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.

VALLEY STABBING SIGNALS WAR
You don't usually hear much going on in the SF Valley. But something's about to kick off. Last week a carload of alleged CPA homies rolled up on four alleged Haskell Streeters in broad daylight in the 20000 block of Sherman Way. Fists flew, a knife came out and one Haskell paid the ultimate price for living the life. The usually wrong media attributed the incident to rival tagging crews. Haskell apparently is moving West, and CPA is claiming more streets to the East. Result? You figure it out. Somebody ought to clamp a lid on this before it gets crazy.

"NO GUNS" FOUNDER CAUGHT WITH A GUN
In case you missed it, HECTOR MARROQUIN, the founder of a gang intervention program called NO GUNS, was arrested last week for being in possession of a firearm. As a convicted felon, he isn't allowed to have a gun. And even if he was allowed to own a gun, as head of an organization that calls itself NO GUNS, it would have looked hypocritical anyway. According to some law enforcement sources, Marroquin and his organization have long been suspected of working both sides of the street. In the interest of being fair and balanced, Hector's defenders claim that he's the victim of some kind of law enforcement vendetta to discredit him. Just prior to his arrest, Hector was tapped as an unpaid consultant to a panel of gang experts to revamp the county's largely failing gang intervention programs. The LAT ran a profile of Marroquin and his program in July of 2005. So far, the Times hasn't run anything that we could find on his arrest. Maybe we missed it.

While on the subject of guns, Sheriff Lee Baca is in the spotlight for handing out badges and concealed carry permits to a group of civilian Homeland Security "consultants" that also contributes money to the department. While no one has come right out and said this is an exchange of favors for money, it sure sounds bogus. There's been a long tradition in this state, and others, of rewarding law enforcement "supporters" with honorary titles, badges and carry permits. Rank and file coppers consider handing out "near legal looking" badges to non-sworn personnel as a slap in the face. These supporters have little or no training and they've never put in the time and sweat to become bona fide reserves. It's also a source of anger for law-abiding civilians who can't get permits because they don't have the money that grants them access to people like Baca and other top cops in a position of granting permits. As we've seen with people like Sean Penn, Robert Blake, James Caan, Howard Stern and even anti-gun Senator Dianne Feinstein, if you've got the money and the access, you too can legally defend yourself in a life-threatening situation. The rest of us, well, our skins somehow aren't as precious as those of politicians or actors.

IT'S OVER.
After a little bit of snooping, people in a position to know are claiming that the kites are saying the riots are over. At least for now. From several usually reliable sources, the start of the all the trouble was a San Fer shot caller currently in High Power waiting for his case to go to trial. It was all a pure power move to check the blacks, flex his muscle and keep tight control on the flow of dope and money into County. This was a total County thing and had little to do with homies in the state system. Which is not to say that it has nothing to do with them. Somebody, probably more than one somebody in State, is backing this shot caller's play. The move would have been a hollow threat if somebody in the State system hadn't promised to check whoever got put on the lista once they hit the state system. The message to resisters and blacks was loud and clear. Don't mess with M or you get ass-kicked and stomped.

Think of it as a strategic move to consolidate business in County into one large monopoly. Black free lancers and independents will now either have to think twice about doing business at all or just knuckle under and buy from the one source that either controls all the supply or taxes it.

I hate to drag politics into all this, but sometimes it needs pointing out. Some of the ugliest fallout of the riots came from politicians and activists. Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Najee Ali went on TV at the height of the violence and essentially accused Tony V. of being either racist or race biased. Earl said something to the effect that if Hispanic inmates were getting beaten, Tony V. would be up in arms and shouting for peace. But because the victims, were black, Tony kept quiet. This sort of comment underscores the absurdity of "ethnic" leaders and race politics. Tony V. may be a lot of things, but he ain't racist. The notion that black gangsters will obey you because you're black, or that Hispanics gangsters will somehow snap to attention because the Hispanic mayor yells at them is farcical. Maybe it hasn't dawned on Earl Ofari that some problems are beyond the power of politicians and well-intended activists to fix. Which brings us to the next item.

That $26 million a year LA pays for gang intervention and diversion is going down a big drain. All that money has apparently not been able to get one little homie to leave the life and go straight. City Councilman Tony Cardenas was reported in the Daily News saying, "We've been wasting a lot of money in this city. Because we have a lot of gang intervention and prevention programs to deal with these people and for us not to have success with one is just beyond me." Read about in the Daily News, 2/18/2006. It's a sad commentary when a guy on the city payroll comes to a realization that's been common knowledge for years to every 16-year-old with a spray can. Dude, have you checked your programs? Do you know who's running them?

WHO RUNS THE JAILS?
The public and media reaction to the jail riots finally got a dose of reality last night when I heard for the first time the magic words -- Mexican Mafia. To regular readers of this site, it's no big surprise. We know who runs the jails and the prisons. It's not the jailers. For anybody who's been in the system or is familiar with it, COs and deputies aren't much more than referees. The real power resides in the SHUs and it's about time that the rest of world starts to realize it.

There are a few simple truths that the media, politicians and social activists don't seem to get. One is that most of the "rioters" don't want to riot. But the reality is that once you're in the system, it's almost impossible to lay low and just do your program. The shot callers won't let you. When the call goes out, you either clique up and get with their program or you'll find yourself completely isolated with a target on your back for not having any heart. It's a no win situation for the "average" inmate.

The other reality most don't get is that even relocating the shot callers to Alaska isn't going to stop their influence. As long as they can make a call, pass a kite or get a letter out through an attorney, they'll continue to exert their influence. There's no getting around that. So it's laughable when you hear calls for isolating the "bad apples" (I actually heard some knucklehead use that term on TV) to reduce their influence.

And then of course, there's the call to put more deputies on the tiers. That won't work either. At least, not completely. There will never be enough deputies to keep people who want to assault or kill from doing exactly what they want.

Maybe the nuttiest response to the riots was articulated by Ramona Ripston from the ACLU. She blamed "this Congress and this President." Remember this is the same group that demanded desegregation of the prisons, a move that provides written assurance that more inmates will be killed. It's hard to know if the ACLU wants to solve the problem or make it even worse.

If there's any good that can possibly come from this is that it may make some little homie decide not to do things that could land him in jail. As bad as things may be on the street, it's nothing like th hell of being locked up.

