RED DOGS GO "UNCENSORED"
File this one under "What the hell were they thinking?" Last week, 23 FRESNO BULLDOGS were taken into custody after they appeared in a DVD called "FRESNO UNCENSORED." In the DVD, they showed off tattoos, flashed signs, handled weapons, dissed cops, barked like dogs and showed off dope. Stuff like this doesn't look good in your parole report. On July 13, six DOGS appeared in court for a prelim to determine whether there's enough evidence to hold them for prosecution. Anybody up there ever hear of self-admission?
Saturday, July 16, 2005
HYBRID GANGSTER TO BE DEPORTED
On July 8, the Houston Chronicle ran a story about the deportation of LESTER RIVERA PAZ. He's the MARA shot-caller who escaped from a Honduran jail and hot-footed across the border to the U.S. He was caught on February 10 in Falfurrias, Texas after shooting up a busload of innocent civilians around Christmas in Chamelecon, Honduras. PAZ and his crimies executed 28 men, women and children to send a message to the Honduran government that he was stone serious and that LE should back off.
There's been discussion on this site in the past as to whether street gangsters and prison gangs could be considered terrorists. I've maintained they're not. Some disagree and they certainly have strong arguments. There was an interesting exchange in the comments section between STILLNOSCRIPT and TIJUANA JAILER. Worth reading. My point has always been that what separates a gangster from a terrorist is a political agenda and the cold-blooded taking of innocent life.
Street level thuggery like drug taxation, witness intimidation, set tripping and the rest of it is, in one way or another, connected to "business." And the business doesn't involve bringing down a government, changing government policy or taking revenge on innocents in response to political oppression, whether real or imagined.
If everything PAZ is accused of is true, this is one homie that crossed the line into political posturing and wholesale slaughter. In other words, a hybrid gangster who would logically fit into the category of terrorist. Let's hope there aren't a lot more like him out there.
On July 8, the Houston Chronicle ran a story about the deportation of LESTER RIVERA PAZ. He's the MARA shot-caller who escaped from a Honduran jail and hot-footed across the border to the U.S. He was caught on February 10 in Falfurrias, Texas after shooting up a busload of innocent civilians around Christmas in Chamelecon, Honduras. PAZ and his crimies executed 28 men, women and children to send a message to the Honduran government that he was stone serious and that LE should back off.
There's been discussion on this site in the past as to whether street gangsters and prison gangs could be considered terrorists. I've maintained they're not. Some disagree and they certainly have strong arguments. There was an interesting exchange in the comments section between STILLNOSCRIPT and TIJUANA JAILER. Worth reading. My point has always been that what separates a gangster from a terrorist is a political agenda and the cold-blooded taking of innocent life.
Street level thuggery like drug taxation, witness intimidation, set tripping and the rest of it is, in one way or another, connected to "business." And the business doesn't involve bringing down a government, changing government policy or taking revenge on innocents in response to political oppression, whether real or imagined.
If everything PAZ is accused of is true, this is one homie that crossed the line into political posturing and wholesale slaughter. In other words, a hybrid gangster who would logically fit into the category of terrorist. Let's hope there aren't a lot more like him out there.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
KILROY ACCIDENT CONFIRMED
The rumor of Kilroy's traffic accident has now been confirmed. Here's the note from a guy who has first-hand knowledge.
"Ernesto (Kilroy) Roybal is alive but not well right now. He owns a trucking business, is active in a local church, does speaking engagements with Art and others who are or have been affiliated with Victory Outreach. He was in a terrible accident and is in a trauma center and is expected to recover. Please keep himn in your thoughts and prayers as he goes through this difficult time. He is a survivor and as he would say.."with God's grace I will survive this as well."
con respecto..."
The rumor of Kilroy's traffic accident has now been confirmed. Here's the note from a guy who has first-hand knowledge.
"Ernesto (Kilroy) Roybal is alive but not well right now. He owns a trucking business, is active in a local church, does speaking engagements with Art and others who are or have been affiliated with Victory Outreach. He was in a terrible accident and is in a trauma center and is expected to recover. Please keep himn in your thoughts and prayers as he goes through this difficult time. He is a survivor and as he would say.."with God's grace I will survive this as well."
con respecto..."
Monday, July 04, 2005
TRUTH OR RUMOR?
I've now heard from two separate sources that KILROY ROYBAL was involved in a very serious car accident. I haven't been able to confirm this so it may be one of those rumors that feeds on itself. Still, it's worth finding out and either put it to rest or veerify it. If anybody out there knows "for sure" let's hear about it.
I'll be off the air for the next few days on some business but I'll be checking emails and comments frequently. Until then, celebrate safely and hang out that flag.
I've now heard from two separate sources that KILROY ROYBAL was involved in a very serious car accident. I haven't been able to confirm this so it may be one of those rumors that feeds on itself. Still, it's worth finding out and either put it to rest or veerify it. If anybody out there knows "for sure" let's hear about it.
I'll be off the air for the next few days on some business but I'll be checking emails and comments frequently. Until then, celebrate safely and hang out that flag.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
THE SUMMER OF RICO
We haven't seen this level of LE activity in ten years. First we had the big SANA bust in the OC. Following quickly on the heels of that, we've now got a RICO case on the VINELAND BOYZ. US ATTORNEY DEBRA YANG has clearly been a busy lady and the TASK FORCE has been working at what the military calls a high operational tempo.
Just before dawn on June 21, 1300 Federal and local cops brought the big fist down on 36 Vineland soldados and shot callers in North Hollywood, Sun Valley, Simi and the Antelope Valley. Most of them were arrested in their underwear or PJs.
VINELAND last made a big noise in 2003 when one of their soldiers, DAVID GARCIA, killed BURBANK police officer MATT PAVELKA. Garcia escaped to Mexico where hundreds of other suspected murderers and criminals have found a safe haven and protection under Mexico's vile judicial system. Mexico won't surrender fugitives if they face a death sentence or even LWOP in US courts.
Garcia wasn't as lucky as the rest. For reasons I still don't understand, Mexico gave up Garcia. I posted something after his arrest wondering aloud if Garcia's return was the beginning of a new Mexican policy. Apparently not. It looks like Garcia's give-up was one of those non-recurring phenomenons. Since Garcia is also named in this recent RICO indictment, chances are he'll get yanked from County and taken into Federal custody.
It doesn't take much imagination to figure out why VINELAND was targeted by the TASK FORCE. After Officer Pavelka's murder, that neighborhood got an awful lot of LE "attention." Something Vineland resented. Instead of taking their lumps and laying low, the BOYZ went on the offensive and even declared open season on LE. Bad move. A loser move. Especially since TASK FORCE headquarters is right there in the SF Valley. Vineland is in the TF's back yard.
So here we are 18 months later and VINELAND is practically no more. When you murder cops and then openly challenge them, you're just begging for it. What would have been shorter County or State time for low level beefs is now longer Federal time someplace far, far away. The Feds have the manpower and money to sustain the long-term surveilance and investigation that local cops can only dream about. Local cops clock out at the end of their shifts. Not because they want to or they're lazy. It's just impossible to get enough bodies assigned and overtime pay approved. It's a mundane matter of city budgets. The Federal Task Force on the other hand never sleeps. It's also a lot easier for the FBI to get wiretap authority than local LE. Plus they've got better security and relocation programs for CIs. All of which adds up to bad news for anyone who gets in their crosshairs. VINELAND found that out the hard way.
We haven't seen this level of LE activity in ten years. First we had the big SANA bust in the OC. Following quickly on the heels of that, we've now got a RICO case on the VINELAND BOYZ. US ATTORNEY DEBRA YANG has clearly been a busy lady and the TASK FORCE has been working at what the military calls a high operational tempo.
Just before dawn on June 21, 1300 Federal and local cops brought the big fist down on 36 Vineland soldados and shot callers in North Hollywood, Sun Valley, Simi and the Antelope Valley. Most of them were arrested in their underwear or PJs.
VINELAND last made a big noise in 2003 when one of their soldiers, DAVID GARCIA, killed BURBANK police officer MATT PAVELKA. Garcia escaped to Mexico where hundreds of other suspected murderers and criminals have found a safe haven and protection under Mexico's vile judicial system. Mexico won't surrender fugitives if they face a death sentence or even LWOP in US courts.
Garcia wasn't as lucky as the rest. For reasons I still don't understand, Mexico gave up Garcia. I posted something after his arrest wondering aloud if Garcia's return was the beginning of a new Mexican policy. Apparently not. It looks like Garcia's give-up was one of those non-recurring phenomenons. Since Garcia is also named in this recent RICO indictment, chances are he'll get yanked from County and taken into Federal custody.
It doesn't take much imagination to figure out why VINELAND was targeted by the TASK FORCE. After Officer Pavelka's murder, that neighborhood got an awful lot of LE "attention." Something Vineland resented. Instead of taking their lumps and laying low, the BOYZ went on the offensive and even declared open season on LE. Bad move. A loser move. Especially since TASK FORCE headquarters is right there in the SF Valley. Vineland is in the TF's back yard.
So here we are 18 months later and VINELAND is practically no more. When you murder cops and then openly challenge them, you're just begging for it. What would have been shorter County or State time for low level beefs is now longer Federal time someplace far, far away. The Feds have the manpower and money to sustain the long-term surveilance and investigation that local cops can only dream about. Local cops clock out at the end of their shifts. Not because they want to or they're lazy. It's just impossible to get enough bodies assigned and overtime pay approved. It's a mundane matter of city budgets. The Federal Task Force on the other hand never sleeps. It's also a lot easier for the FBI to get wiretap authority than local LE. Plus they've got better security and relocation programs for CIs. All of which adds up to bad news for anyone who gets in their crosshairs. VINELAND found that out the hard way.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
OC REGISTER OFF THE RAILS
I don't want to beat the "clueless reporter" thing to death but I was just made aware of the OC Register's story on the SANA bust. The reader who sent it to me underlined the relevant sentences. The reporters, LARRY WELBORN and RACHANEE SRISAVASDI, are talking about SANA and his past.
