Sunday, February 28, 2010

EVER EXPANDING MEXICAN SUPREMACY PARTY of LA RAZA in California

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

JOHN PEREZ, ONE MORE MEXICAN WORKING TO TURN MEXIFORNIA INTO A MEXICAN WELFARE AND PRISON TERRITORY OF NARCOMEX.

Hey, Perez is ANTONIO “TACO RUNT” VILLARAIGOSA’S COUSIN!
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latimes.com

California Assembly Speaker-elect Pérez has ties to deep pockets
The legislator, who has cultivated an image as a crusader for the marginalized and powerless, has also advocated for the powerful.
By Patrick McGreevy and Jack Dolan
February 28, 2010
Reporting from Sacramento
Supporters of incoming Assembly Speaker John Pérez say his rapid climb from rank-and-file lawmaker to one of the most powerful offices in the state is due to his intellectual prowess and unwavering commitment to the working poor.

But Pérez, a Democrat who was chosen as speaker in December and will be sworn in Monday, has something that left-leaning former labor leaders and freshman lawmakers usually lack: a financial pipeline to billionaire developers and white-shoe investors who rank among the most politically active power brokers in the state.

Forged during his years as an executive with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, those ties have helped fill his campaign coffers. They have also outraged consumer advocates. And two of his mentors from the union came under the microscope in recent political corruption investigations.

Many of Pérez's legislative efforts have been consistent with the image he has cultivated as a crusader for the marginalized and powerless. He said he's most proud of a bill that authorizes a study of foul drinking water streaming from taps in the small, poor city of Maywood in his district.

But he has also championed causes that seem directly at odds with his political persona.

In 2009, his first full year as a lawmaker, Pérez carved a lucrative exception into state law for billionaire developer Philip Anschutz. He also introduced a bill at the request of Enterprise Car Rental that would have helped boost the company's bottom line by stripping away a significant consumer protection.

Before his election to the Assembly, while a member of the Los Angeles redevelopment commission, Pérez voted to give millions in government subsidies to a giant real estate firm that contributed heavily to his union's political fund.

Pérez, 40, a cousin of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- a former Assembly speaker himself -- responded philosophically when asked about his involvement with powerful patrons.

"Exposure to people with different points of view, I hope, helps you make better decisions," he said, adding that it's impossible to help union members if their employers don't do well. "I come out of private-sector labor. There is a notion that business has to thrive."

But in the state with the most expensive legislative races in the country, there is also the reality that lawmakers who want to become leaders have to accumulate rich backers, said Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan publication that tracks political contests.

"Legislators turn to somebody who has developed a knack for tapping all the corporate interests, the big money," Quinn said. "In the Assembly, it has become a prerequisite for the speaker to be in a position to protect legislators by building a huge war chest."

Pérez was a 25-year-old labor activist when he was hired in 1995 to direct the Western states council of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents more than 200,000 Californians employed by grocery stores and in related industries. As he moved through the ranks, eventually becoming a political director and vice president, Pérez learned to press the UFCW's agenda with lawmakers and wield the considerable power of its campaign funds.

He worked closely with fellow union executive Sean Harrigan, who said he had been a Pérez mentor and who in 2000 was appointed to the board of the California Public Employees Retirement System, the world's largest pension fund.

Consumer groups and government watchdogs were shocked by what the union did next: raise more than $374,000 in political contributions from investment firms doing business with CalPERS.

"That's one step short of payola," said Doug Heller of the Santa Monica-based nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog.

Four firms targeted in an investigation into corruption in the New York state pension fund contributed to the union while Pérez was vice president. They include Markstone Capital Group, which agreed in December to pay $18 million in restitution after founder and former Chairman Elliott Broidy pleaded guilty to felony charges related to gifts and political donations to top decision-makers in New York.

In an interview, Pérez acknowledged that the union's solicitation of money from CalPERS investors while Harrigan worked in both places was awkward. But he distanced himself, saying Harrigan alone raised the money.

"In retrospect, yeah, I would have asked questions," Pérez said. "But I didn't know what business [the contributors] had with CalPERS then. I only know that now after what I've read."

The CalPERS investors donated to a union fund that contributes to ballot-measure campaigns, although not to candidates. Pérez benefited from the union's overall fundraising success, however. When he ran for the Assembly in 2008, the UFCW and its locals put $86,000 into his campaign.

Harrigan said there was nothing improper about the fundraising.

Last spring, Harrigan resigned from a separate post, on the Los Angeles Police and Fire Pension Fund board, after being questioned by authorities looking into financial firms doing business with it. No charges were filed.