SNITCHES, STANLEY AND REDEMPTION.
On the day that Stanley Williams will be available for viewing I'll forward my not-all-that-original theory that he'd be alive today if he had only come clean and debriefed.

Stanley defenders claim that he should have been spared because he supposedly reduced violence and saved lives. The problem with that claim is that it's purely anecdotal. There's no hard evidence to actually back that assertion.

Now let's take an example from recent history. Specifically the Metro Task Force and the debriefed dropouts that became CIs in that investigation. Thanks to CIs, in a brief period between January 1994 and April of that same year, CIs were credited with saving the lives of at least 13 people and probably a lot more. These targets were mostly other homies and carnals but there were a lot of innocent victims as well.

Here's a quick rundown. When Frankie B. was up on murder charges, a certain party put a witness to that murder in the hat. Thanks to a CI, Pomona cops swooped in and put the witness someplace safe.

When all of Big Hazard was greenlighted, every Hazard had a target on his back. The LAPD did a lot of stuff against Hazard that looked like enforcement and harrassment to the uninformed but what they were really doing was showing the flag and keeping the shooters out of the neighborhood. Lives saved? More than a few. They couldn't save them all, though.

When two El Monte Flores homies were put in the hat for suspicion of killing Joker Flores, the son-in-law of a carnal, a CI talked and the two homies were snatched off the street by El Monte PD and tucked away someplace safe.

When Night Owl Castro volunteered to hit a tax resister, a CI came forward and Castro was quickly arrested on out of state warrants.

After China Boy took one in the chest from Hazard while enforcing the tax code, four Hazards were put in the hat. A CI came forward and the four homies were "made safe" by LAPD CRASH.

Last item. The night that E.J. Olmos threw a party to celebrate the airing of a documentary on the making of American Me, a couple of brothers had gathered up weapons and soldiers and were planning a live fire exercise. A CI revealed the plan and the drive-by never happened. Lives saved? Who can say.

This is not anecdotal. This is verifiable material to which names, dates and proof can be attached. So while it's fashionable in some circles to say that Snitches belong in Ditches, it's also fairly obvious that Snitches can keep people (gangsters and civilians alike) out of ditches. The fact is that more than a few people are walking around today who owe their lives to snitches and don't even know it. Ironically, you can bet that some of those people probably have a very low opinion of snitches.

If Williams had had even a smattering of "saves" like the few mentioned above, chances are the arguments to spare him would have found more sympathy with the Gov. Hell, there probably would have been a few cops and prosecutors who would have signed affidavits testifying to his having saved lives. As it turned out, Williams decided to stay gangster to the end. He chose to be a dead martyr instead of a live snitch. It was his call.

TWO FRIENDS, TWO GANGS
I've been wanting to get to this for some time, but there wasn't enough information to get a clear picture. Recently, it got a little clearer. This incident illustrates one of the many weird dynamics of life in the hood.

On February 24, 2004, ALFRED "LIL TIGGER" SALINAS was shot and killed in front of his house. The man eventually prosecuted and convicted of the crime was FRANK "POPS" GUTTIEREZ. What makes this shooting noteworthy is that the shooter and the victim had been friends since childhood. Tragically, this isn't a unique incident.

According to court testimony, Lil Tigger was approaching his house on the night of the the 29th when he was ambushed by Pops Guttierez. Pops fired a few rounds at Lil Tigger from his car but missed. Lil Tigger ran towards his front door and Pops followed. Hearing the shots, Lil's mom came out of the house and actually got between Pops and her son. Pops continued blazing away and apparently shot and killed Lil Tigger while firing over Lil's mom's head.

With a powerful eyewitness like Lil's mom on the stand, it was pretty much a slam dunk for the prosecution. She had no trouble identifying Pops because the two kids grew up together and Pops was a regular visitor to the house. They played football together and by all accounts they were tight. But as happens often on the streets, they went separate ways. Pops went Highland Park and Lil followed his father's footsteps into Avenues and was putting in work for that neighborhood.

What Pops did was nothing less than a suicide run. It's unknown who lit the fire under Pops to take Lil out, or why, but it must have been a big fire. What a waste of two lives.

Lil Tigger's father is Tigger Salinas, a validated brother who was convicted of killing his girlfriend Sofia Gomez in 2002 after they got into a fight and she threw a beer in his face.

In another ironic twist, and something that foreshadowed his own murder, Lil Tigger got between Frankie "Stretch" Brajas and another homie in a fight at a barbecue about a year before Lil was killed. Showing a lot of heart, Lil took a bullet in the stomach protecting Stretch but wasn't able to keep Stretch from being pursued and shot in the back and killed.

CAUTION: SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE STUPIDITY.
A crank head in San Francisco tried extracting meth from his urine. In the process he spilled some solvent on himself and then lit a cigarette to ponder what to do next. The answer was get a fire extinguisher. He set himself on fire and was eventually arrested. Here's the url:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/03/BAGECG2AOV1.DTL

Apparently it is possible to extract meth from the urine of chronic user. But you need gallons of the stuff, equipment and at least half a brain. This fool was clearly missing one of those items. If the brothers find out about this you have to wonder if they'll impose a wee wee tax on top of the cell tax and commissary tax.

ANOTHER AVENUES INDICTED
We're a little late on this one. Not as late as the LA Times, however. While going through the stack of papers from the month-long travel, there was the notice that on Nov. 17 another name was added to the Federal hate crime indictment against the four AVENUES charged with terrorizing blacks in Northeast.

The new addition to the indictment is PORFIRIO AVILA. He's been accused of driving the vehicle that carried the trigger man in the Bowser murder. We don't quite get the reasoning behind this because Avila is already serving a life sentence for the Bowser hit. Maybe it's because that murder, prosecuted by the County DA, didn't have the hate crime allegation? Who knows. The way of the Feds is mysterious.

Because of this fairly late addition to the case, we're speculating that the lead USA is probably still beating the bushes looking to round up witnesses and anything that could beef up his prosecution.