"Once, the repeat criminal tried to turn away from crime. In 1992, Ojeda unsuccessfully tried to broker a gang truce among local street gangs to stop a spree of drive-by killings."
I have no idea how they came to this bizarre conclusion or who they talked to, but it's clearly bogus. It will probably stand uncorrected and eventually cited as gospel by someone down the road.
On another topic, I want to send out props to everyone that comments. I've noticed the haters have either decamped to other sites or changed their confrontational manner to one that's more respectful. I'm even more gratified to hear from people in the neighborhoods and those who have been through the county and state systems. You're helping make this site what I want it to be. Namely, a place to get the straight deal without the filters.
I don't want to beat the "clueless reporter" thing to death but I was just made aware of the OC Register's story on the SANA bust. The reader who sent it to me underlined the relevant sentences. The reporters, LARRY WELBORN and RACHANEE SRISAVASDI, are talking about SANA and his past.
"Once, the repeat criminal tried to turn away from crime. In 1992, Ojeda unsuccessfully tried to broker a gang truce among local street gangs to stop a spree of drive-by killings."
I have no idea how they came to this bizarre conclusion or who they talked to, but it's clearly bogus. It will probably stand uncorrected and eventually cited as gospel by someone down the road.
On another topic, I want to send out props to everyone that comments. I've noticed the haters have either decamped to other sites or changed their confrontational manner to one that's more respectful. I'm even more gratified to hear from people in the neighborhoods and those who have been through the county and state systems. You're helping make this site what I want it to be. Namely, a place to get the straight deal without the filters.
Monday, June 20, 2005
LAT FINALLY GETS IT RIGHT
In a follow-up story to SANA's bust in OC, Sam Quinones makes a couple of startling but long overdue admissions in the LA Times. For the first time, the LAT finally cops to the fact that the famous EME gang "truce" way back in 1992 was a "ruse." Anyone familiar with the subject knows that it was never a truce. It was merely a change in the rules of engagement. The edict from Sana, Chuco and Boxer was not "no more killing." It was "no more drivebys." A big difference. If somebody needed to be checked, it was going to be up close and personal. They said as much on FBI surveilance tapes which have always been available to the public after they were used as evidence in the big RICO cases mentioned in my previous post. The Times never bothered to look.
For years after the 1992 "park meetings" the LAT has held the opinion that LE was making the violence worse by taking "peace keeping" shot callers off the streets. The Times would back up that contention by quoting the usual suspects like Malcolm Klein, Diego Vigil, Greg Boyle and more recently, Tom Hayden. Hayden, in fact, repeated the "peace keeper" myth in his book "Street Wars." And like an echo chamber, the myth was picked up from that book and repeated in other media. If the Times writers were at all familiar with the dynamics of the relationship between the Eme and the neighborhoods, they'd know that a shot caller doesn't need to be on the street to control activity. They can do it from the SHU or anywhere.
The Times has also never written about the other items on the park meeeting agenda: taxation and organizing SOCAL gangs under the Sureno flag. This piece by Quinones finally sets the record straight.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but I think this article is the first major media acknowledgement that Boxer has debriefed. I follow this stuff as closely as I can, but I don't recall ever reading about Boxer debriefing prior to this piece.
Quinones went to some savvy guys for his piece: Rich Valdemar, Leo Duarte and Al Valdez. The collective knowledge of those three is encyclopedic and anyone who has worked with them or watched them testify as gang experts knows they go deep and way back. They all get props from both sides of the street for being fair and even-handed in their assessement of crimes and criminals.
In a follow-up story to SANA's bust in OC, Sam Quinones makes a couple of startling but long overdue admissions in the LA Times. For the first time, the LAT finally cops to the fact that the famous EME gang "truce" way back in 1992 was a "ruse." Anyone familiar with the subject knows that it was never a truce. It was merely a change in the rules of engagement. The edict from Sana, Chuco and Boxer was not "no more killing." It was "no more drivebys." A big difference. If somebody needed to be checked, it was going to be up close and personal. They said as much on FBI surveilance tapes which have always been available to the public after they were used as evidence in the big RICO cases mentioned in my previous post. The Times never bothered to look.
For years after the 1992 "park meetings" the LAT has held the opinion that LE was making the violence worse by taking "peace keeping" shot callers off the streets. The Times would back up that contention by quoting the usual suspects like Malcolm Klein, Diego Vigil, Greg Boyle and more recently, Tom Hayden. Hayden, in fact, repeated the "peace keeper" myth in his book "Street Wars." And like an echo chamber, the myth was picked up from that book and repeated in other media. If the Times writers were at all familiar with the dynamics of the relationship between the Eme and the neighborhoods, they'd know that a shot caller doesn't need to be on the street to control activity. They can do it from the SHU or anywhere.
The Times has also never written about the other items on the park meeeting agenda: taxation and organizing SOCAL gangs under the Sureno flag. This piece by Quinones finally sets the record straight.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but I think this article is the first major media acknowledgement that Boxer has debriefed. I follow this stuff as closely as I can, but I don't recall ever reading about Boxer debriefing prior to this piece.
Quinones went to some savvy guys for his piece: Rich Valdemar, Leo Duarte and Al Valdez. The collective knowledge of those three is encyclopedic and anyone who has worked with them or watched them testify as gang experts knows they go deep and way back. They all get props from both sides of the street for being fair and even-handed in their assessement of crimes and criminals.
Friday, June 17, 2005
SANA BUSTED
Just when you thought that the FBI was too busy chasing terrorists in the US to worry about ORGANIZED CRIME, here they are taking out the legendary PETER "SANA" OJEDA and 23 of his alleged crimies.
On Wednesday, 300 coppers served 40 warrants after a 2-year investigation on Orange County soldiers and shot callers. Ojeda and the other 23 were charged under RICO statutes, making it the first Eme RICO prosecution in Orange County. But not the first in the state.
To us, this looks like the latest installment of an ongoing FBI campaign to rattle the Eme's and NF's cages and get shot callers off the streets. Students of history will recall that similar RICO prosecutions were initiated in NORCAL in OPERATION BLACK WIDOW against the NF. RICO prosecutions also resulted in three major EME trials in LA COUNTY, US vs. AGUIRRE, US vs. DETEVIS and US vs. MARTINEZ. The FBI never gave the LA County prosecutions a butch name. This one in Orange County was apparently called OPERATION NEMESIS.
Eme/NF watchers will also recall that all those cases were made possible by the testimony of confidential informants. OPERATION BLACK WIDOW's informant was ROBERT GRATTON. In the Aguirre case ERNIE "CHUCO" CASTRO wore a wire and rolled on his brothers. In the Detevis case, there was John Turscak who cooperated with LE. And Max Torvisco was the CI in the Martinez case. So you have wonder if there's a snitch in this case as well. There probably is. It's almost impossible to make big cases like this without a guy on the inside.
I know a little bit about SANA's history. But I know for a fact one or more of you readers out there know a lot more than I do. Let's hear about it. This bust is a significant event in Eme history. And now is the time to comment. In fact, I'll take any significant comment and put it up as a regular posting so everyone can read it without going to the comments section.
Just when you thought that the FBI was too busy chasing terrorists in the US to worry about ORGANIZED CRIME, here they are taking out the legendary PETER "SANA" OJEDA and 23 of his alleged crimies.
On Wednesday, 300 coppers served 40 warrants after a 2-year investigation on Orange County soldiers and shot callers. Ojeda and the other 23 were charged under RICO statutes, making it the first Eme RICO prosecution in Orange County. But not the first in the state.
To us, this looks like the latest installment of an ongoing FBI campaign to rattle the Eme's and NF's cages and get shot callers off the streets. Students of history will recall that similar RICO prosecutions were initiated in NORCAL in OPERATION BLACK WIDOW against the NF. RICO prosecutions also resulted in three major EME trials in LA COUNTY, US vs. AGUIRRE, US vs. DETEVIS and US vs. MARTINEZ. The FBI never gave the LA County prosecutions a butch name. This one in Orange County was apparently called OPERATION NEMESIS.
Eme/NF watchers will also recall that all those cases were made possible by the testimony of confidential informants. OPERATION BLACK WIDOW's informant was ROBERT GRATTON. In the Aguirre case ERNIE "CHUCO" CASTRO wore a wire and rolled on his brothers. In the Detevis case, there was John Turscak who cooperated with LE. And Max Torvisco was the CI in the Martinez case. So you have wonder if there's a snitch in this case as well. There probably is. It's almost impossible to make big cases like this without a guy on the inside.
I know a little bit about SANA's history. But I know for a fact one or more of you readers out there know a lot more than I do. Let's hear about it. This bust is a significant event in Eme history. And now is the time to comment. In fact, I'll take any significant comment and put it up as a regular posting so everyone can read it without going to the comments section.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
JEFF HIGH HEAD ROLLS
After three incidents of violence at Jefferson High School, school supe. Roy Romer has replaced its principal, Norm Morrow. The new principal will be Juan Flecha who will move from his current position at Eagle Rock High School. Something about this smacks of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Despite what mayor-elect Antonio V. said about Morrow ("My sense, frankly, is that things are out of control," and "I don't get the sense that anyone was in charge.") my sense is that the problems facing Jeff High and other schools are beyond the capacity of a single individual to fix. Morrow was the sacrificial lamb, a head rolled out for public consumption to create the appearance that "something" was being done. Let's off the principal and maybe the problem will go away.