Another Pérez ally from the UFCW is Dan Weinstein, a former regional political director of the labor group who recruited him to run the regional council and later helped fund his election to the Assembly. While Pérez was a local political director and Harrigan sat on the CalPERS board, Weinstein's financial firm made millions of dollars helping clients land CalPERS business. Weinstein also put $18,000 into the union's political accounts.

Weinstein and his firm later became embroiled in a probe of New York state pension fund business, agreeing to repay the fund $1 million, although Weinstein admitted no wrongdoing and has not been accused of illegal activity.

Weinstein and Pérez say they have remained friends.

"I feel horrible for all the difficulties he's found himself in," Pérez said.

Favorable votes

Harrigan was executive director of the union's regional council from 2001 through 2005. Pérez was local political director starting in 2001 and served concurrently as a regional vice president beginning in 2003, until he left the union in 2008. One of the council's most generous contributors during those years was the CIM Group, a Los Angeles real estate development firm that donated $51,000 to a UFCW political fund.

During those years, the company prospered in front of public boards that Harrigan and Pérez sat on. CIM got $280 million to invest from the state pension fund and favorable decisions from the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency while Pérez was on the agency's board of commissioners.

In December 2005, Pérez voted to allow CIM to use a $4.3-million redevelopment grant to pay off a private loan financing the firm's downtown Gas Company Lofts project. Months before the vote, CIM had given $12,000 to the UFCW's political committee.

In May 2006, Pérez voted to approve the use of public money to subsidize CIM's Reseda Theater renovation. Two months later, CIM gave his union an additional $6,000.

Pérez said there was no connection between his votes and the contributions, adding that he didn't "know that CIM was still contributing to the union while I was on the CRA board."

CIM spokesman Bill Mendel said each contribution paid for an advertisement in the souvenir book for the union's "Person of the Year" award ceremony, a donation the company made annually from 2002 to 2007.

Nothing Pérez did on the redevelopment board generated heat like his vote in 2005 to let CIM install "supergraphic" signs on Sunset Boulevard.

The previously banned billboards, which can cover an entire side of a building, outrage some residents who say they destroy the aesthetics of a neighborhood. Chris Schabel, an elected member of the Hollywood Studio District Neighborhood Council, said Pérez should have recused himself.

"If the union was receiving money" Schabel said, "he should not have voted on it."

Pérez said recusal is necessary only if a board member has personal business ties with an applicant. "I had no business with them," he said.

Three years later, Pérez rented an apartment from CIM.

In 2008, when he ran for the Assembly seat representing downtown and areas to the east and south, Pérez needed to move from Loz Feliz into the district. So he rented a 900-square-foot apartment in CIM's Gas Company Lofts -- the project he'd voted to subsidize.

"I looked at about 12 buildings downtown," hoping to find somewhere that wouldn't become a political liability, Pérez said. But, "as you can imagine, almost every building downtown has some business with" the redevelopment board. So he just chose a place he liked.

He would not say how much rent he pays, only that it's market rate and "exorbitant."

Proposals draw fire

Since his arrival in Sacramento in December 2008, several of Pérez's proposals have drawn fire from consumer advocates. One was a measure that would have made it easier for car rental companies to hold customers liable when vehicles get stolen. Under existing law, the companies must prove that the client acted recklessly in order to collect.

Pérez concedes that Enterprise wrote the bill and asked him to submit it, while noting that most lawmakers in Sacramento sponsor legislation written by private interests. "It's not uncommon," he said.

Enterprise made a $2,500 contribution to Pérez less than a month after he introduced the bill, campaign finance records show.

"We approached Mr. Pérez because he is a thoughtful and knowledgeable member, who displayed interest in the car rental industry," said Enterprise spokeswoman Laura Bryant.

Pérez said he let the bill die because, although he had submitted it at the company's request, he never liked its liability provision and was unable to negotiate more reasonable terms for consumers.

Another measure that Pérez pushed made an exception to state law that allows billionaire developer Anschutz to advertise alcohol inside Club Nokia, part of his $2.5-billion L.A. Live entertainment project.

