County Jail, Mayor V. would be the first to call for some kind of intervention. But we'll leave that aside for now.

As much as the LAPD and activists may deny this, the indicators are that this triple homicide was nothing if not racially motivated. Two things. First it came just as the Avenues Federal hate crime trial got under way in downtown. Coincidence? We think not. Secondly, just this past week, an attorney defending one of the Avenues members in that trial got a death threat. The big media knows about this but for some reason, hasn't seen fit to release that information. Another coincidence? You be the judge.

Even the cops suspect this but are being coy. An LAPD rep was quoted as saying that the murders were some kind of message but they don't quite know what the message is. Unfortunately we do.

Here's some wild speculation based on nothing but observation of the landscape and some history. If I were a cop, I'd start looking at the Four One Five. That's KUMI NATION to the uninitiated. The 415 is the "underground" branch of the BGF made up of members that are more hard core than the average BGF member. My gut tells me the shooters were probably not even locals. They might have been imported "talent" from out of town or out of state whose services were bought or bartered.

I hope to hell I'm wrong and that the killings were just mistaken identy or one of the extant theories. But I don't think so. They better do some real hard talking at that coffee house.

FAIR WARNING.
I've been way tolerant over the comments, but some of this shit is getting deep. Even worse, it's getting stupid. I'm trying to maintain some sort of coherent discussion of issues and until recently, with your input and contributions, the effort has been mostly successful. Lately though, the tone is getting too close to the gutter and it's starting to get old for me. If you want to comment, make an argument, vent your spleen, quote another source, or even be an outright racist, there's been plenty of latitude. You want to shout out to your neighborhood? Go ahead. My warning is just don't be stupid. I'm talking about comments that refer to the things you want to do with your genitals, other people's genitals and the various arrangements thereof. Knock it off!

In the three years I've been doing this, I've never blocked an IP address but we're getting real close to making that a policy. I know where this stuff is coming from. There are vested interests in this town, and elsewhere, that would love to see this site turned into a garbage pile. I'm not going to let that happen.

I hate sounding like a scolding schoolteacher and this will be the last time. If you can't play by some simple, common sense rules, go play someplace else. From now on, crap gets blocked. Apologies to all the commenters who do it right.

MORE ON MOCO MORRILL'S BOOK
A few posts back I made some comments about Robert "Moco Verde" Morrill's book, "The Mexican Mafia - The Story." Some readers misunderstood the point of the comments. I have no quarrel with the accuracy of the book. He's writing about first-hand experience. He was there from the beginning and lived the tale he tells. My main objection was simple grammar and his jumping around from topic to topic. The narrative is hard to follow and you need a road map and copious notes to keep track of it all. I've been informed that some valiant efforts were made to clean up the copy. So grammatically, it could have been even worse.

Despite the faults, I still think it's a worthwhile read and here's how to get a copy.
ROBERT MORRILL
P.O. Box 769337
San Antonio, TX 78245

The cost is $30.00 plus $3.00 for shipping to US and $5.00 for Canada. Write them for overseas shipping. Curiously, Inthehat gets lots of hits from overseas. A lot of Euros can't figure out what the hell goes on in our streets and they drop in. Most of what they know they get from the movies and we know how accurate that is.

As long as I'm on the subject of reading material, a great companion book (CD actually) to Moco's book is Mundo Mendoza's, "From Altar Boy to Hit Man." It's the unvarnished truth and still the best book out there about you know what. You can order a copy from copsandconvicts.com. Click on the Training Products section and you'll find the ordering process. Happy beach reading.

COMMENTS ARE BACK ON
Apparently something happened with Blogger and the comments section got turned off. In case you were having a mojo for a good rant, the comments are now back on. Contrary to some of the comments, nobody shut me down or asked me to moderate the comments. Ease up, already. This is how conspiracy theories get started. It was just a dopey computer thing.

Also for your convenience and to reduce the bandwith, Blogger will now let you add a link to your comments. That'll save you a lot of cutting and pasting and reduce the amount of scrolling. How's that for free access and free speech?