If only it was that easy.
In addition to changing the principal, JHS will also get 90 (count 'em ninety) surveillance cameras, three more school cops, a new coat of paint and graffiti removed from the campus. A new high school will also open its doors in July to handle 700 students from JHS.
The simple truth is, the fights didn't break out over the lack of fresh paint or overcrowding. The problems go deep into the neighborhoods and beyond. For example, the homicide of Cabrillo HS student DEMETRIUS "BEAR" WILLIAMS in Long Beach back in February had nothing to do with the school environment. Cabrillo is a brand new, $45 million school chock full of programs. It has the highest ratio of computers to students of any major urban school on the West Coast. It's got advanced programs for media, animation and computers, a pre-engineering magnet program, a college prep magnet program, and an academy of finance and information technology. So no one gets left behind, Cabrillo also has a "recovery" program for kids falling behind to help them catch up. Plus there's dance and music, drug and gang counseling, mentoring programs and gang diversion. The Greater Long Beach National Conference for Community and Justice supports an on-campus group called Jaguars United whose purpose is to promote interaction between racial groups. They sponsor events like movie nights, peace rallies and "fishbowl" lunches where students are encouraged to socialize with members of different racial groups. All this was in place way before Williams was killed. If ever there was fertile ground for peace and harmony, Cabrillo should have been it.
Despite all these good intentions, racial tensions persist at Cabrillo. At the end of the school day, black students walk on one side of the street and Latinos on the other. Blacks go to the MacDonald's. Hispanics go to a taco stand. Racial taunts are commonplace. If anything, Williams had taken racial diversity to heart. He fathered an out-of-wedlock child. His girlfriend is a Latina. Instead of bridging the racial divide, his relationship with a Latina, cops say, got some people on both sides bent the wrong way.
Williams also claimed WEST COAST CRIPS, self-admitted on an FI card. The two accused shooters, according to LBPD, are WEST SIDE LONGOS. And there we are back at the neighborhoods.
While JHS hasn't experienced a BEAR incident, it's abundantly clear that video cameras, some new paint and a new principal aren't going to solve its problems. Antonio V., Romer and city leaders should do a little more than change the window dressing.
After three incidents of violence at Jefferson High School, school supe. Roy Romer has replaced its principal, Norm Morrow. The new principal will be Juan Flecha who will move from his current position at Eagle Rock High School. Something about this smacks of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Despite what mayor-elect Antonio V. said about Morrow ("My sense, frankly, is that things are out of control," and "I don't get the sense that anyone was in charge.") my sense is that the problems facing Jeff High and other schools are beyond the capacity of a single individual to fix. Morrow was the sacrificial lamb, a head rolled out for public consumption to create the appearance that "something" was being done. Let's off the principal and maybe the problem will go away.
If only it was that easy.
In addition to changing the principal, JHS will also get 90 (count 'em ninety) surveillance cameras, three more school cops, a new coat of paint and graffiti removed from the campus. A new high school will also open its doors in July to handle 700 students from JHS.
The simple truth is, the fights didn't break out over the lack of fresh paint or overcrowding. The problems go deep into the neighborhoods and beyond. For example, the homicide of Cabrillo HS student DEMETRIUS "BEAR" WILLIAMS in Long Beach back in February had nothing to do with the school environment. Cabrillo is a brand new, $45 million school chock full of programs. It has the highest ratio of computers to students of any major urban school on the West Coast. It's got advanced programs for media, animation and computers, a pre-engineering magnet program, a college prep magnet program, and an academy of finance and information technology. So no one gets left behind, Cabrillo also has a "recovery" program for kids falling behind to help them catch up. Plus there's dance and music, drug and gang counseling, mentoring programs and gang diversion. The Greater Long Beach National Conference for Community and Justice supports an on-campus group called Jaguars United whose purpose is to promote interaction between racial groups. They sponsor events like movie nights, peace rallies and "fishbowl" lunches where students are encouraged to socialize with members of different racial groups. All this was in place way before Williams was killed. If ever there was fertile ground for peace and harmony, Cabrillo should have been it.
Despite all these good intentions, racial tensions persist at Cabrillo. At the end of the school day, black students walk on one side of the street and Latinos on the other. Blacks go to the MacDonald's. Hispanics go to a taco stand. Racial taunts are commonplace. If anything, Williams had taken racial diversity to heart. He fathered an out-of-wedlock child. His girlfriend is a Latina. Instead of bridging the racial divide, his relationship with a Latina, cops say, got some people on both sides bent the wrong way.
Williams also claimed WEST COAST CRIPS, self-admitted on an FI card. The two accused shooters, according to LBPD, are WEST SIDE LONGOS. And there we are back at the neighborhoods.
While JHS hasn't experienced a BEAR incident, it's abundantly clear that video cameras, some new paint and a new principal aren't going to solve its problems. Antonio V., Romer and city leaders should do a little more than change the window dressing.
Monday, June 13, 2005
PROSECUTOR TURN OFFS
I've been hearing talk about this ever since ROBERT BLAKE's not guilty verdict and I frankly didn't put much stock in it. It seemed too easy an answer for a case that should have gone the other way. But now I've heard from enough people from all sides of the issue that there may be some truth to it.
Here's the story. During her closing arguments, DA SHELLIE SAMUELS used the word "bullshit." Not once. Not twice. But on five separate occasions. Samuels has a reputation for getting emotional in court. Which is fine. Righteous indignation and passion works when you're making an argument. What doesn't work, according to people who were really close to the investigation, is disrespect. Using "bullshit" five times was over the top, according to people I've spoken to, and turned off the jury. Jurors don't expect prosecutors to wrestle in the gutter. They're expecting class and decorum. Samuels gave them potty mouth.
Close observers also mentioned the famous Limousine Rapists case in Long Beach. The DA on that one was BOB FOLTZ. FOLTZ essentially alienated everybody by his disrespectful antics. He pretended to fall asleep during defense cross examination. He also made a big show of doing a crossword puzzle during defense arguments. He basicaly acted like an ass.
The result was not guilty verdicts on all 23 counts. Foltz hung himself like an old salami by the dopey theatrics.
I didn't follow the Blake case closely so I can't speak with confidence about the "bullshit" prosecution. But if anybody out there can expand on it, let's hear about it.
I've been hearing talk about this ever since ROBERT BLAKE's not guilty verdict and I frankly didn't put much stock in it. It seemed too easy an answer for a case that should have gone the other way. But now I've heard from enough people from all sides of the issue that there may be some truth to it.
Here's the story. During her closing arguments, DA SHELLIE SAMUELS used the word "bullshit." Not once. Not twice. But on five separate occasions. Samuels has a reputation for getting emotional in court. Which is fine. Righteous indignation and passion works when you're making an argument. What doesn't work, according to people who were really close to the investigation, is disrespect. Using "bullshit" five times was over the top, according to people I've spoken to, and turned off the jury. Jurors don't expect prosecutors to wrestle in the gutter. They're expecting class and decorum. Samuels gave them potty mouth.
Close observers also mentioned the famous Limousine Rapists case in Long Beach. The DA on that one was BOB FOLTZ. FOLTZ essentially alienated everybody by his disrespectful antics. He pretended to fall asleep during defense cross examination. He also made a big show of doing a crossword puzzle during defense arguments. He basicaly acted like an ass.
The result was not guilty verdicts on all 23 counts. Foltz hung himself like an old salami by the dopey theatrics.
I didn't follow the Blake case closely so I can't speak with confidence about the "bullshit" prosecution. But if anybody out there can expand on it, let's hear about it.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
NORTH SOUTH BRAWL
I can't verify how much of this is true but the Monterey Herald ran a story on May 31 about a SUR vs NORTE brawl at a LAKE SAN ANTONIO campground in MONTEREY COUNTY. From the sketchy reporting, apparently a group of NORTENOS were camping when they were invaded by a large group of southsiders. A fight broke out involving some 50 people. A 17-year-old who claimed Southside was arrested for ADW and 4 others were arrested on outstanding warrants. Unknown affiliation on those four.
Nortes were wearing red and tatted up with XIV and NSC (NORTH SIDE CASTROVILLE). SURs flew blue. At least that's what the paper said.
Although no one was shot, LE found a bunch of spent shell casings on the grounds.
What's interesting is that Salinas officers from the county's JOINT GANG TASK FORCE, according to the news story, "were working in the area at the time." Coincidence? We think not. I think what that really means is that the TASK FORCE coppers had the whole area under surveillance at the time the fight broke out. Which might also mean video tapes of the event exist somewhere. And that might mean more arrests may come down once the TASK FORCE has the chance to view the tapes and make positive IDs. Just speculation, of course, but highly probable. Monterey Sheriff's just got a multi million dollar Federal grant for the task force and it seems likely surveillance gear would be high on the shopping list.
I haven't been able to verify any of this yet. So if anybody out there knows what's what, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it. But please keep the comments on an appropriately elevated level. We're not here to throw fat on the fire.
I can't verify how much of this is true but the Monterey Herald ran a story on May 31 about a SUR vs NORTE brawl at a LAKE SAN ANTONIO campground in MONTEREY COUNTY. From the sketchy reporting, apparently a group of NORTENOS were camping when they were invaded by a large group of southsiders. A fight broke out involving some 50 people. A 17-year-old who claimed Southside was arrested for ADW and 4 others were arrested on outstanding warrants. Unknown affiliation on those four.
Nortes were wearing red and tatted up with XIV and NSC (NORTH SIDE CASTROVILLE). SURs flew blue. At least that's what the paper said.
Although no one was shot, LE found a bunch of spent shell casings on the grounds.