The bill seemed dead last year, but Pérez revived it. The move surprised political observers because Pérez is openly gay and Anschutz, who lives in Denver, supported a measure to overturn Colorado laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Pérez, who received $4,600 in contributions from Anschutz's company and lobbyist, said he championed the cause to help create jobs in his district, a worthy goal even if the businessman in question is "a jerk."
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THE LA RAZA AGENDA
TAKEN FROM TRANSCRIPTS DATED 1995. MANY OF THESE LA RAZA POLITICIANS HAVE WON HIGHER OFFICES WITH THE VOTES OF ILLEGALS.
“WE WILL TAKE CONTROL OF OUR COUNTRY (U.S.) BY VOTE IF POSSIBLE AND VIOLENCE IF NECESSARY!”
Agendas of MEChA, La Raza, MALDEF, and Southwest Voter Registration Projects These are transcripts of live, recorded statements by elected U.S. politicians, college professors, and pro-illegal alien activists whose objective is to take control of our country "by vote if possible and violence if necessary!" 1. Armando Navarro, Prof. Ethnic Studies, UC Riverside at Latino Summit Response to Prop 187, UC Riverside, 1/1995
"These are the critical years for us as a Latino community. We're in a state of transition. And that transformation is called 'the browning of America'. Latinos are now becoming the majority. Because I know that time and history is on the side of the Chicano/Latino community. It is changing in the future and in the present the balance of power of this nation. It's a game - it's a game of power - who controls it. You (to MEChA students) are like the generals that command armies. We're in a state of war. This Proposition 187 is a declaration of war against the Latino/Chicano community of this country. They know the demographics. They know that history and time is on our side. As one community, as one people, as one nation within a nation as the community that we are, the Chicano/Latino community of this nation. What this means is a transfer of power. It means control."

“THE NEW LEADERSHIP OF THE AMERICAS... IS MEXICAN!”
“REMEMBER: (PROPOSITION) 187 IS THE LAST GASP OF WHITE AMERICA IN CALIFORNIA!”

2. ART TORRES
Art Torres, former CA state senator, currently Chair of California Democrat Party at UC Riverside 1/1995 "Que viva la causa! It is an honor to be with the new leadership of the Americas, here meeting at UC Riverside. So with 187 on the ballot, what is it going to take for our people to vote - to see us walking into the gas ovens? It is electoral power that is going to make the determination of where we go as a community. And power is not given to you -- you have to take it. Remember: 187 is the last gasp of white America in California. Understand that. And people say to me on the Senate floor when I was in the Senate, 'Why do you fight so hard for affirmative action programs?' And I tell my white colleagues, 'because you're going to need them.'"

“WE ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS THAT CAME FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY TO ANOTHER COUNTRY....WE ARE FREE TO TRAVEL THE LENGTH AND BREADTH OF THE AMERICAS BECAUSE WE BELONG HERE.”

3. Jose Angel Gutierrez, Prof. Univ. Texas at Arlington, founder La Raza Unida Party at UC Riverside 1/1995 "The border remains a military zone. We remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we're a new Mestizo nation. And they want us to discuss civil rights. Civil rights. What law made by white men to oppress all of us of color, female and male. This is our homeland. We cannot - we will not- and we must not be made illegal in our own homeland. We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country. We are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It's a matter of time. The explosion is in our population."

“WE HAVE TO BAND TOGETHER, AND THAT MEANS LATINOS IN FLORIDA, CUBAN-AMERICANS, MEXICAN-AMERICAS, PUERTO RICANS, SOUTH AMERICANS, WE HAVE TO NETWORK BETTER......”
BILL RICHARDSON. WE ALL WERE WITNESS TO OBAMA, ALWAYS THE HISPANDERER, ATTEMPT TO PUT RICHARDSON IN HIS CABINET TO SIGNAL THE ILLEGALS THAT AMNESTY WAS COMING. LIKE MOST HISPANIC POLITICIANS, RICHARDSON WAS TOO CORRUPT TO PASS EVEN THE CORRUPT CONGRESS AND WITHDREW HIS NOMINATION.
4. Bill Richardson, New Mexico Governor, former U.S. Congressman, U.N. Ambassador, U.S. Secretary of Energy interviewed on radio Latino USA responding to Congressional Immigration Reform legislation in 1996 "There are changing political times where our basic foundations and programs are being attacked, illegal and legal immigration are being unfairly attacked. We have to band together, and that means Latinos in Florida, Cuban-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, South Americans, we have to network better - we have to be more politically minded, we have to put aside party and think of ourselves as Latinos, as Hispanics more than we have in the past."

“WE’RE GOING TO TAKE OVER ALL THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN CALIFORNIA. IN FIVE YEARS THE HISPANICS ARE GOING TO BE THE MAJORITY POPULATION OF THIS STATE.... ANYONE THAT DOESN’T LIKE IT SHOULD LEAVE IT!”, Mario Obledo,
Mario Obledo, founding member/former national director of Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), former CA Secretary Health/Welfare on Tom Leikus radio talk show "We're going to take over all the political institutions in California. In five years the Hispanics are going to be the majority population of this state." Caller: "You also made the statement that California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn't like it they should leave - did you say that?" Obledo: "I did. They ought to go back to Europe."

“WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA.. THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION STATE!”6. Mario Obledo CCIR commentary on Mario Obledo: When CCIR, the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, erected a billboard on the California/Arizona border reading, "WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA, THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION STATE", Mario Obledo, infuriated, went to the billboard location and threatened to blow it up or burn it down. Even after this threat to deny American citizens their freedom of speech, President Clinton awarded Obledo the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. CCIR question to Obledo: "Jose Angel Gutierrez said, 'We have an aging white America, they are dying, I love it.' How would you translate that statement?" Obledo: "He's a good friend of mine. A very smart person."

“THEY’RE AFRAID THAT WE’RE GOING TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS. THEY ARE RIGHT, WE WILL TAKE THEM OVER....”
7. Richard Alatorre, former Los Angeles City Councilman at Latino Summit conference in Los Angeles opposing CA Prop. 209 ending affirmative action in 9/1996 "Because our numbers are growing, they're afraid about this great mass of minorities that now live in our community. They're afraid that we're going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They are right, we will take them over, and we are not going to go away - we are here to stay, and we are saying 'ya basta' (enough!) and we are going to turn... and de... not elect or re-elect people that believe that they are going to advance their political careers on the backs of immigrants and the backs of minorities."

MEXICAN SUPREMACIST LA RAZA PARTY REP. FROM INLAND EMPIRE WHERE HE WORKS HARD TO THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION AND WELFARE SYSTEM.


“THE LATINOS ARE COMING... THE LATINOS ARE COMING!!! AND THEY’RE GOING TO VOTE!”
8. Joe Baca, former CA Assemblymember, currently member of Congress at Latino Summit Response to Prop 187 UC Riverside 1/1995 and Southwest Voter Registration Project annual conference in Los Angeles, 6/1996 "We need more Latinos out there. We must stand up and be counted. We must be together, We must be united. Because if we're not united you know what's going to happen? We're like sticks - we're broken to pieces. Divided we're not together. But as a unit they can't break us. So we've got to come together, and if we're united, si se puede (it can be done) and we will make the changes that are necessary. But we've got to do it. We've got to stand together, and dammit, don't let them divide us because that's what they want to do, is to divide us. And once we're divided we're conquered. But when we look out at the audience and we see, you know, la familia, La Raza (the family, our race), you know, it's a great feeling, isn't it a good feeling? And you know, I started to think about that and it reminded me of a book that we all read and we all heard about, you know, Paul Revere, and when he was saying, 'The British are coming, the British are coming!' Well, the Latinos are coming, the Latinos are coming! And the Latinos are going to vote. So our voices will be heard. So that's what this agenda is about. It's about insuring that we increase our numbers. That we increase our numbers at every level. We talk about the Congressional, we talk about the Senate, we talk about board of supervisors, board of education, city councils, commissions, we have got to increase out numbers because the Latinos are coming. Because what's going on right now, with 187, the CCRI (CA Civil Rights Initiative against affirmative action), and let me tell you, we can't go back, you know, we're in a civil war. But we need to be solidified, we need to come together, we must be strong, because united we form a strong body. United we become solidified, united we make a difference, united we make the changes, united Latinos will win throughout California, let's stick together, que si se puede, que no? (it can be done, right?)

“IF THEY’RE SUPPORTING LEGISLATION THAT DENIES THE UNDOCUMENTED DRIVER’S LICENSE, THEY DON’T BELONG IN OFFICE, FRIENDS. THEY DON’T BELONG HERE!”
9. Antonio Villaraigosa, Chair of MEChA (student wing of Aztlan movement) at UCLA, former CA assemblymember, former CA Assembly speaker, currently Los Angeles City Mayor, and formerly Councilman at Southwest Voter Registration Project Conference in Los Angeles, 6/1997 "Part of today's reality has been propositions like 187 (to deny public benefits to illegal aliens, 1994), propositions like 209 (to abolish affirmative action, 1996), the welfare reform bill, which targeted legal immigrants and targeted us as a community. That's been the midnight. We know that the sunny side of midnight has been the election of a Latino speaker - was the election of Loretta Sanchez, against an arch-conservative, reactionary hate-mongering politician like Congressman Dornan! Today in California in the legislature, we're engaged in a great debate, where not only were we talking about denying education to the children of undocumented workers, but now we're talking about whether or not we should provide prenatal care to undocumented mothers. It's not enough to elect Latino leadership. If they're supporting legislation that denies the undocumented driver's licenses, they don't belong in office, friends. They don't belong here. If they can't stand up and say, 'You know what? I'm not ever going to support a policy that denies prenatal care to the children of undocumented mothers', they don't belong here."


GLORIA MOLINA, RACIST MEXICAN SUPREMACIST IS NOW ON THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS. A HUGE PORTION OF THE COUNTY’S REVENUES ARE PAID OUT TO ILLEGALS. LOS ANGELES COUNTY CALCULATES THAT THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IS ABOUT $2 BILLION PER YEAR AND GROWING FAST.