Just to recap, the Avenues soldados already indicted are Gilbert Saldana (doing LWOP in CDC on an another murder beef), Merced Cambero (in the wind and probably in Mexico), Alejandro Martinez (in Fed custody) and Fernando Cazares (doing 3 years in CDC on a prior case). Another shooter in the Wilson murder (whose name we won't mention), was already convicted by the DA three years ago and is curiously absent from the Federal indictment. And yet another shooter who was never convicted or indicted on the Wilson or Bowser cases is also absent from the Federal indictment. Discuss among yourselves as to why.

Let's see, it's been almost six years since Kenny Wilson was lit up on Avenue 52 and the LA Times hasn't written one word about this. Asleep at the switch? Lazy? Not PC to write about this? Take your pick. And they wonder why their circulation is going away.

TATI TORREZ KILLED IN SUPERMAX
Thanks to an email from a reader, we just got word that MANUEL "TATI" TORREZ, a 64-year-old Emero, was killed in Florence supermax by other inmates. Torrez was serving a 160 month sentence that he picked up in the second of the big Eme Federal cases prosecuted by the US Attorney's LA office back in the late nineties.

In that case, US vs. DETEVIS et al, the USA rolled up bunch of Eme members and second tier associates. Tati apparently took a plea at the time. Some observers have speculated that Tati provided information in exchange for some sort of benefit. If he did, he must have had a lousy lawyer because 160 months for a guy in his fifties doesn't sound like much of deal.

So far, nobody has been charged with the Torrez murder. According to the local TV station in Florence, this was the first homicide to occur in that facility. But it probably won't be the last.

Over the years, a number of LEOs with a lot of experience with the Mob have speculated that sending made guys into the Federal system is like pollinating the fields. It just gives the brothers another area for recruitment. We may be seeing the first public evidence of that. LEOs have tracked Eme recruitment in the Feds for some time and have warned against putting them there in the first place.

As a commenter mentioned some time back, Torrez was tight with Bala Talamantez back in the day. Bala made it into the history books when he hooked up with George Jackson in Quentin just before Jackson made his famous escape attempt.

Just for the record, Tati was stomped on and beaten and finally one of his killers jumped off a bunk and landed both feet on Tati's chest. That's the way it happens prison style. When shanks are hard to come by, feet will do.

DON'T WALK ALONE
On October 16, a reputed Mongol member named Ronald "Sonic" Cobos was shot and killed outside The Pantry, the restaurant once owned by former mayor Dick Riordan. While Sonic claimed the Mongols, apparently he was one of those new wave recruits that didn't even own a motorcycle.

According to what was pieced together, Cobos met up with some females in a biker bar in Alhambra and went to the Pantry to eat. While there, Cobos got into a mad dog contest with a couple of Filipinos. Nothing real serious but noticeable enough that the staff threw the Filipinos out. When Cobos and the girls were done eating, they went outside. In the parking lot across the street, Cobos and his new friends were confronted by a group of ten to twelve Filipinos. Apparently the Filipinos decided to wait for Cobos and called in the cavalry to back them up. Words were exchanged and one of the Asians grabbed a piece and shot Cobos in the chest at near point blank range.

Cobos lived for three weeks on life support but was never able to talk. His status was improving but then all of a sudden, he got worse and died on November 4.

The lesson here is clear. Don't go into harm's way without backup. At the very least bring something that goes bang. You're courage may be admirable but it won't mean much when you lose. Contrary to what some posters have said about the Mongols, it's obvious they don't always travel in packs.

In the same general area of downtown, a yet to be named drug dealer paid the ultimate price last night for refusing to kick up his taxes. Sometimes macho pride can be a very bad career move.

TOOKIE AND TUONG.
No matter where you stand on the Tookie Williams execution issue, you have to marvel at the exquisite timing of another execution a half world away. Singapore, to be exact, where Nguyen Tuong Van, a convicted drug dealer is scheduled to be hanged on December 2 for smuggling just under a pound of heroin.

When it comes to crime and punishment, Singapore is medieval. You get caned and fined for spitting on the sidewalk, littering or tagging. Drug smuggling is a death penalty offense. Note to Courtney and Snoop. Stay out of Singapore. Just to provide a comparison, Tuong Van was arrested in December 2002. That figures out to three years between the crime and execution. I count good. Since 1991, Singapore has hanged 400 criminals. It also happens to have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Connection? You be the judge.

Tookie, on the other hand, has had a quarter century of appeals on his multi homicide conviction and he's been allowed to write books and have a movie made about him and, as we've heard for about the millionth time, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

It really doesn't get any more clear than this. No matter what Jesse and the Hollywood types like to say about this country, they can't say we don't bend over backwards to make sure every avenue of appeal is exhausted before the State takes a life. And there's still an outside chance Arnold may give Tookie a pass. There aren't any passes in Singapore. They hang 'em high and often. Same goes for other countries like Malaysia and Viet Nam that execute drug slangers. It's kind of ironic too that the same people like the Tom Haydens and the Mike Farrells that were rooting for the other side in Viet Nam aren't saying a word about the drug dealers in Nam waiting to be executed. Go figure.

It would be unfair to say that the authorities in Singapore are completely lacking in compassion. They're letting Tuong's mom have a few extra visits before they hang him.

THIS TIME THEY MEAN IT. NO REALLY.
One of the items I came across while going through the stack was an item in the Daily News from last month. Apparently, the City Council is resurrecting the GANG CZAR concept once again. This time, it's Councilman Tony Cardenas who is reanimating the dead beast. He wants to create a new city division to supervise and coordinate anti-gang efforts. The article wasn't really clear on how this would be done because we suspect that Cardenas himself isn't really clear on how to do it.

Back in the Dick Riordan days, the Mayor and the Council tried to come up with gang czar model and came up with nothing. First they got together to figure out what the full time gang chief would do and where the money to pay him or her and a staff would come from. Then they figured they didn't have the money and decided to make it a part time position. Then they didn't have the money for that either and they couldn't figure out how to make the czar do something that wasn't already being duplicated by any number of other city departments. Then they just packed it up and went home. No gang czar.

While there's always hope, we get the feeling this new effort will end up in the same trash can of half-baked aspirations as the earlier proposal. We've got a few ideas on how to do this, but nobody is asking.

Cardenas wants to lick the gang problem and, at the same time, save the city some money. Famous last words from Cardenas. "I'm sure that we're going to find duplication. I'm sure that we're going to find inefficiency." In government? You think?