What's interesting is that Salinas officers from the county's JOINT GANG TASK FORCE, according to the news story, "were working in the area at the time." Coincidence? We think not. I think what that really means is that the TASK FORCE coppers had the whole area under surveillance at the time the fight broke out. Which might also mean video tapes of the event exist somewhere. And that might mean more arrests may come down once the TASK FORCE has the chance to view the tapes and make positive IDs. Just speculation, of course, but highly probable. Monterey Sheriff's just got a multi million dollar Federal grant for the task force and it seems likely surveillance gear would be high on the shopping list.
I haven't been able to verify any of this yet. So if anybody out there knows what's what, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it. But please keep the comments on an appropriately elevated level. We're not here to throw fat on the fire.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
BIKE GANG GOING HOLLYWOOD
Thanks to a couple of readers on this one. In 1998, an ATF agent named WILLIAM QUEEN went undercover with the Mongols and operated behind the lines for 28 months. He went by the name of BILLY ST. JOHN. The operation ended with a bunch of indictments and prison sentences. Queen wrote a book about it, UNDER AND ALONE. You can find it on Amazon.
The book is a fast but ultimately not satifying read. He didn't go into enough detail to satisfy the truly curious mind. He didn't explore a lot of areas that I know are out there waiting for exploration. Maybe he was holding back not to screw up future or ongoing investigations. Nonetheless it's a decent enough book and worth the price.
A few readers sent word that the book got some interest from the film business. Apparently it's now official. Mel Gibson is attached to the project, as they say in the biz, and he'll play the Queen/St. John part. Queen scored a $1 million payday for the film rights. He'll also be tech consultant.
While we're always hoping for the best, the movie business has a lousy track record when they turn a "true life" story into a screen product. Especially when it involves crime. In the process of transforming a good story into a movie, the real life aspects are clipped and pruned along the way until most of them are left in the script writer's drawer. What you often see on the screen is nothing like what happened on the streets.
The most extreme example of this happened in 1992 when Edward Olmos made AMERICAN ME. As originally written, the script was an accurate history of the early days of the Eme. The story goes that even Cocoliso blessed the project because it told the truth. But when Olmos decided to make a "few changes" the reality went out the window. The scriptwriter walked away from the project. Unofficial and unpaid "advisors" (Eme dropouts) told the producer that the "changes" would piss off the carnals. Apparently artistic vision took a back seat to the truth. And people paid with their lives.
By the time the dust settled, bodies fell, Olmos was targeted for termination and the movie public was short changed. Even people who knew the real life story walked out of the movie wondering what the hell they just saw on the screen. It was a mess. As it turns out, a deadly one for the official tech advisors.
Hopefully, Gibson won't go the same way Olmos did. But in that business, anything is possible. By the time it's over, it could turn out to be "Biker Gangs from Venus Want Earth Women."
On a related topic, I heard from a pal in the movie business that Tony Scott, brother to Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Blade Runner etc.) is doing a remake of THE WANDERERS. If you young guys out there haven't seen it, rent it. It was an over the top "street gang" movie set in Manhattan. By modern standards, the gangs in that movie were as hard core as Vanilla Ice.
Scott plans on shooting it in LA and we'd love to be there for the open casting calls. Advice: don't cover up those tattoos yet. They'll need hundreds of dressed down homies. Hollywood is comin' to the 'hood so practice up on your mad dog look.
Thanks to a couple of readers on this one. In 1998, an ATF agent named WILLIAM QUEEN went undercover with the Mongols and operated behind the lines for 28 months. He went by the name of BILLY ST. JOHN. The operation ended with a bunch of indictments and prison sentences. Queen wrote a book about it, UNDER AND ALONE. You can find it on Amazon.
The book is a fast but ultimately not satifying read. He didn't go into enough detail to satisfy the truly curious mind. He didn't explore a lot of areas that I know are out there waiting for exploration. Maybe he was holding back not to screw up future or ongoing investigations. Nonetheless it's a decent enough book and worth the price.
A few readers sent word that the book got some interest from the film business. Apparently it's now official. Mel Gibson is attached to the project, as they say in the biz, and he'll play the Queen/St. John part. Queen scored a $1 million payday for the film rights. He'll also be tech consultant.
While we're always hoping for the best, the movie business has a lousy track record when they turn a "true life" story into a screen product. Especially when it involves crime. In the process of transforming a good story into a movie, the real life aspects are clipped and pruned along the way until most of them are left in the script writer's drawer. What you often see on the screen is nothing like what happened on the streets.
The most extreme example of this happened in 1992 when Edward Olmos made AMERICAN ME. As originally written, the script was an accurate history of the early days of the Eme. The story goes that even Cocoliso blessed the project because it told the truth. But when Olmos decided to make a "few changes" the reality went out the window. The scriptwriter walked away from the project. Unofficial and unpaid "advisors" (Eme dropouts) told the producer that the "changes" would piss off the carnals. Apparently artistic vision took a back seat to the truth. And people paid with their lives.
By the time the dust settled, bodies fell, Olmos was targeted for termination and the movie public was short changed. Even people who knew the real life story walked out of the movie wondering what the hell they just saw on the screen. It was a mess. As it turns out, a deadly one for the official tech advisors.
Hopefully, Gibson won't go the same way Olmos did. But in that business, anything is possible. By the time it's over, it could turn out to be "Biker Gangs from Venus Want Earth Women."
On a related topic, I heard from a pal in the movie business that Tony Scott, brother to Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Blade Runner etc.) is doing a remake of THE WANDERERS. If you young guys out there haven't seen it, rent it. It was an over the top "street gang" movie set in Manhattan. By modern standards, the gangs in that movie were as hard core as Vanilla Ice.
Scott plans on shooting it in LA and we'd love to be there for the open casting calls. Advice: don't cover up those tattoos yet. They'll need hundreds of dressed down homies. Hollywood is comin' to the 'hood so practice up on your mad dog look.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
PLEASE SHOW THIS SITE SOME RESPECT
The free exchange of opinions and observations is one of the reasons I started this site. I'm especially gratified to see that a number of the comments to the posts come from people who have come up in the neighborhoods and been through the system. For the most part, the comments are informative and provide the sort of insight that can only come from those who have been there and back. I'm grateful to people who can contribute without resorting to profanity and don't throw fat on the fire of north/south, black/brown animosity. Or for that matter, advocating any form or violence or prejudice.
I've noticed a battle going on in the comments that has no place on this site. I'm not a prude and I'll tolerate a certain amount of profanity. Especially if it's clever and used like a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. What won't happen here is hate.
If you claim a neighborhood and want to put that in your comment, go ahead. But I won't allow challenges and cyberspace mad dogging. Keep the fights off this site. There are plenty of places on the internet where you can do that. Frankly, they're boring and do nothing to further the outside world's understanding of what's what.
Please don't ruin this place for everybody else. If you've got something to say, do it the right way. Speak your mind but don't add to problem. Don't put me in the position of being a censor. There's already enough of that.
The free exchange of opinions and observations is one of the reasons I started this site. I'm especially gratified to see that a number of the comments to the posts come from people who have come up in the neighborhoods and been through the system. For the most part, the comments are informative and provide the sort of insight that can only come from those who have been there and back. I'm grateful to people who can contribute without resorting to profanity and don't throw fat on the fire of north/south, black/brown animosity. Or for that matter, advocating any form or violence or prejudice.
I've noticed a battle going on in the comments that has no place on this site. I'm not a prude and I'll tolerate a certain amount of profanity. Especially if it's clever and used like a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. What won't happen here is hate.
If you claim a neighborhood and want to put that in your comment, go ahead. But I won't allow challenges and cyberspace mad dogging. Keep the fights off this site. There are plenty of places on the internet where you can do that. Frankly, they're boring and do nothing to further the outside world's understanding of what's what.
Please don't ruin this place for everybody else. If you've got something to say, do it the right way. Speak your mind but don't add to problem. Don't put me in the position of being a censor. There's already enough of that.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, WE HAVE ANSWERS.
The email below asks an important question that resonates deeply into every neighborhood in LA. I'll answer in a very general way. I could go into specifics but I don't want to become the free information library for some LA media types that don't know how or won't do the research. Here's the question.
"Has there been a greenlight issued against so-cal blacks in the los angeles area because of a payment that has not been made to the EME after there was a purchase of narcotics? Some one was telling me that greenlights were issued at any black individual that appears to be bangin no matter their affiliation, if they look the part they are a target. I just wanted to know if this was true."
I'll take the second part of the question first. Nobody (that includes blacks, whites, asians) banging in an established neighborhood needs a greenlight to be regulated or corrected. The reader seems a little confused on terminology. Banging has nothing to do with business or politics. It's street level warfare and it could be brown vs. brown, brown vs. black, black vs. black etc. Banging is keeping your neighborhood free of incursions from rivals with no distinction made on the basis of color. It's a matter of, "This is ours, you can't be here. Period. Trespassers will be dealt with."
Neighborhoods don't issue greenlights because strictly speaking, greenlights come from shot callers. At the neighborhood level, there's always a de facto greenlight on trespassers because that's what neighborhoods do. It's understood from before you get jumped in that it's every homies' responsibility to keep out enemies.
As to the specific brown on black warfare, that depends on a number of factors and those factors vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Some neighborhoods have shot callers that are more interested in business than warfare. They'll tolerate black dope dealers as long as they pay their taxes and don't start up sets to challenge the established authority of that neighborhood. The question implies that somebody got burned on a dope deal. I'm not aware of any specific big burn but you don't have to be black to get killed over a deal gone sideways. And you don't have to be black to have your whole neighborhood greenlighted.
Other neighborhoods don't tolerate blacks of any kind. They don't care if you're a banger, a dealer or an ordinary civilian that isn't even clicked up. These neighborhoods will not allow a black dealer to set up shop even if he's willing to pay taxes. They won't even tolerate black civilians living next door or down the block. In these neighborhoods, being black is all you need to be to get harassed, driven out or even terminated. I've come across a lot of cases like that and they ain't pretty.