LA TIMES FINALLY WAKES UP.
After years of neglecting this story, on June 29th and July 4 the LA Times finally woke up and smelled the gunpowder rising up out of Kenny Wilson's homicide. As many of you know, I've been following this caper since it happened in 1999. Many of you also know about my failed efforts in getting this case, and similar cases in Pomona, Compton, SB, SM, SD and San Pedro out to the public. I've been pitching this story to all the usual LA media suspects and got zero takers. The closest I got to seeing the piece in print was when it was basically given to a staffer at the LA Weekly after two years of repeated attempts to that very staffer to get the Weekly to run it. I guess they don't teach ethics in J school. Note to Laurie Ochoa at the LA Weekly, Google Gilbert Saldana and Merced Cambero and see who pops up first with the earliest mention. My blog, or your paper?

And then just today, the July 4 LA Times article shows up on the Drudge Report. It's now going national. Let's see how wrong they get this story and what kind of feeding frenzy, if any, this story kicks off. For starters, the LA Times stated that Kenny Wilson was going to his apartment the night he was killed. He wasn't. Wilson lived in the IE and was in HP visiting friends. For those keeping score at home, there are a few more errors, but let's have fun seeing where they go with it.

FOR THE RECORD
Some readers have wondered if I read all the posts or any of them. I read some of them. My personal filter process is if the post starts with something like "F*ck you putos," I don't bother reading it. It's pointless. There's nothing to learn there. Also, I don't respond to questions in the comments section. If I respond to anything, I'll do it right here. So if anyone logs in as Wally or any variation of that in the comments section, trust me, it's not me. The other thing I never do is post "anonymous" comments in the comments section to either goose the conversation or slam somebody. As longtime readers have figured out, I don't slam people or get into net beefs. One last thing. I have no clue who the commenters are and I have no way of getting in touch with them. I periodically get requests from people wanting to get in touch with this or that commenter. Can't help you. I have no way of tracking and I wouldn't even if I could. If you want to get in touch with somebody, work it out in the comments section. I'm not in that loop.

On another topic, the recent incidents in Venice and SB have gotten the attention of some senior members. Nobody's seen a lista yet but there's an awful lot of "chatter" in County. Could be BS or the real thing. Let's hope it doesn't turn into a long hot summer.

WASSUP?
It's nice to know you've been missed. Despite my absence, the hits to the site continue to go up. This is puzzling and weird and it may prove that a blogger doesn't need to post a lot to keep people coming back. But unlike most blogs, this one is more than opinions and rants. It started out with the intention of providing the kind of information you weren't getting from "legit" media. And you all keep coming back for more, even if I'm not there to provide it. This tells me there's a desire for this kind of info. The question is, why won't the big media fill that yawning hole?

For instance, the LA DA's office just got a conviction on the last of eight Avenues homies in a case that has been dragging through the courts since 2001. This is the biggest Eme murder conspiracy case ever filed by the DA's office in its entire history and there hasn't been one word written about it. There have been bigger Federal cases against the Emeros but nothing this big in the state system. I can understand the big national media overlooking it, but what's the local media's excuse.? The LA Times did a huge investigative story on crooked Las Vegas politicians and judges. The paper will apparently go out of state to dig up stories but won't walk across First Street from the Times office to the CCB to cover something of local importance. Does the Times care more about Vegas than LA? You be the judge.

I'll cover some of the more interesting aspects of this case next week after the penalty phase. Stay tuned.

On another subject, I just finished reading Robert Morrill's self-published book, "The Mexican Mafia -- The Story" and I wish I could say it was a great book. It's an okay book, good for some fact mining and background information. The problem is that Morrill isn't a writer. And he's a worst typist. The book is riddled with typos, run-ons, bad punctuation and some whoppers. For instance, when he meant to say "for all intents and purposes" he says "for all intensive purposes." He uses "perspective" for "respective," and is guilty of numerous grammatical sins. Just bad. Frankly, Mundo Mendoza's book is way better written and more literate in every respect. But there's so little written about the Eme that you're missing out if you don't buy Moco Morrill's book. The stuff on the Monterey Park PD Task Force is worth the price of admission. If you're an obsessive completist like I am, you need to know this stuff.

And in case you missed it, the US Attorney unsealed an indictment in San Diego against Raul Leon and 35 others in a giant Eme RICO case. It was the culmination of a 21-month investigation into Eme operations in SD. The FBI called the operation "In The Hat." Those whacky Feds.

More later. Actually sooner than later.