BE BACK ON MONDAY. PROMISE.
It's been a hellacious month. Lots of traveling and launching a few projects that will be revealed in due time.

I finally landed back in town this weekend and by Monday, I should have some new posts up. First I need to catch up the emails and a bunch of news stories that have been piling up.

One thing I did notice while skimming through the various piles of mail and phone messages is the increased presence of the FBI all over the city and county. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting some kind of Federal operation. Local beefs like firearms possession are getting hit with Federal prosecutions. One example was the Black P-Stones getting hit with everything the Feds could throw at them two weeks ago. Which means long Federal time someplace far, far away.

More on Monday.

SPAM BLOCKER ACTIVATED
This site has apparently been getting a lot of spam from vile marketers posing as legitimate commenters. I know you've seen them. They say stuff like, "I like your blog. If you want to know all about [kitty litter, new car prices, Russian brides etc] here's where to go."

These are mass emails generated by computers. From now on, anyone posting will have to type in the word verification in order for your comments to appear. I know it's a pain, but it only takes a second. Hopefully, the word verification will keep these assbites from clogging up the comments section with useless crap.

Just this morning there were four "comments" from somebody trying to sell a research service. If you see comments like that, please ignore them. Don't click on them because the hits and where they come from are tracked. The more response they get, the more they'll post.

GANG WAR IN THE VALLEY
For you guys complaining that I haven't been around enough, here's my way of making it up to you. Most of this came from very reliable information and it's backed up with stories that ran in the Daily News about the dust being kicked up in the north end of San Fer, the Valley, not the gang.

The two duelling factions are Vincent Town and Columbus Street. Vincent Town is primarily a paisa set that in the recent past was happy moving rock and kicking up to the Eme shotcallers in Columbus. Apparently, the arrangement has fallen apart. There's a lot of money being made in the area and the Vincent Town wants to keep it all for themselves. According to one person on the street, "Vincent Town don't want to be a bitch anymore."

The inevitable friction has reached the boiling point in the last few weeks and bodies have fallen. The main resistance operator in VT is a previously deported Mexican National named VICTOR "OCHI" CASTRO. Ochi appears to be a slick operator and occasionally dresses up in drag to move in and out of the neighborhood undetected.

In early October, somebody took a shot at Ochi's brother Beyo and Beyo's wife. They missed Beyo but the wife was hit in the leg.

The next day, Ochie rolls up on two Columbus streeters -- Gerardo "Bad Boy" Fajardo and Deanthony "Anger" Prichard. Both are hit and Bad Boy is killed. Anger survived.

About a week later, Ochi and Beyo jack up a truck, pick up two homies and they roll right into the heart of Columbus Street territory. One of the homies takes along an AK for high caliber firepower.

As the truck rolls north on Memory Park Avenue, an Impala with Sal
Casper" Miranda and three of his homeboys is rolling south. This sets the stage for what the military usually calls a "meeting engagement." It's also a little bit like an old time jousting match. Both parties open up with everything they had.

After they pass each other with bullets flying in both directions, the truck stops and the guy with the AK continues shooting at the Impala. Casper apparently takes one in the head and another in the torso. He died at the scene. An innocent bystander some six blocks away was wounded by one of the stray AK rounds. Fortunately, she'll live.

Ten minutes later, the highjacked truck is found burning at Columbus and Tupper.

Politically, this is bad news for VT. There's no angel of the black hand looking out for them. Just the opposite. Not only did they resist the almighty tax, but did so with extreme prejudice. They took out at the very least an Associate. Which is bad enough. If Casper was a full blown brother (unknown at this time if he is or not), then the blow back is going to be severe. Regardless of his status, the fur's flying and the sky's the limit with regard to retaliation.

This story is all over the Valley right now and every little homie with his ear to the ground has heard it. So let's not beef on line about who's telling stories out of school. It's just another week of life in LA and we're just here to report the news as we hear it. The Daily News is all over this beef right now and you'll probably be seeing stories about it anyway. You're just hearing it here first.

FAILURE OF THE VICTIM SELECTION PROCESS
Four individuals tried to carjack a vehicle early Friday morning (Sept. 31) but got a big surprise. According to the LA Times, the attempt carjacking happened on the corner of Corbin and Vanowen, a quiet neighborhood way out there in the West SF Valley. Just FYI, this is CPA territory, a neighborhood that has a long, long history in the area but likes to lay low and stay out of politics.

When one of the carjackers pulled a gun on the guys inside the vehicle, one or more of the occupants fired back with their own straps. Turns out the men in the car were FBI agents doing a surveillance detail. The result was one dead carjacker and three in custody. Ooops! It's unknown at this time if the four car boosters are associated with the neighborhood or just some freelancers.

Here's a question for you LEOs out there to help fill in my trivia database. When something like this happens, does it automatically become a Federal beef or does local law enforcement take over? Both agencies obviously have jurisdiction so what's the procedure here? Just curious.

HOW TO GET "THE BOOK"
Ever since the post on Mundo Mendoza's book, I've gotten email asking how to get it. It was supposed to be on the convicts and cops website but it's not up there yet. I just got this update from the site operator and I'm passing it on.

Mundo Mendoza's CD book, "Mexican Mafia: From Altar Boy to Hitman" is available for $19.50 + $2.50 for shipping & handling. Orders can be made by sending a cashier's check or money order for $22.00 made out to Ken Whitley & Associates, PO Box 2623, Corona, CA 92878-2623. Allow 2-3 weeks for delivery. Orders can also be made through Pay Pal by going to http://www.convictsandcops.com/ under products. Web site orders will be available in a few days

Happy reading.

BOXER APPEARS ON THE BBC
A friend just sent me this from the BBC (British Boradcasting Co.) It seems they've been running a series called "I CHALLENGE" that examines individuals who have challenged authority. I'm running the whole story to save you from clicking over and maybe not being able to access it. Nothing most of us didn't already know, but it's worth a read anyway. Especially the part about retaliation on families. You might even call it rat-alietion. Bad joke, I know.