What often determines the racial tolerance of the neighborhood is the personal bias of the shot caller. The shot caller establishes neighborhood policy. If he doesn't like mayates, then they don't live in that neighborhood. If he's the type that puts business above race, then some allowances are made.
As a general rule, the brothers don't do business with blacks. Also as a general rule, brothers don't like blacks moving into the neighborhood because it reflects badly on them. If the neighborhood isn't pure, or nearly pure raza, it's perceived by other neighborhoods as not being in total control. It's seen as slipping. And if you're slipping in that area, you may be seen as weak in others. And weakness is a sign that your forces are standing down and maybe the fortress has some crumbling walls.
Brothers are not big proponents of diversity or multi-culturalism. They're down for the brown and we've heard that some of the brothers won't raise their hand for somebody who isn't 100% raza no matter how much work he put in.
Before signing off, here's a story that goes back to the riots. In the famous chopper footage from Florence and Normandie, DAMIAN "FOOTBALL" WILLIAMS was seen dragging a male hispanic from a car, beating him and then spray painting him. When the brothers saw that, WILLIAMS was greenlighted. Personal hard candy. I've heard he's in PC, but I wouldn't swear to it. If anybody knows for sure, I'd like to hear about it.
Some time down the road, I'll get into the brown on black high school beefs that the big media doesn't seem to know how to report.
The email below asks an important question that resonates deeply into every neighborhood in LA. I'll answer in a very general way. I could go into specifics but I don't want to become the free information library for some LA media types that don't know how or won't do the research. Here's the question.
"Has there been a greenlight issued against so-cal blacks in the los angeles area because of a payment that has not been made to the EME after there was a purchase of narcotics? Some one was telling me that greenlights were issued at any black individual that appears to be bangin no matter their affiliation, if they look the part they are a target. I just wanted to know if this was true."
I'll take the second part of the question first. Nobody (that includes blacks, whites, asians) banging in an established neighborhood needs a greenlight to be regulated or corrected. The reader seems a little confused on terminology. Banging has nothing to do with business or politics. It's street level warfare and it could be brown vs. brown, brown vs. black, black vs. black etc. Banging is keeping your neighborhood free of incursions from rivals with no distinction made on the basis of color. It's a matter of, "This is ours, you can't be here. Period. Trespassers will be dealt with."
Neighborhoods don't issue greenlights because strictly speaking, greenlights come from shot callers. At the neighborhood level, there's always a de facto greenlight on trespassers because that's what neighborhoods do. It's understood from before you get jumped in that it's every homies' responsibility to keep out enemies.
As to the specific brown on black warfare, that depends on a number of factors and those factors vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Some neighborhoods have shot callers that are more interested in business than warfare. They'll tolerate black dope dealers as long as they pay their taxes and don't start up sets to challenge the established authority of that neighborhood. The question implies that somebody got burned on a dope deal. I'm not aware of any specific big burn but you don't have to be black to get killed over a deal gone sideways. And you don't have to be black to have your whole neighborhood greenlighted.
Other neighborhoods don't tolerate blacks of any kind. They don't care if you're a banger, a dealer or an ordinary civilian that isn't even clicked up. These neighborhoods will not allow a black dealer to set up shop even if he's willing to pay taxes. They won't even tolerate black civilians living next door or down the block. In these neighborhoods, being black is all you need to be to get harassed, driven out or even terminated. I've come across a lot of cases like that and they ain't pretty.
What often determines the racial tolerance of the neighborhood is the personal bias of the shot caller. The shot caller establishes neighborhood policy. If he doesn't like mayates, then they don't live in that neighborhood. If he's the type that puts business above race, then some allowances are made.
As a general rule, the brothers don't do business with blacks. Also as a general rule, brothers don't like blacks moving into the neighborhood because it reflects badly on them. If the neighborhood isn't pure, or nearly pure raza, it's perceived by other neighborhoods as not being in total control. It's seen as slipping. And if you're slipping in that area, you may be seen as weak in others. And weakness is a sign that your forces are standing down and maybe the fortress has some crumbling walls.
Brothers are not big proponents of diversity or multi-culturalism. They're down for the brown and we've heard that some of the brothers won't raise their hand for somebody who isn't 100% raza no matter how much work he put in.
Before signing off, here's a story that goes back to the riots. In the famous chopper footage from Florence and Normandie, DAMIAN "FOOTBALL" WILLIAMS was seen dragging a male hispanic from a car, beating him and then spray painting him. When the brothers saw that, WILLIAMS was greenlighted. Personal hard candy. I've heard he's in PC, but I wouldn't swear to it. If anybody knows for sure, I'd like to hear about it.
Some time down the road, I'll get into the brown on black high school beefs that the big media doesn't seem to know how to report.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
WEAK REPORTING
Since I've been getting a lot of emails on my opinion about that CNN report, HOMICIDE IN HOLLENBECK, there's obviously some interest. Yes I did see it and frankly, I didn't think it was very good.
The problems and weird reporting illustrated in that CNN story is actually one of the reasons I started this blog. As my knowledge and understanding of LA neighborhoods grew, the more I realized that the big media way way off the mark in terms of understanding and simple factual truth. All they want is some dramatic footage of tattooed homies flashing guns, a heart-broken mom standing on the flower-laden street corner where her child was killed, a talking-head cop with some sound bites about how bad things are and a politician promising to pass some a law that'll "stop the violence." It's bullshit.
I've seen first-hand how the electronic media works. The lack of depth is staggering. One of my readers asked how come that program concentrated on EL SERENO when there's so much else going on in Hollenbeck. She was asking if somebody at CNN or LAPD had a hate on for El Sereno. The simple answer is no.
To the people who produce this kind of programming, they wouldn't know the difference between El Sereno, Blythe Street, Rancho San Pedro or a jar of Vick's. It's all the same to them.
The way they work is fast, furious and cheap. A field producer parachutes in from New York or Atlanta or Chicago and hits the ground making phone calls on the way from the airport. They work off a formula: street-wise cop, crying mom, hard core homies with tats and cuetes, a politician and, if they get lucky, a fresh dead body they can roll on as the cops are laying out the yellow tape.
That's it. If a producer can hit the required numbers, they can put the meathead "reporter" on a grimy corner for a stand-up and they can cut the whole package back home and make it look like they've "been there" and told the tale. It's pathetic really because for most news viewers, all they're ever going to learn about neighborhoods is what an out of town field producer can put together in under three days. The footage is king. The "reporting" is just the audio background noise to give your ears something to do while your eyeballs are glued to the blood, tears and footage of a cop drawing down on suspects.
There are some rare exceptions. In LA, we've got Chris Blatchford who has done some deep digging and some really good reporting. His two part story on the Mongols was terrific. But that kind of reporting is rare.
The multi-part saga that the LA DAILY NEWS did last year on gangs was a dissapointment. With that much space and all the resources the paper threw at the issue, they basically did a TV style job. They did it by the numbers. This was a case of tissue-thin TV reporting influencing the print media. Instead of aspiring to something deeper, they did a paper and ink version of the TV approach.
It's not all bad news, however. Some great stuff can come out of the most unexpected places. The single best piece ever written about THE BRAND, for instance, came out of the NEW YORKER about a year ago. And I've seen some really good documentaries on cable, most notably the one on the Latin Kings that still airs on occasion.
For the most part, don't expect the media to ever give you an accurate reflection of what's going on in the barrio or la pinta. If you want to find a nugget of gold in that mountain of slag, read and view the big media with caution. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, "They can't handle the truth."
Since I've been getting a lot of emails on my opinion about that CNN report, HOMICIDE IN HOLLENBECK, there's obviously some interest. Yes I did see it and frankly, I didn't think it was very good.
The problems and weird reporting illustrated in that CNN story is actually one of the reasons I started this blog. As my knowledge and understanding of LA neighborhoods grew, the more I realized that the big media way way off the mark in terms of understanding and simple factual truth. All they want is some dramatic footage of tattooed homies flashing guns, a heart-broken mom standing on the flower-laden street corner where her child was killed, a talking-head cop with some sound bites about how bad things are and a politician promising to pass some a law that'll "stop the violence." It's bullshit.
I've seen first-hand how the electronic media works. The lack of depth is staggering. One of my readers asked how come that program concentrated on EL SERENO when there's so much else going on in Hollenbeck. She was asking if somebody at CNN or LAPD had a hate on for El Sereno. The simple answer is no.
To the people who produce this kind of programming, they wouldn't know the difference between El Sereno, Blythe Street, Rancho San Pedro or a jar of Vick's. It's all the same to them.
The way they work is fast, furious and cheap. A field producer parachutes in from New York or Atlanta or Chicago and hits the ground making phone calls on the way from the airport. They work off a formula: street-wise cop, crying mom, hard core homies with tats and cuetes, a politician and, if they get lucky, a fresh dead body they can roll on as the cops are laying out the yellow tape.
That's it. If a producer can hit the required numbers, they can put the meathead "reporter" on a grimy corner for a stand-up and they can cut the whole package back home and make it look like they've "been there" and told the tale. It's pathetic really because for most news viewers, all they're ever going to learn about neighborhoods is what an out of town field producer can put together in under three days. The footage is king. The "reporting" is just the audio background noise to give your ears something to do while your eyeballs are glued to the blood, tears and footage of a cop drawing down on suspects.
There are some rare exceptions. In LA, we've got Chris Blatchford who has done some deep digging and some really good reporting. His two part story on the Mongols was terrific. But that kind of reporting is rare.