“I’M GONNA GO OUT THERE AN VOTE BECAUSE I WANT TO PAY THEM BACK!”10. Gloria Molina, one of the five in Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors at Southwest Voter Registration Project Conference, 6/1996 "This community is no longer going to stand for it. Because tonight we are organizing across this country in a single mission, in a plan. We are going to organize like we've never organized before. We are going to go into our neighborhoods. We are going to register voters. We are going to talk to all of those young people that need to become registered voters and go out to vote and we're are politicizing every single one of those new citizens that are becoming citizens of this country. And what we are saying is by November we will have one million additional Latino voters in this country, and we're gonna march, and our vote is going to be important. But I gotta tell you, there's a lot of people that are saying, 'I'm gonna go out there and vote because I want to pay them back!' And this November we are going to remember those that stood with us and we are also going to remember those that have stood against us on the issues of immigration, on the issues of education, on the issues of health care, on the issues of the minimum wage."

“LONG LIVE OUR RACE!”11. Vicky Castro, former member of Los Angeles Board of Education at Southwest Voter Registration Project Conference, 6/1996 "Que viva la raza, que viva la raza (long live our race)! I'm here to welcome all the new voters of 18 years old that we're registering now in our schools. Welcome, you're going to make a difference for Los Angeles, for San Antonio, for New York, and I thank Southwest for taking that challenge. And to the Mechistas (MEChA students) across this nation, you're going to make that difference for us, too. But when we register one more million voters I will not be the only Latina on the Board of Education of Los Angeles. And let me tell you here, no one will dismantle bilingual education in the United States of America. No one will deny an education to any child, especially Latino children. As you know, in Los Angeles we make up 70% of this school district. Of 600,000 -- 400,000 are Latinos, and our parents are not heard and they're going to be heard because in Los Angeles, San Antonio and Texas we have just classified 53,000 new citizens in one year that are going to be felt in November!"

“I STARTED THIS VERY QUIETLY BECAUSE THERE ARE THOSE THAT IF THEY KNEW THAT WE WERE CREATING A WHOLE NEW CADRE OF BRAND NEW CITIZENS IT WOULD HAVE TREMENDOUS POLITICAL IMPACT.”


“WE HAVE PROCESSED A LITTLE OVER 78,000 BRAND NEW CITZENS.”12. Ruben Zacarias, former superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District at Southwest Voter Registration Project Conference, 6/1997 "We have 27 centers now throughout LAUSD. Every one of them has trained people, clerks to take the fingerprints. Each one has the camera, that special camera. We have the application forms. And I'll tell you what we've done with I.N.S. Now we're even doing the testing that usually people had to go to INS to take, and pretty soon, hopefully, we'll do the final interviews in our schools. Incidentally, I started this very quietly because there are those that if they knew that we were creating a whole new cadre of brand new citizens it would have tremendous political impact. We will change the political panorama not only of L.A., but L.A. County and the State. And we do that we've changed the panorama of the nation. I'm proud to stand here and tell you that in those close to three years we have processed a little over 78,000 brand new citizens. That is the largest citizenship program in the entire nation."

“I HAVE PROUDLY AFFIRMED THAT THE MEXICAN NATIONAL EXTENDS BEYOND THE TERRITORY ENCLOSED BY ITS BORDERS....”13. Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico announcing the Mexican constitutional amendment allowing for dual citizenship on 6/23/97 "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican national extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders, and that Mexican migrants are an important - a very important part of it. For that reason my government proposed a constitutional amendment to allow any Mexican with the right as he desires to acquire another nationality to do so without being forced to first give up his or her Mexican nationality. Fortunately, the amendment was passed almost unanimously by our federal Congress and is now part of our constitution. I am also here today to tell you that we want you to take pride in what each and every one of your Mexican brothers and sisters are doing back home.

“WE’RE HERE... TO SHOW THE WHITE ANGLO-SAXON PROTESTANT L.A., THE FEW OF YOU WHO REMAIN, THAT WE ARE THE MAJORITY, AND WE CLAIM THIS LAND AS OURS, IT’S ALWAYS BEEN OURS, AND WE’RE STILL HERE, AND NONE OF THE TALK ABOUT DEPORTING. IF ANYONE’S GOING TO BE DEPORTED IT’S GOING TO BE YOU!”