BBC September 27, 2005
As part of the "I Challenge" series looking at individuals who have challenged authority around the world, Rene Enriquez - a former leading member of the Mexican Mafia, a notorious US prison gang - tells the BBC about his experiences as a Mafioso and his decision to quit the organization.
Rene rose to the highest ranks of the Mexican Mafia In an old arrest photograph, Rene Enriquez stands defiantly, his criminal history boldly stamped across his torso.
One tattoo on his chest shouts for attention. It's a black hand, symbol of one of America's most violent gangs, the Mexican Mafia.
Rene, 43, formerly known as Boxer and once ranked as a Mexican Mafia "Godfather", is serving several life sentences for killings committed in the name of the gang.
For nearly 20 years, nothing stopped Rene in his climb from street thug to top leader in the Mexican Mafia.
He killed men and ordered hits, ran elaborate drug rings, laundered money, and mobilized thousands of Latino street gang members for battle.
Remarkably, Rene committed many of these crimes while serving a life sentence in one of America's most fearsome "Supermax" prisons using complex systems of communication and subterfuge.
But after years of this way of life, he began to question what he was doing.
"I was a leading member of the Mexican Mafia until one day, I decided that I'd had enough," he explains. "I decided to defect."

The Mexican Mafia is one of the "big five" prison gangs that turned California's criminal justice system on its head, operating with near-impunity behind bars.
California runs America's largest prison system, with more than 160,000 inmates. For years gangs controlled drug sales, extortion and other criminal networks in prisons.
US prison gangs operate with near impunity behind bars "You were immediately elevated in your position in your neighborhood once you got out of prison," says Rene, who joined the gang in his late teens.
"The girls loved you, the guys respected you and you learned a lot in the joint. It's crazy, but that's the way it is."
He says he became addicted to the violence.
"The more notches you have on your belt, the more ferocity people see you as possessing, and the greater you become."
As tough sentencing laws packed the prisons, the gangs grew larger. So they looked to the streets to increase power and profits.
California responded by confining gang leaders like Rene in harsh isolation. For 13 years he was locked down, alone, in a windowless cell with only an hour of solitary exercise in a concrete pen.
"Killing Boxer off was the hardest part. That's all I ever knew. That's who I was." But instead of being "broken", Rene deepened his commitment to the gang. He learned complex secret codes to communicate with other members and on the streets.
He adopted the gang's punishing exercise routine and plunged into study, reading hundreds of books on philosophy, leadership, modern corporations and military history.
He learned how to harness the power of fear under the most extreme conditions. But life in solitary took its toll. The gang descended into internal strife.
Exhausted, Rene says the final straw came when some members proposed widening the war against rivals by targeting their families.
"That's when I knew it was time to leave," he says. But killing "Boxer" off was the hardest part. That's all I ever knew. That's who I was".
"I was ashamed of leaving the organization, something that I've killed for, dedicated my life to. Twenty years of my adult life, and I'm walking away from it."

In gang culture, defection is the ultimate disloyalty and anyone who leaves risks being killed by other members of the gang.

"[Rene] has become their number one priority. They want him dead for what he's done," says Gang investigator Robert Marquez. To get out of the Supermax, Rene was forced to betray his comrades and reveal the gang's innermost secrets to authorities in a thorough de-briefing process.
Rene's information proved vital in prosecutions of top Mexican Mafia members, in understanding how the gang infiltrated other organizations, and manipulated the prison system's rules.
But it also put him on the gang's hit list.
"He has become their number one priority," says gang investigator Robert Marquez, of the California Department of Corrections. "If ever they get a chance, they want him dead for what he's done."
He now lives in Lancaster State Prison, a special unit north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert designed to protect gang defectors from retaliation.
He runs a prisoner outreach group to educate children about the realities of gang membership and helps the authorities increase their knowledge of the Mexican Mafia.
Rene's hopes are focused on making parole. But redemption is a daunting task, given his bloody history.

"The reality is that I believe that I will die here," he says. "I believe that I will never get out." END OF BBC STORY.

The most interesting thing to me about this article is the reference to killing people's families. Traditionally, my understanding is that's been taboo. I'm not sure if Boxer's statement ushers in a new policy or if it was just talk that never evolved into policy. There have been instances where family members were taken out, but that's been the exception rather than the rule. Thoughts anyone?

ERROR OF OMISSION
An exchange between TJ Jailer and a commenter at the bottom of the comments section in a previous had me smacking my head. I mentioned the number of reasons dropouts debrief. They were; 1) you want to work off a case, 2) you broke the rules and went in the hat, and 3) politics puts you in the hat. The head smacking was becasue I failed to mention another reason -- the change of heart. As TJ correctly pointed out, Mundo was not working off a case, he was in up status with the brothers and there weren't any weird politics brewing against him. It was purely a matter of turning his back on the life and deciding to go the other way. He's not alone in this course of action. There have been others. By failing to mention that last reason in the post, I was guilty of being incomplete. And I hate when I do that. I just want to set straight my thoughts on that issue.

MUNDO BOOK FINALLY OUT
For those of you who don't dig all the way into the comments sections, here's something you're missing. The long-awaited book by Mundo Mendoza is finally available.

The name is, or should be, familiar to a lot of you. Mundo was among the first of the big dropouts. While he wasn't there at the very beginning of the Eme in 1957, he was real close. He came to know and operated with the top echelon of the brotherhood and not only knows where all the skeletons are buried, he was responsible for putting some of them there. If the CD is anything like the original I read, it doesn't pull punches or cops out on anything.

I've seen earlier, hard-copy versions of the book and I can't understand why he never found a publisher. If Monster Cody Scott got his book published, the reluctance to publish this superior memoir is a mystery. But thanks to the new media and the internet we no longer need publishers to act as the filters for information. The days of the gatekeepers are numbered.

For anyone interested in the subject, your library is not complete without a copy of this book. If you're law enforcement, a prosecutor, an educator, journalist, crime reporter, policy maker, researcher, an interested observer or somebody still in the mix and wondering why your world looks the way it does, this CD book is essential reading.

The book is being sold through this website.
http://www.convictsandcops.com/

If you click there now, however, there's no mention of it yet but it will be up on that site sometime this week.

In the meantime, you can send an email to this address and put in your order.

sarge4444@earthlink.net

And just in case this sounds like I'm shilling for this project, my financial interest in this is precisely zero. Unless somebody decides to throw me a freebie, I'm paying full retail for my copy.

I'd like to hear some feedback after you read it and digest that mountain of information contained on the CD.