The multi-part saga that the LA DAILY NEWS did last year on gangs was a dissapointment. With that much space and all the resources the paper threw at the issue, they basically did a TV style job. They did it by the numbers. This was a case of tissue-thin TV reporting influencing the print media. Instead of aspiring to something deeper, they did a paper and ink version of the TV approach.
It's not all bad news, however. Some great stuff can come out of the most unexpected places. The single best piece ever written about THE BRAND, for instance, came out of the NEW YORKER about a year ago. And I've seen some really good documentaries on cable, most notably the one on the Latin Kings that still airs on occasion.
For the most part, don't expect the media to ever give you an accurate reflection of what's going on in the barrio or la pinta. If you want to find a nugget of gold in that mountain of slag, read and view the big media with caution. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, "They can't handle the truth."
Friday, April 29, 2005
CLANTONEROS IN INDIANA
I'm back!
As regular readers will see, I haven't posted for a month. I haven't lost interest. I'm running into time and scheduling crunches that have kept me on the streets and off the computer. Lots of interesting postings to come as a result.
Thanks and a big shout out to all the readers who wondered what happened to INTHEHAT. It's nice to be appreciated and I'm happy that so many people in the blog world find what I write of some use.
I just picked up on a homicide that happened in Indiana. The victim was a validated CLANTON homeboy found in the trunk of a car. I won't go into all the details, but it had to do with 400 pounds of weed and a major drug operation.
For students of the LA neighborhoods, this is a singular event. We've reported in the past on the spread of 18th Street and the MS as far away as CANADA, FLORIDA, BOSTON and lots of places in between. For the most part, these are considered newer neighborhoods that don't have really deep roots in LA and therefore the cultural and historic connection to geography is weaker. These are trans-national barrios, if you will, more fluid and able to operate far from the home office. CLANTON, on the other hand, is one of the oldest LA neighborhoods dating back to the turn of the 20th Century and traditionally hasn't strayed far from LOS.
This vic indicates that CLANTONEROS aren't staying close to home anymore. Two factors seem to be driving the expansion. One is the that shot callers that got rolled up in Federal cases are in Federal lockups all over the Midwest. That means they're recruiting and organizing right where they live. The other is pure economics. Dope is cheaper in LA and more expensive in the heartland. Moving cheap LA dope into places like Indiana can double or triple the profits. It's a proposition no dealer/tax collector/shot caller can resist. If this neighborhood continues to expand south and eastward, they may have to change the motto from "RIFAMOS POR VIDA" to "RIFAMOS POR VIDA Y'ALL."
As always, thanks for stopping by.
I'm back!
As regular readers will see, I haven't posted for a month. I haven't lost interest. I'm running into time and scheduling crunches that have kept me on the streets and off the computer. Lots of interesting postings to come as a result.
Thanks and a big shout out to all the readers who wondered what happened to INTHEHAT. It's nice to be appreciated and I'm happy that so many people in the blog world find what I write of some use.
I just picked up on a homicide that happened in Indiana. The victim was a validated CLANTON homeboy found in the trunk of a car. I won't go into all the details, but it had to do with 400 pounds of weed and a major drug operation.
For students of the LA neighborhoods, this is a singular event. We've reported in the past on the spread of 18th Street and the MS as far away as CANADA, FLORIDA, BOSTON and lots of places in between. For the most part, these are considered newer neighborhoods that don't have really deep roots in LA and therefore the cultural and historic connection to geography is weaker. These are trans-national barrios, if you will, more fluid and able to operate far from the home office. CLANTON, on the other hand, is one of the oldest LA neighborhoods dating back to the turn of the 20th Century and traditionally hasn't strayed far from LOS.
This vic indicates that CLANTONEROS aren't staying close to home anymore. Two factors seem to be driving the expansion. One is the that shot callers that got rolled up in Federal cases are in Federal lockups all over the Midwest. That means they're recruiting and organizing right where they live. The other is pure economics. Dope is cheaper in LA and more expensive in the heartland. Moving cheap LA dope into places like Indiana can double or triple the profits. It's a proposition no dealer/tax collector/shot caller can resist. If this neighborhood continues to expand south and eastward, they may have to change the motto from "RIFAMOS POR VIDA" to "RIFAMOS POR VIDA Y'ALL."
As always, thanks for stopping by.
Monday, March 28, 2005
WHERE'S THE FACT-CHECKING AT THE LA TIMES?
In today's LA TIMES (3/28/05) ANDREW BLANKSTEIN wrote a profile of ROBERT BLAKE'S defense attorney, GERALD SCHWARTZBACH. For those who didn't already know, Schwartzbach has been an activist bay-area lawyer for decades. In his piece, Blankstein mentions one of Schwartzbach's most famous cases, defending STEPHEN BINGHAM, another activist bay-area lawyer. Bingham had been accused of smuggling a gun in a tape recorder to the infamous GEORGE JACKSON who was in San Quentin's Adjustment Center at the time awaiting trial for the murder of a prison guard.
Jackson used the gun in an escape attempt and was killed by gun rail guard. Blankstein says, "Six people, including two prison guards, were killed during an escape attempt in which prisoners used the weapon." In actual fact, three prison guards were killed, not two. For the record, they were JERE GRAHAM, FRANK DELEON and PAUL KRASENES. Two other guards, BRECKENRIDGE and RUBIACO nearly bled to death and might have died if COs hadn't blasted their way into the adjustment center to rescue them. Two other inmates (KANE and LYNN) were also killed that day, but not by guards. They were two white inmates who were delivering food to the cells when Jackson pulled the ASTRA 9 mm pistol and took over the tier in the adjustment center. Jackson and his crimies killed the two inmates just because they were there and they were white.
According to the surviving witnesses of that afternoon on August 21, 1971, Jackson personally shot Graham execution style with one round to the back of the head after saying about the gun, "Let's see if this thing works." DeLeon and Krasenes died a slower, more painful death. They were first beaten, then stabbed and then their throats were cut from ear to ear. They bled out over a period of half an hour.
KANE and LYNN, the white inmates, were hogtied with bedsheets and basically slaughtered with razor blades and shanks. You would think that Jackson, described by BLANKSTEIN as "a leader of a black prison rights movement," would have had some compassion for inmates who were trapped in the same "prison industrial complex" he condemned in his books.
In the Blake case, Schwartzbach, according to Blankstein, "steered clear of the media." "The media, Schwartzbach believed, had already tried his client."
In the Bingham case, for those who remember, Schwartzbach went the other way and courted the media in the runup to the trial. A Bingham Defense Fund was set up and donations solicited through the usual channels. The Defense Fund was run by the same people that provided Bingham with a false passport, identity papers and thousands in cash when he fled the country. House parties were organized where Stephen spoke about his upcoming trial and his 13 years as a fugitive. Selected media, which is to say sympathetic media, was invited to these events. The ground was being softened. Doubts were already planted in the public's mind about Bingham's reason for hiding out in Europe for 13 years. The story for public consumption was that Bingham was afraid he'd be railroaded by a vindictive justice system for the murder of three prison guards. The friendly SF alt press went out of its way to concoct and postulate other possible scenarios for how the gun might have been smuggled to Jackson. These included wild theories that prison officials had actually given Jackson the gun in order to have an excuse to kill him. That it was all part of a larger conspiracy to break the back of the Black Panthers. Never mind the fact that Jackson and Huey Newton were at war at the time of his escape attempt and Newton got a triple bonus from Jackson's death. He gained a martyr to the cause. He got rid of a rival for control of the Party. And he now had complete control of the profits from Jackson's best-selling book, SOLEDAD BROTHER. And never mind the fact that Penny Jackson, George's sister went to the Panther headquarters in Oakland immediately after the escape attempt and railed at Vanita Anderson and the other Panthers in residence that they were responsible for the death of her brother.
Ultimately, Bingham, like Blake, was found not guilty. In both cases, however, common sense would say otherwise.
In today's LA TIMES (3/28/05) ANDREW BLANKSTEIN wrote a profile of ROBERT BLAKE'S defense attorney, GERALD SCHWARTZBACH. For those who didn't already know, Schwartzbach has been an activist bay-area lawyer for decades. In his piece, Blankstein mentions one of Schwartzbach's most famous cases, defending STEPHEN BINGHAM, another activist bay-area lawyer. Bingham had been accused of smuggling a gun in a tape recorder to the infamous GEORGE JACKSON who was in San Quentin's Adjustment Center at the time awaiting trial for the murder of a prison guard.
Jackson used the gun in an escape attempt and was killed by gun rail guard. Blankstein says, "Six people, including two prison guards, were killed during an escape attempt in which prisoners used the weapon." In actual fact, three prison guards were killed, not two. For the record, they were JERE GRAHAM, FRANK DELEON and PAUL KRASENES. Two other guards, BRECKENRIDGE and RUBIACO nearly bled to death and might have died if COs hadn't blasted their way into the adjustment center to rescue them. Two other inmates (KANE and LYNN) were also killed that day, but not by guards. They were two white inmates who were delivering food to the cells when Jackson pulled the ASTRA 9 mm pistol and took over the tier in the adjustment center. Jackson and his crimies killed the two inmates just because they were there and they were white.
According to the surviving witnesses of that afternoon on August 21, 1971, Jackson personally shot Graham execution style with one round to the back of the head after saying about the gun, "Let's see if this thing works." DeLeon and Krasenes died a slower, more painful death. They were first beaten, then stabbed and then their throats were cut from ear to ear. They bled out over a period of half an hour.
KANE and LYNN, the white inmates, were hogtied with bedsheets and basically slaughtered with razor blades and shanks. You would think that Jackson, described by BLANKSTEIN as "a leader of a black prison rights movement," would have had some compassion for inmates who were trapped in the same "prison industrial complex" he condemned in his books.