“WE ARE THE MAJORITY IN L.A. THERE’S OVER SEVEN MILLION MEXICANS IN L.A. COUNTY ALONE.”
LA RAZA – “THE (MEXICAN) RACE”….
THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA
1126 16th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-785 1670
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
USCFILE.org
Cut and paste articles and post email all over the country!
REPORT ILLEGALS TO: 1-866-DHS-2-ICE.
http://www.ice.gov/ ICE, ice, ICE
JUDICIALWATCH.org
Report Illegals & Employers Toll Free... (866) 347-2423
INS National Customer Service Center Phone: 1-800-375-5283.
http://www.reportillegals.com/

Saturday, February 27, 2010

CUDAHY, California - ILLEGALS' LOW EXPECTATIONS FOR THE RULE OF LAW TURNING THIS TOWN INTO MEXICO

Mexico right here in America
________________________________________
Reply to: comm-354690469@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-06-18, 9:38AM PDT


Illegals' low expectations for the rule of law is turning Southern California into Mexico.

SEE: http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/the-town-the-law-forgot/15731/?page=2

EXERPT:

"A rough-and-tumble world of small-city politics has come to define the drug- and gang-infested cities clustered around the 710 freeway: Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Huntington Park, Lynwood, Maywood and South Gate, among others.

In recent decades, the demographic shift from white working class to Mexicans and Central Americans resulted in immigrants and their sons and daughters gaining political power. Now, most elected officials reflect the majority Latino population. But high unemployment, illegal immigration and a maze of freeways, truck stops and industrial areas — just a half-day’s drive from Mexico — have contributed to the busy drug-trafficking zones, blight and violence.

Residents, many of them illegal or too young to vote, have it rough. After complaining to authorities or taking too much notice of suspicious activity on their block, some low-income residents have been repaid with retaliation or violent threats. In Cudahy, one persistent complainer got a door-knock from the police — a public no-no that alerts drug dealers to the complainer’s identity and can result in that person’s property being vandalized.

“It gets a lot worse than that,” says a local cop, acknowledging that criminal threats are so common that police are hard-pressed to investigate them.

In contrast to the vulnerability of the average Cudahy resident, business owners who operate questionable businesses get velvet-glove treatment from politicians that would be considered scandalous in the city of Los Angeles. In Cudahy, the Potrero Club is one of several magnets for crime and is frequented by gangsters, but it is nevertheless embraced by Cudahy authorities. A notorious nightspot that parents warn their children to stay away from, the Potrero Club has a long record of being the scene of thefts, assaults and drug activity.

Officials in Cudahy openly promote this crime magnet, however, holding fund-raisers for the Cudahy Youth Foundation there and even using it as an annual gathering spot for a children’s Christmas pageant. Cudahy has sunk so low that each year at Christmastime, Perez and the city council parade around town on the back of a tow truck and toss candy to the children, with the procession ending in a toy giveaway at the Potrero Club, whose owners in the past have displayed photos not of Hollywood movie stars but of famous Mexican drug traffickers.

Crime statistics for the Potrero Club show 700 calls for police assistance there since September 2003, in response to reports of shootings, assaults, stabbings, beatings by security guards, drug use — even rape.

City leaders don’t find it strange that a dangerous nightclub passes for a civic pillar in Cudahy. Cars disappear from the Potrero at an alarming rate, according to police reports obtained by the Weekly. When asked about Cudahy’s use of the Potrero for official events, Perez says, 'It’s not my favorite place, but we’ll continue to use it.'"




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IN THE LOS ANGLES BURBS, THE CITY CUDAHY UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION

“Cudahy is a strange little city; some say a scary one. In 2003, city leaders fired the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department — which had policed Cudahy for 14 years, focusing on gang and drug crime — in favor of a nearby municipal police force that recently erupted over public allegations of police brutality and kickbacks to police and city officials from a towing company.
In Cudahy, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has seized almost 20 times more cocaine over the past five years than in Bell, a bordering city of similar size, and the city suffers more crime per capita than small towns nearby. It’s a city with 200 active gang members, where shootings are common though homicide rare — that is, until 11 killings occurred in the wake of the sheriff’s departure in 2003.”