POLITICS AND PC
In today's issue of the LA TIMES (9/16) Sam Quinones writes about SNYs, internal Eme/NF politics and what could be the beginning of a new paradigm behind the walls. He touches on so many aspects of this situation that the article could be used as a jumping off platform for a month-long discussion.

The main point of the piece is that Eme/NF internal politics are creating dropouts at historic rates. It's a situation where the prison gangs are basically eating their own.

Let's look at this. There are a number of reasons why carnals and associates drop out. One is they're looking at some long time and decide to catch a break by debriefing and going into PC. The other is that they've broken some reglas and been put in the hat. The last one is the one that should have the big homies rethinking their stand about politics, personal feuds and staking a bigger claim to a pie that seems to be shrinking.

I'm a big believer in studying history. When you know what happened in the past, you might get a clue to what might happen in the future. When Chuco Castro debriefed back in the early nineties, one of the several reasons he gave was that he realized he's taken out more than a few brothers and associates that hadn't done anything wrong. But he went ahead and took care of business anyway because those were the rules. Somebody shows up on a lista and the rules say you got to do what you got to do. Chuco realized that even straight up soldiers who dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's, kicked up, played fair and followed the rules were getting put in ditches because somebody, somewhere, for some unknown reason decided they belonged there.

Chuco came to the realization that if he stayed in the mix long enough, even he could end up on somebody's list for reasons he couldn't even guess at. This is nothing new. But way back then, it was rare that somebody of his stature had to watch his back from the very people that claimed to be his closest allies.

What seems to be happening now is an acceleration of that reality among more and more soldiers. I mentioned a few posts back about the change in the power structure in County. That situation is a straight up power struggle. A "mine's bigger that yours" macho, power move that's only going to create more fault lines and fractures inside the organization. Going back to history, it's a replay on a smaller scale to the insane, self-destructive moves that Nicky Scarfo played in North Jersey. He whacked anybody and everybody, even his own blood family members in an out-of-control demonstration of raw power. The business and the personal got so mixed up in his head that the whole organization imploded from the inside. All the Feds did was find somebody in the mix afraid enough of nutcase Scarfo to tip the scales a little bit. We're seeing a lot of that right now in the Sureno Nation.

What the growth in PC yards is doing is taking away the brothers' power to project their influence beyond the SHUs. They've traditionally had the power because they had access to main yards. As more PC yards coming on line, the power to call shots dimishes. If you play that paradigm out to its logical conclusion, you'll be left with a handful of shot callers thrashing around in their SHUs, isolated from the rest of the inmate population and desperately looking for any willing homie to carry out orders.

PC or SNY yards, as Quinones alludes to, no longer have the negative connotation they used to. It used to be that solid soldiers, North or South, would rather take their chances getting stabbed up in mainline than being PC'd up with chesters, snitches and queens. That's not the case anymore. And you can't blame them. If the very people you grew up with and shed blood for can't be trusted not to turn on you on the say-so of some paranoid carnal in the SHU, then hey, PC sounds like the deal of a lifetime. Better to be a live dropout than bleeding out in a shower or choked out in your cell and not even knowing why the hell you just got hit.

Your thoughts?

A BLAST FROM THE PAST
Levar Haney Washington and Gregory Vernon Patterson, the two converts to Islam accused of plotting to set off attacks against military and Jewish targets in LA, pleaded not guilty yesterday in Santa Ana Federal court. An old name popped up in connection to Washington. His lawyer is none other than Ellen Barry. For those of you with a long memory and a mind hungry for details, you'll remember Barry as the lawyer that represented Alex "Pee Wee" Aguirre in the first of the three RICO cases back in 1996. Pee Wee, an Avenues shot caller and alleged carnal, was eventually convicted and sentenced to life. He's doing his time in Marion.

During that trial, Barry's contention that all those meetings in hotels videotaped by the LA Task Force were nothing more than paroled convicts getting together to form a support group to help them adjust to life on the outside. Some of the people taped in those meetings include Huero Shy, Randy Cowboy, informant Chuco Castro and Pee Wee. Clearly, her argument didn't convince the jury.

Alex's little brother Richie was recently mentioned in a recent LA WEEKLY article. Story poacher Christine Pelisek wrote about his murder trial but didn't stick around long enough to cover the finale. Richie and co-defendant Scott Gleason were convicted of three homicides. An appeal is likely.

MONGOLS PAY TRIBUTE?
I've been sitting on this one for a while because I couldn't verify it. But now it seems every neighborhood I've talked to seems to know about it. It's become common knowledge on the street and there's tacit verification from at least two LE sources. I'll refrain from using names but it seems that at least one brother has made a deal to lift the verde off the Mongols in exchange for a sum of money. The amount I've heard repeatedly is $30,000. Apparently, in exchange for the money, this brother is promising to not tax the Mongols in the future. It's supposed to be a one time deal to bury the hatchet.

But apparently, it's not that simple. There's another brother out there who isn't happy about this. Either because he's not seeing his share of the loot or there's some personal beef in the background that he feels hasn't been settled yet. This brother is also of the opinion that the green should only be lifted if the bikers agree to be taxed on an ongoing basis. Politics, politics.

Okay, so don't shoot the messenger. I'm just telling you what people in the neighborhoods are talking about. The story's out there and I'm just putting it on the air for comment. Don't bother flaming this blog with who has the bigger set of cojones and how down either side is for their clicka. Nobody with a lick of smarts wants to get on the bad side of either of these two warring groups. It's not about that.

PHONY FLYER OR THE REAL THING?
This flyer has been circulating in neighborhoods. Nobody's sure if it's for real, a fake, COINTELPRO or what. I've seen this on a number of web sites but I think it originated with Eric Leonard, the KFI crime guy. The number on the flyer is registered to a NOI mosque in LA and has apparently been disconnected.

Let's hope this is a big, fat fake. If not, we're in some problems in our fair city.

On another note, we're not going anywhere this weekend for a number of reasons. One, we're way too busy writing. The other is we hate crowds. And the third is we're doing our little bit to save gas. The best way to bring prices down is to create a gas surplus. And the way to do that is to just keep driving down to the essential minimum.

And hey, it didn't take me three weeks to post another item. I ain't lazy. Just effing busy. Have a great weekend. More to come tomorrow.