In the Blake case, Schwartzbach, according to Blankstein, "steered clear of the media." "The media, Schwartzbach believed, had already tried his client."
In the Bingham case, for those who remember, Schwartzbach went the other way and courted the media in the runup to the trial. A Bingham Defense Fund was set up and donations solicited through the usual channels. The Defense Fund was run by the same people that provided Bingham with a false passport, identity papers and thousands in cash when he fled the country. House parties were organized where Stephen spoke about his upcoming trial and his 13 years as a fugitive. Selected media, which is to say sympathetic media, was invited to these events. The ground was being softened. Doubts were already planted in the public's mind about Bingham's reason for hiding out in Europe for 13 years. The story for public consumption was that Bingham was afraid he'd be railroaded by a vindictive justice system for the murder of three prison guards. The friendly SF alt press went out of its way to concoct and postulate other possible scenarios for how the gun might have been smuggled to Jackson. These included wild theories that prison officials had actually given Jackson the gun in order to have an excuse to kill him. That it was all part of a larger conspiracy to break the back of the Black Panthers. Never mind the fact that Jackson and Huey Newton were at war at the time of his escape attempt and Newton got a triple bonus from Jackson's death. He gained a martyr to the cause. He got rid of a rival for control of the Party. And he now had complete control of the profits from Jackson's best-selling book, SOLEDAD BROTHER. And never mind the fact that Penny Jackson, George's sister went to the Panther headquarters in Oakland immediately after the escape attempt and railed at Vanita Anderson and the other Panthers in residence that they were responsible for the death of her brother.
Ultimately, Bingham, like Blake, was found not guilty. In both cases, however, common sense would say otherwise.
Friday, March 18, 2005
A BLACK EYE FOR MAJOR CRIMES
We don't usually comment on celebrity cases. Frankly, they function more as public entertainment than a criminal process whose goal is the search for the truth. As Steve Cooley and LA prosecutors are scratching their heads wondering what the hell happened to an otherwise slam dunk case, the LA TIMES this morning pointed to one possible reason for the case going south. The Times calls it the "CSI EFFECT." Thanks to shows like CSI, movies like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and countless police procedural novels, juries have become armchair sleuths. They come into cases thinking that they probably know as much as any detective or prosecutor about evidence, the law, forensics, the motivation of the defendant and, most worrisome, a large doubt about the professionalism of the police and prosecutors.
Actually, this is nothing new. It's been happening far less visibly, to the public at least, for years. One prosecutor who used to work in Compton told me years ago that it was getting harder and harder to get guilty verdicts out of juries. The problem, as he saw it, was that juries were expecting the sort of forensic magic they see on TV -- hair samples, fibers, miniscule blood spatters, anal swabs, a fingerprint lifted from an eyeball and the sort of esoteric evidence that only a fiction writer would concoct.
Reality is as lot more mundane. In most murder cases, the forensic evidence amounts to nothing more than some shell casings and bullet projectiles. Most of the time, the gun or the murder weapon is never recovered. On CSI, for instance, you've got a team of criminalists armed with everything from print kits to gas chromatographs and computer systems that recreate crime scenes in full color and 3D imaging. They have databases that would put the CIA to shame. With a few keystrokes, they can call up everything from a prior arrest to a suspect's fifth grade math test. Evidence is processed at lightning speed and they operate in a world of unlimited manpower and budgets.
The reality is that in LA it can take six months to get a ballistics report from the crime lab. Homicide investigators rarely get a single criminalist assigned to a crime scene. And in busy divisions, IOs are working from three to ten cases simultaneously and loaded down with maybe another ten cold cases. This is not to imply that the IOs in Blake's case did a less than thorough job. They pulled together everything that homicide detectives could realistically gather. It's just that the evidence did not seem to meet the jury's TV-inflated expectations.
The Blake jury's biggest obstacle seems to be that the prosecutor could not place the gun in Blake's hand. They wanted GSR (Gunshot Residue), prints on the gun, a tidy, airtight timeline, some blood spatter on Blake's clothes when he pulled the trigger -- who knows, maybe even a photo from a spy satellite that happened to be passing overhead at the time of the killing. The kind of "he's so screwed" evidence "as seen on TV." Something so compelling and irrefutable that even Courtney Love on Nembutal would have no trouble deciding guilt. Basically, this jury, and juries in other cases, left common sense at the door and were misled by their expectations of modern crime-fighting techniques. What they don't know is that the LAPD and the DA's office is woefully understaffed, under-funded and still living in the steam age in terms of high-tech gear and people required to operate it.
In the courtroom, juries have also come to expect drama and "Aha" moments, a "You can't handle the truth" tipping point where the suspect hangs himself with his own words. In real life, it doesn't happen.
For the most part, murder trials are as stimulating as an afternoon of ice fishing. Maybe less so because you can't drink beer in court.
Dumb juries aside, there's no avoiding the fact that the DA's Major Crime Unit couldn't make the case. There was some talk early on that the case should never have been filed because it was weak to begin with. But to a thoughtful observer, the case looked good enough for a filing. Besides, with the widespread public opinion that Blake did it, not filing would have made Cooley look like the weakest crime-fighter since Barney Fife. Or at least gun shy after the humiliation of the OJ case.
If the jury wasn't dazzled by the sort of evidence they see on TV, it's possible they might have been convinced by a better courtroom performer. If you can't enthrall the jury with techy evidence, maybe they'll be captivated by the person presenting the evidence. If you can't give the jury CSI, maybe you should send forth Tom Cruise.
As in any organization, the DA's office has the usual mix of colorless functionaries, political operators, bench warmers, loose canons and brilliant crime fighters. While the prosecutor in this case did an admirable job, maybe MAJOR CRIMES could have done a better casting job. To paraphrase the old saw of letting the punishment fit the crime, maybe the next time that unit gets a celebrity case, they should let the prosecutor fit the criminal.
We don't usually comment on celebrity cases. Frankly, they function more as public entertainment than a criminal process whose goal is the search for the truth. As Steve Cooley and LA prosecutors are scratching their heads wondering what the hell happened to an otherwise slam dunk case, the LA TIMES this morning pointed to one possible reason for the case going south. The Times calls it the "CSI EFFECT." Thanks to shows like CSI, movies like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and countless police procedural novels, juries have become armchair sleuths. They come into cases thinking that they probably know as much as any detective or prosecutor about evidence, the law, forensics, the motivation of the defendant and, most worrisome, a large doubt about the professionalism of the police and prosecutors.
Actually, this is nothing new. It's been happening far less visibly, to the public at least, for years. One prosecutor who used to work in Compton told me years ago that it was getting harder and harder to get guilty verdicts out of juries. The problem, as he saw it, was that juries were expecting the sort of forensic magic they see on TV -- hair samples, fibers, miniscule blood spatters, anal swabs, a fingerprint lifted from an eyeball and the sort of esoteric evidence that only a fiction writer would concoct.
Reality is as lot more mundane. In most murder cases, the forensic evidence amounts to nothing more than some shell casings and bullet projectiles. Most of the time, the gun or the murder weapon is never recovered. On CSI, for instance, you've got a team of criminalists armed with everything from print kits to gas chromatographs and computer systems that recreate crime scenes in full color and 3D imaging. They have databases that would put the CIA to shame. With a few keystrokes, they can call up everything from a prior arrest to a suspect's fifth grade math test. Evidence is processed at lightning speed and they operate in a world of unlimited manpower and budgets.
The reality is that in LA it can take six months to get a ballistics report from the crime lab. Homicide investigators rarely get a single criminalist assigned to a crime scene. And in busy divisions, IOs are working from three to ten cases simultaneously and loaded down with maybe another ten cold cases. This is not to imply that the IOs in Blake's case did a less than thorough job. They pulled together everything that homicide detectives could realistically gather. It's just that the evidence did not seem to meet the jury's TV-inflated expectations.
The Blake jury's biggest obstacle seems to be that the prosecutor could not place the gun in Blake's hand. They wanted GSR (Gunshot Residue), prints on the gun, a tidy, airtight timeline, some blood spatter on Blake's clothes when he pulled the trigger -- who knows, maybe even a photo from a spy satellite that happened to be passing overhead at the time of the killing. The kind of "he's so screwed" evidence "as seen on TV." Something so compelling and irrefutable that even Courtney Love on Nembutal would have no trouble deciding guilt. Basically, this jury, and juries in other cases, left common sense at the door and were misled by their expectations of modern crime-fighting techniques. What they don't know is that the LAPD and the DA's office is woefully understaffed, under-funded and still living in the steam age in terms of high-tech gear and people required to operate it.
In the courtroom, juries have also come to expect drama and "Aha" moments, a "You can't handle the truth" tipping point where the suspect hangs himself with his own words. In real life, it doesn't happen.
For the most part, murder trials are as stimulating as an afternoon of ice fishing. Maybe less so because you can't drink beer in court.
Dumb juries aside, there's no avoiding the fact that the DA's Major Crime Unit couldn't make the case. There was some talk early on that the case should never have been filed because it was weak to begin with. But to a thoughtful observer, the case looked good enough for a filing. Besides, with the widespread public opinion that Blake did it, not filing would have made Cooley look like the weakest crime-fighter since Barney Fife. Or at least gun shy after the humiliation of the OJ case.
If the jury wasn't dazzled by the sort of evidence they see on TV, it's possible they might have been convinced by a better courtroom performer. If you can't enthrall the jury with techy evidence, maybe they'll be captivated by the person presenting the evidence. If you can't give the jury CSI, maybe you should send forth Tom Cruise.