The Town the Law Forgot
An L.A. ’burb is mired in gangs, cartels and south-of-the-border-style politics
Jeffrey Anderson
published: February 22, 2007
The first sign of trouble for Cudahy City Council candidate Tony Mendoza was a pair of thong panties mailed to his wife, with a note telling her to watch her husband’s back. Then came the phone calls — and the death threats.
A political novice in a tiny city of Mexican immigrants that hasn’t had an election since 1999, Mendoza had expected dirty tricks. But to his dismay, the caller, who spoke poor English and called every day for three days, said Mendoza would be killed if he did not leave Cudahy, a 1.2-square-mile city 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. After the third call, Mendoza pulled out of the March 6 race. “I have my family to think about,” he said.
Running for council seats against a slate of incumbents in a city infested with gangs and drugs, Danny Cota and Luis Garcia faced similar tactics. A truck owned by Garcia, a former city employee, was painted with graffiti, and ex-felon and Cudahy city employee Gerardo Vallejo sought a restraining order against Garcia for criminal threats. A judge tossed the complaint, but Garcia’s campaign was rattled.
In late December, at a holiday gathering at the City Club in downtown Los Angeles hosted by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Cota ran into Bell Gardens City Councilman Mario Beltran, who was perplexed to see Cota, a 29-year-old teacher, hobnobbing and being photographed with Villaraigosa and others.
“Who brought him here?” Councilman Beltran asked onlookers, some of whom are friends of Cudahy’s Vice Mayor, Osvaldo Conde, who is running for re-election. “You better watch out,” Beltran warned Cota, the bright-eyed challenger. “Conde will take care of you with his cuerno de chivo.”
Though Beltran was smiling as he tossed off some Mexican slang for an AK-47, Cota says he did not appreciate such talk. A witness, Maywood Mayor Sergio Calderon, a friend of Cota’s, says, “It was a joke, a tasteless joke.”
Cudahy is a strange little city; some say a scary one. In 2003, city leaders fired the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department — which had policed Cudahy for 14 years, focusing on gang and drug crime — in favor of a nearby municipal police force that recently erupted over public allegations of police brutality and kickbacks to police and city officials from a towing company.
In Cudahy, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has seized almost 20 times more cocaine over the past five years than in Bell, a bordering city of similar size, and the city suffers more crime per capita than small towns nearby. It’s a city with 200 active gang members, where shootings are common though homicide rare — that is, until 11 killings occurred in the wake of the sheriff’s departure in 2003.
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Cudahy leaders seem satisfied. Consider the tone-deaf reaction of Cudahy City Manager George Perez in early February, after the news broke on KNBC Channel 4 and in La Opinión, a Spanish-language daily, that the city of Maywood, currently under a $2-million-a-year contract to police Cudahy, was facing a state takeover because the police department — the Maywood-Cudahy Police Department — is so out of control.
“Police problems in Maywood have nothing to do with us,” said Perez. “Our city council is happy, and our citizens are too.”
Cudahy resembles a Mexican border town more than it does a Los Angeles suburb. Entrenched gangs and Mexican drug trafficking have trapped working-class legal and illegal immigrants in a cycle of violence and fear, in a city where less than a quarter of the 28,000 residents are eligible to vote. An uneducated city council, a deeply troubled police force imported from Maywood two towns over, and the raw power of the 18th Street Gang — a complex criminal organization with a knack for setting up business fronts and obscuring underground drug activity — make Cudahy residents seem like hostages in their own city.
By most accounts, Cudahy City Council members — two retired union managers, an insurance salesman, a waitress and a grocer — do not run the city as they were elected to do. Rather, they defer to City Manager Perez, a former janitor who is known to favor revenue traps such as DUI and driver’s license checkpoints over aggressive tactics that make gangs and drug dealers less comfortable.
In 2001, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office convened a grand jury to investigate whether Perez violated criminal conflict-of-interest laws. The probe stemmed from his actions as a city councilman, when, after voting for an ordinance that lifted a one-year waiting period between holding political office and appointed office, Perez stepped down from the council and was promptly appointed city manager, the city’s highest-paying job. According to prosecutors’ memos and letters obtained by the L.A. Weekly, the D.A.’s office was forced to drop the investigation after concluding that it “could not prove a criminal violation” of state laws “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Known as a ruthless political boss, Perez is not running for city council in the upcoming March 6 election, but he is deserving of scrutiny. After all, he calls the shots in Cudahy.
Perez shrugs at allegations of foul play on the campaign trail, or any possibility that his minions could be involved. “I’ve talked with Mendoza,” he says of death threats that knocked the would-be candidate out of the running. “He apologized for talking bad about me.”
Since his revolving-door ascent from the council to city manager in 2000, Perez’s salary has risen by $30,000 — more than most residents make in a year — to $120,000. Meanwhile, the city’s problems remain dire: poverty, density, gangs and drugs. One-third of residents are under 14 — a vulnerable population. Out in front of Cudahy City Hall one November day, 16-year-old Erica summed up Cudahy this way: “It’s small, so everything is close by. But it’s ugly, and there are shootings.”