POWER PLAY IN COUNTY
It's nice to see the blog carrying on without much input from me. Reading the debates and discussions in the comments section is like hanging out on the street and listening to the OGs talking. No anger or harsh words. Just strong opinion backed up by experience and tempered by time.

I like the idea expressed by a commenter that this place is like buffet. You don't have to like everything on the table. But there's a lot to choose from. And you'll never go away hungry.

Here's something to munch on. I won't mention names, but some of you are plugged in enough to figure it out. It seems that the balance of power in LA County jail is being upset by a recent arrival -- a shot caller from San Fer. The guy has been kicking up dust, rearranging collection conduits and has put at least one guy we know for sure in the hat over a nothing deal. Prior to his arrival, the center of gravity was located around a couple of EasLos and Northeast brothers who seemed to run County along traditional lines -- low profile, smooth and professional. The money flowed up without too many beefs and the only people who had to watch their backs were the Mayates and tax resistors. This new arrival seems to be brooming the established order, disrespecting some solid camaradas and just throwing muscle around not because he has to but because he can. There's a rumor that a senior resident from the BAY was even sent to County on a bogus subpoena just to check this guy's play. Can't verify that one but it's out there being discussed.

All of this leads me to ponder a notion that was brought up by TJ Jailer in one of his recent comments and then remarked upon by other readers -- the notion that the brotherhood's internal politics will keep it from ever growing into the sort of organization on a par with the LCN, at one time the gold standard of criminal enterprises. There's no denying that the LCN had a great run for a long time and they made a lot of money and achieved a tremendous amount of legitimate and quasi-legitimate power and all of it without putting too many bodies in ditches.

To date, the brothers don't seem able to pull off anything remotely similar to the LCN template. A large part of that, I suspect, has to do with the inability to shake off the street gang mentality and replace it with something more structured. Basically it means that people who don't like being told what to do have to start learning to do what they're told. Which is a big obstacle for people who are essentially anti-authoritarian. To implement that sort of change will probably require a charismatic visionary. A gangster version of Mao, Che or Fidel. Okay, I'll concede that Mao, Che and Fidel are (were) gangsters but you can't deny that they got a lot of people to pull the cart in the same direction. Even if that direction was over a cliff.

The potential is there. There's a huge street organization already in place. What's lacking to push the entire enterprise to the next level is a leadership that's less concerned with back stabbing and politics and more focused on a bigger picture.

CIs, INTEL AND THE CONSENT DECREE
Today's LA TIMES ran a story about a policy change regarding use of informants by LAPD uniformed cops. The story is a little cloudy on the facts. Apparently the LAPD asked the federal monitor Michael Cherkasky for permission to let uniformed gang cops develop informants. The DOJ, Cherkasky and US District Court Judge Gary Feess gave the LAPD permission to do so.

What's not mentioned in the article is whether this permission slip will allow uniformed gang cops to pay CIs for information. The truth is, with or without permision from authorities, uniformed gang cops have never stopped using street informants. It's part of what they do as gang cops. Developing gang intelligence would be next to impossible without informants.

It's no big secret that within hours after a gang-related shooting or a homicide, gang cops usually get strong leads on the shooter(s) and the motive from contact with informants. The key to a filing is whether informants have first-hand knowledge of the incident or whether it's hearsay and thus inadmissible in court. The other obstacle is whether the informant is willing to come forward and testify in court in a case where he or she has first-hand knowledge of the crime.

The LAT article mentions that the ACLU has concerns about this "new" CI policy. The fear is that street informants or cops could put a case on a innocent party out of personal retribution or internal gang squabble. This is a genuine concern. I just witnessed a case where a CI made up a story out of whole cloth and basically framed a defendant in a murder case. It turns out the defendant was guilty anyway and eventually copped a plea in exchange for a reduced sentence. But the fact remains that the CI was lying and will probably be charged with perjury. So the danger is there. You can see where the possibility exists of an innocent guy being set up and framed not necessarily by police, but by his own crimies.

We know how slick some players can get. It's not out of the realm of possibility that three of four criminals conspire to kill somebody, agree to finger some guy they want out of the picture to clean up their books and conspire to put the case on him.

The use of CIs can cut both ways. It can make huge cases like the Aguirre and Detevis federal RICO cases but it can also take cases completely off the rails and make LE look like fools and maybe send innocent defendants to jail. Street cops may not like it, but the solution is to impose rigid guidelines, provide close supervision and evaluate the validity of information at every step of the process right up to a DA's filing. We've seen first-hand how the best intentioned investigations conducted by straight-arrow, ethical cops can go completely sideways based on believable but ultimately bad information. It's rare, or course, but all it takes is one bad case to put the entire issue back on shelf and remove a potentially valuable tool of law enforcement. The Perez case was a once in a lifetime incident and look what it do to the city. We're still paying for it.

INSANITY AT THE BORDER
While I was away, a regular reader sent me an item from the July 28 issue of the Tucson Citizen. According to the article, Police Commander Jesus Zamora of San Luis Colorado, a Mexican town just across the border from San Luis, Arizona, will "work with a local gang" in exchange for an "end to what they [the gang] say is police harassment." There are so many things wrong with this that it's tough to know where to start.

According to the Arizona cops, the gang (which goes un-named in the article) is responsible for smuggling drugs and illegal border crossers and committing at least two homicides. Police Commander Zamora's deal is nothing more than a declaration of unconditional surrender. Coming on the heels of the chaos in Nuevo Laredo, this item rates as small potatoes. But it underscores Mexico's freefall into anarchy. Last week the NY TIMES ran a very long and well-researched story on corruption south of the border that claimed the heart of the rot starts right in Vicente Fox's office. It's no surprise then that Commander Zamora, manning a lawless border outpost threw up his hands and basically said, "Whatever."

The concept of coming to some kind of detente between a criminal organization and legitimate authority is a seductive one that pops up regularly and flames out in a death spiral every time it's been tried. It doesn't work. It has never worked. It will never work. We need only to look at the track record of these misguided attempts.

Let's start with the LCN during WWII. After the NORMANDIE was torched in NEW YORK harbor, the US NAVY and the FBI made a deal with mob boss LUCKY LUCIANO. Because the Cosa Nostra controlled the docks, Lucky would make sure the troop ships and cargo heading for Europe would get loaded on time and only a tolerable level of theft would be allowed to happen. In exchange, Lucky would be released from prison at the end of the war and deported to Sicily. Bad deal.