As in any organization, the DA's office has the usual mix of colorless functionaries, political operators, bench warmers, loose canons and brilliant crime fighters. While the prosecutor in this case did an admirable job, maybe MAJOR CRIMES could have done a better casting job. To paraphrase the old saw of letting the punishment fit the crime, maybe the next time that unit gets a celebrity case, they should let the prosecutor fit the criminal.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
ARENAS GETS LWOP
We originally posted the killing of CHP officer STEINER by 16-year-old VALENTINO ARENAS, a POMONA 12th STREET wannabe when it first happened. If you recall, ARENAS was intent on making a name for himself with his neighborhood and decided that the most dramatic and direct way was to kill a cop. It was an assassination pure and simple.
This week, ARENAS was sentenced to LIFE WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE (LWOP). I was discussing this case with a reformed gangster and a retired cop, each of us musing about what can a free society do to keep teens like Arenas from getting to that point of insanity where he pulls the trigger on a cop just to impress a bunch of other teens.
We estimated that if Arenas lives to 70, each of his next 54 years in prison will cost California $36,000 for a grand total of $1.94 million to house, feed, clothe and keep healthy. I wondered what if the state had spent ten percent of that money, roughly $190,000, on him in some kind of intervention or diversion program. Could a kid like him, with a father already in prison, a caretaker aunt who had just come out of prison when the killing happened and a non-present mom, possibly be snatched out of that environment and set straight?
Oddly, it was the reformed gangster in our group who was the most pessimistic. Based on his own eperience with a terrible home environment, time in the CYA, County jail and ultimately State prison, his contention is that there's no government program that can give a kid what he needs and craves the most -- loving parents and a stable home. The most we can hope to do, he said, was the yank that kid out of the house when he was still an infant and either put him up for adoption or put him in an orphanage. That's illegal, to say the least. In a free society, I told him, you can't take kids away from parents on the basis of how they "might" be damaged by their own parents in the future. And besides, I said, there are plenty of kids in supposedly stable, well-off homes who go sideways and set off a COLUMBINE or pull off a drive-by. You yank those kids too?
The retired cop then brought up an example of something that happened in England this week.In this case, it was a 12-year-old who assaulted and raped his special ed teacher, stole her car and went on a cime spree. Like Arenas, he was sentenced to LWOP, something unheard of in England but something that they're learning to deal out. Apparently, the kid had been a professional smoker and drinker since the age of four and was encouraged to have sex by the time he was eight. By his alcoholic, drug-addicted parents.
The point that the cop went on to make was that in England, where they've got every social program known to man, where they've banned guns and the death penalty, provide free cradle to grave medical care, ultra-generous welfare allowances, free housing to the poor, and where you can't even give somebody the finger without being accused of a hate crime, even they can't seem to short-circuit the youth crime problem. Apparently, it's almost as bad there as it is in LA.
"It's the home," the ex-gangster said. "Definitely," the ex-cop said. "There's got to be a way," I said. "Yeah," the ex-gangster said. "But it would be illegal."
We originally posted the killing of CHP officer STEINER by 16-year-old VALENTINO ARENAS, a POMONA 12th STREET wannabe when it first happened. If you recall, ARENAS was intent on making a name for himself with his neighborhood and decided that the most dramatic and direct way was to kill a cop. It was an assassination pure and simple.
This week, ARENAS was sentenced to LIFE WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE (LWOP). I was discussing this case with a reformed gangster and a retired cop, each of us musing about what can a free society do to keep teens like Arenas from getting to that point of insanity where he pulls the trigger on a cop just to impress a bunch of other teens.
We estimated that if Arenas lives to 70, each of his next 54 years in prison will cost California $36,000 for a grand total of $1.94 million to house, feed, clothe and keep healthy. I wondered what if the state had spent ten percent of that money, roughly $190,000, on him in some kind of intervention or diversion program. Could a kid like him, with a father already in prison, a caretaker aunt who had just come out of prison when the killing happened and a non-present mom, possibly be snatched out of that environment and set straight?
Oddly, it was the reformed gangster in our group who was the most pessimistic. Based on his own eperience with a terrible home environment, time in the CYA, County jail and ultimately State prison, his contention is that there's no government program that can give a kid what he needs and craves the most -- loving parents and a stable home. The most we can hope to do, he said, was the yank that kid out of the house when he was still an infant and either put him up for adoption or put him in an orphanage. That's illegal, to say the least. In a free society, I told him, you can't take kids away from parents on the basis of how they "might" be damaged by their own parents in the future. And besides, I said, there are plenty of kids in supposedly stable, well-off homes who go sideways and set off a COLUMBINE or pull off a drive-by. You yank those kids too?
The retired cop then brought up an example of something that happened in England this week.In this case, it was a 12-year-old who assaulted and raped his special ed teacher, stole her car and went on a cime spree. Like Arenas, he was sentenced to LWOP, something unheard of in England but something that they're learning to deal out. Apparently, the kid had been a professional smoker and drinker since the age of four and was encouraged to have sex by the time he was eight. By his alcoholic, drug-addicted parents.
The point that the cop went on to make was that in England, where they've got every social program known to man, where they've banned guns and the death penalty, provide free cradle to grave medical care, ultra-generous welfare allowances, free housing to the poor, and where you can't even give somebody the finger without being accused of a hate crime, even they can't seem to short-circuit the youth crime problem. Apparently, it's almost as bad there as it is in LA.
"It's the home," the ex-gangster said. "Definitely," the ex-cop said. "There's got to be a way," I said. "Yeah," the ex-gangster said. "But it would be illegal."
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
CODE TALKING
The recent killing of Federal Judge Joan Lefkow's family is a story we hope will prompt the media to continue focusing on white hate groups. Right now, the suspicion is that all-purpose hater Matthew Hale somehow ordered or at least suggested that one of his crimies or followers execute Lefkow's husband and mother.
The NYT today has a story today that Hale has been communicating with people on the outside through his parents and lawyer by means of coded messages. Hale's mother is quoted as saying that the coded messages was "the dumbest thing I've ever heard of." The lawyer said that Hale's mother made the lawyer write the message down verbatim and deliver it to one of Hale's people on the outside. The message was apparently not delivered.
As a result of all this, POs have cut off Hale from communicating with his parents. Surprisingly, the ACLU has yet to raise an objection about cutting Hale off from his family.
While code comms from prison may be something new to the average citizen, the fact is, codes have been around almost as long as prisons. The range of codes run from simple hands signals, ghost writing, one time pads, Aztec writing, lip reading, imbedded writing with signifiers and variations of all those.
For instance, one of the more common codes is the simple letter that appears innocent to the untrained eye. The key to the code in the letter lies in the salutation. If the salutation for instance is "HI, HOW'S IT GOING?" the recipient knows to pick out every fifth letter. A letter that starts with "WHAT'S NEW?" indicates that every seventh letter in the body is the coded message. All this, of course, is worked out ahead of time long before the inmate lands in prison.
Also common is what cryptographers call the one time pad. Again this is worked out well ahead of time and consists of a number of code guides. Every letter in the alphabet is assigned a random number or letter. The key as to which page of the code guide to use is somewhere in the code. By going to the correct page in the guide, the recipient simply compares the random number or letter in the message to its actual meaning.
The difference between this and a letter with a salutation signifier is that it looks like a code and therefore harder to slide by the POs in charge of reviewing communications.
The most secure avenue of comms still remains legal documents. By law, POs can't open letters addressed from prisoners to their lawyers and vice versa. These are confidential. Some lawyers, as was documented in the Lynne Stewart/Blind Sheik case that recently ended, knowingly cooperate in illegal communications from prisoners to the outside. Other lawyers aren't even aware that they're being used as a conduit.
So Matt Hale's mother's contention that Hale might have been communicating in code is anything but "dumb."
The recent killing of Federal Judge Joan Lefkow's family is a story we hope will prompt the media to continue focusing on white hate groups. Right now, the suspicion is that all-purpose hater Matthew Hale somehow ordered or at least suggested that one of his crimies or followers execute Lefkow's husband and mother.
The NYT today has a story today that Hale has been communicating with people on the outside through his parents and lawyer by means of coded messages. Hale's mother is quoted as saying that the coded messages was "the dumbest thing I've ever heard of." The lawyer said that Hale's mother made the lawyer write the message down verbatim and deliver it to one of Hale's people on the outside. The message was apparently not delivered.
As a result of all this, POs have cut off Hale from communicating with his parents. Surprisingly, the ACLU has yet to raise an objection about cutting Hale off from his family.
While code comms from prison may be something new to the average citizen, the fact is, codes have been around almost as long as prisons. The range of codes run from simple hands signals, ghost writing, one time pads, Aztec writing, lip reading, imbedded writing with signifiers and variations of all those.
For instance, one of the more common codes is the simple letter that appears innocent to the untrained eye. The key to the code in the letter lies in the salutation. If the salutation for instance is "HI, HOW'S IT GOING?" the recipient knows to pick out every fifth letter. A letter that starts with "WHAT'S NEW?" indicates that every seventh letter in the body is the coded message. All this, of course, is worked out ahead of time long before the inmate lands in prison.
Also common is what cryptographers call the one time pad. Again this is worked out well ahead of time and consists of a number of code guides. Every letter in the alphabet is assigned a random number or letter. The key as to which page of the code guide to use is somewhere in the code. By going to the correct page in the guide, the recipient simply compares the random number or letter in the message to its actual meaning.
The difference between this and a letter with a salutation signifier is that it looks like a code and therefore harder to slide by the POs in charge of reviewing communications.
The most secure avenue of comms still remains legal documents. By law, POs can't open letters addressed from prisoners to their lawyers and vice versa. These are confidential. Some lawyers, as was documented in the Lynne Stewart/Blind Sheik case that recently ended, knowingly cooperate in illegal communications from prisoners to the outside. Other lawyers aren't even aware that they're being used as a conduit.
So Matt Hale's mother's contention that Hale might have been communicating in code is anything but "dumb."
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