The LCN didn't suddenly become Mother Teresa. The deal gave the LCN total control of the docks and the longshoreman's union and made a lot of wise guys wealthy beyond their dreams. The deal legitimized the LCN in the eyes of a lot of people who should have known better.

With Lucky free to operate in Sicily, he traveled to Cuba with Meyer Lansky and established cordial relations with corrupt president Fulgencio Bautista. The math is simple. LCN + corrupt Bautista = Fidel Castro. Gee, all the government wanted was to make sure the beans and bullets got to the Western front. What we got was the Russian missile crisis and 50 years of the lights going off every night at 8:00 PM in Cuba. Plus the gulags for AIDS patients and firing squads for "counter-revolutionaries."

In post-war Sicily, Mafiosi no longer worked in the shadows as they had to when Mussolini was in power. They ran for office and became mayors, governors and national representatives. LCN controlled everything, legitimate and otherwise.

Fast forward to the Neopolitan Camora in the 1970s. The big money-maker for the Camora wasn't dope. It was cigarettes. In Italy, cigarettes are a state-owned monopoly. That means the government imports and produces all the smokes. There are no private sector cigarette companies. Which means no competition and therefore, the government sets the price.

At a time when smokes sold for 40 cents a pack in the US, Italian smokers paid over a dollar for the same pack with the government tax stamp on the bottom. The Camora saw this as a golden business opportunity. They bought up entire cargo ships of US smokes and parked them 20 miles off the coast of Naples. Every afternoon at 3:00 PM, squadrons of 35-ft power boats would depart from Naples harbor and lash up next to the mother ship to load up on roughly a ton of smokes per trip.

The boats would offload at a thousand little places on the coast. The smokes were ultimately sold on street corners by little old ladies and young kids. The illegal trade cost the government millions of dollars a year in tax revenue. The Finanza (Italian customs dept.) started cracking down on the fast boats. When the Camora felt the heat, they started killing cops and launched a wave of armed robberies, hijackings, assaults and tourist attacks.

To make a very long story short, the Camora made a deal with the cops. Let us run the cigarette business unmolested and we'll stop killing cops, robbing tourists and hijacking cargo trucks. The cops said okay.

When the Corsicans, French and Sicilians found out that the Camora was running in and out of Naples without so much as a raised eyebrow, they started piggybacking heroin, hashish and weed on the cigarette shipments. Naples became a main port of entry for every illegal substance known to dope fiend. The expected spike in murder, overdoses and fat dirty bank accounts ensued. Bad deal.

In the US, we have the examples of the Gangster Disciples. That social experiment, funded with taxpayer dollars, let the Detroit gangs "police" themselves. The end result was a trip to Lybia, a pact with Qadaffi, a rocket launcher, El Rukn assassination squads, more dope on the streets and more dead bodies in alleys. Bad deal.

To a lesser extent, we had the same situation with Project Get Going here in LA. A lot of you old timers remember that one and I'll leave you all to flesh out the details in the comments section.

The historical precedents to what Commander Zamora is doing in San Luis Colorado are clear. You don't legitimize criminal orgs by making deals with them. It's bad policy that will always burn society. Deals with individuals is another story that can bear untainted fruit. But that's a whole other discussion.

BACK FROM VACATION
Before I left for the ultra-montane serenity of the Grand Tetons, I was thinking of asking a guest blogger to carry on. When I got back, I realized you all kept the chatter going at a high pitch. Awesome! I didn't realize so many wise-guys checked in. I got huge laughs from the sniping and I didn't even mind the un-PC jokes. But then again, I've got a thick skin. I did a quick tabulation and it seems like every ethnic and racial group got its turn in the barrel. So I guess that makes it fair.

For those who wondered where I went, the answer is Wyoming. We kayaked, hiked, camped out, got rained on, sunburned, hailed on in Yellowstone, bitten by a zillion bugs, went into lakes cold enough to stop your heart, drifted down the Snake River, and had close encounters with moose, elk, marmots, bison, bald eagles, otters, ospreys, grouse and hawks. And no, we didn't witness or hear about any float-bys.

The biggest crime story in the papers the week we were there involved a streaker at the Jackson Hole demolition derby. Like Mutton Bustin' and greased pig wrestling, streaking the demo derby is some kind of annual tradition. Hey, it's Wyoming. And July is the only month when they don't get snow. This year, there was "huge" controversy when one of the streakers grabbed a fire extinguisher off the firetruck that was hosing down the dirt between demo heats. A Teton County deputy sheriff and a security guard tried to wrangle the naked guy. When it looked like nude boy was getting ready to spray the cop, the copper tased him with 50,000 volts. The crowd went nuts, booed the cop and threw beer cups and trash into the arena.

The streaker was arrested and released and could face a $750 fine for indecent exposure. A lawyer in the crowd volunteered to defend the guy for free. Chances are, that'll be the biggest crime story of the year. Nothing much happens in Wyoming compared to LA. The entire state has less than 500,000 residents. And at last count, there were 1,500 inmates behind bars in the entire prison system, and that includes juvi, half way houses, honor ranches etc. Barely enough to qualify as a decent sized single neighborhood in LA.

Vice President Dick Cheney flew into town the day after we landed. He's a resident and avid fly fisherman. A fishing guide told me that local anglers get bent out of shape when the Veep goes fishing. When he's on the river, Blackhawk choppers do security sweeps and that scares the crap out of the trout, ruining everybody's fishing.

With so much land and so few people, you'd think real estate would be a buyer's market. Think again. Raw land in "desirable" locations can go for a million per acre. A modest house in downtown Jackson will run you half a million to $600,000. Right on the corner of Cache and Broadway in Jackson, Sotheby's has a real estate office where you can look at ranch property on the Snake River that goes from 5 to 10 million dollars. Kinda makes Highland Park look like a bargain.

Gotta go. There's 143 emails I need to read and a pile of mail that needs sorting.

OFF THE AIR FOR THE NEXT WEEK
There won't be any posting until August 3. Ithehat is going on vacation. Until then, stay safe and catch me up in if anything happens while we're kayaking.