Victor, a 16-year-old honor student who plays varsity football, runs track and holds down a part-time job, says, “Some streets are too ghetto. There’s lots of violence. My mother has been going to community meetings to ask about this, but it always seems to stay the same.” Victor liked it better where his family used to live: Compton, one of L.A.’s notorious trouble spots. “There should be more police here in Cudahy. Kids don’t play outside. People don’t feel safe.”
With its narrow, deep lots — the result of an agricultural past that is long gone — its glut of rundown apartment buildings and its lack of economic growth, Cudahy offers a good example of how Mexican drug cartels, the prison-based Mexican mafia and gangs like 18th Street are attracted to the Los Angeles–adjacent industrial sprawl populated by poor immigrants.
Do these criminal elements influence Cudahy’s leaders, with city officials answering to someone other than the public or the rule of law, in a town policed by another town’s troubled police force? The answer is unknown.
Neither the DEA nor the FBI has ever established a connection between city officials and business fronts in the United States’ $65 billion illegal-drug market. Beyond the street crime, behind the scenes, groups finance border tunnels and run other drug-trafficking gateways that have helped make Southern California the highest-intensity drug-distribution center in the United States.
Who is actually responding to that? Local cities’ law enforcers have their hands full with violent street crime. Local gang- and drug-task-force police officers who talked to the Weekly on condition of anonymity say they are busy with three criminal groups: traffickers, who are not always involved in gangs; the Mexican mafia, which can be involved in either gangs or drug cartels; and gangs such as 18th Street, which specialize in drug transportation, distribution, money laundering and muscle.
Some cops say they lack confidence in the feds to clean house at the civic level, where drug traffickers rely on distribution fronts, money-laundering businesses and tainted law enforcement. “You hear about all kinds of scandalous shit,” says a local veteran detective. “But federal agents don’t have the street knowledge to figure out what’s going on. They rely on us.”
DEA agent Sarah Pullen says drug trafficking “has crept into society” via cash businesses, real estate deals and otherwise legitimate civic leaders with interests in both. “Southeast L.A. County has always been heavily involved in all levels of drug trafficking,” says Pullen, who pursued Cudahy-based targets in six of 12 cases in the past few years.
When asked by the L.A. Weekly why Cudahy has shown up so frequently in eye-popping drug busts from the 1980s to the present — sometimes with as much as 500 pounds of cocaine seized at a time — Pullen says her agency doesn’t track drug seizures by city. It tracks drug organizations, which aren’t confined by borders.
But after doing some research, Pullen was able to determine that from 2002 to 2007, the DEA seized 27.5 pounds of cocaine from the city of Bell, Cudahy’s neighbor directly to the north. In comparison, during that same time period, the agency seized 486 pounds of cocaine in Cudahy — more than 17 times the amount seized in Bell.
Mostly, Pullen says, gangs and traffickers go where they feel most comfortable. She cautions, “Once it gets past drugs and money, we turn it over to the FBI. We don’t have the tools to connect all the dots.” For its part, the FBI will not confirm public-corruption probes, much less whether any such probes involve drug trafficking or money laundering. When asked, FBI agent Laura Eimiller snaps, “I can’t talk about that. It could compromise ongoing investigations.”
A rough-and-tumble world of small-city politics has come to define the drug- and gang-infested cities clustered around the 710 freeway: Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Huntington Park, Lynwood, Maywood and South Gate, among others.
In recent decades, the demographic shift from white working class to Mexicans and Central Americans resulted in immigrants and their sons and daughters gaining political power. Now, most elected officials reflect the majority Latino population. But high unemployment, illegal immigration and a maze of freeways, truck stops and industrial areas — just a half-day’s drive from Mexico — have contributed to the busy drug-trafficking zones, blight and violence.
Residents, many of them illegal or too young to vote, have it rough. After complaining to authorities or taking too much notice of suspicious activity on their block, some low-income residents have been repaid with retaliation or violent threats. In Cudahy, one persistent complainer got a door-knock from the police — a public no-no that alerts drug dealers to the complainer’s identity and can result in that person’s property being vandalized.
“It gets a lot worse than that,” says a local cop, acknowledging that criminal threats are so common that police are hard-pressed to investigate them.
In contrast to the vulnerability of the average Cudahy resident, business owners who operate questionable businesses get velvet-glove treatment from politicians that would be considered scandalous in the city of Los Angeles. In Cudahy, the Potrero Club is one of several magnets for crime and is frequented by gangsters, but it is nevertheless embraced by Cudahy authorities. A notorious nightspot that parents warn their children to stay away from, the Potrero Club has a long record of being the scene of thefts, assaults and drug activity.
Officials in Cudahy openly promote this crime magnet, however, holding fund-raisers for the Cudahy Youth Foundation there and even using it as an annual gathering spot for a children’s Christmas pageant. Cudahy has sunk so low that each year at Christmastime, Perez and the city council parade around town on the back of a tow truck and toss candy to the children, with the procession ending in a toy giveaway at the Potrero Club, whose owners in the past have displayed photos not of Hollywood movie stars but of famous Mexican drug traffickers.
Crime statistics for the Potrero Club show 700 calls for police assistance there since September 2003, in response to reports of shootings, assaults, stabbings, beatings by security guards, drug use — even rape.
City leaders don’t find it strange that a dangerous nightclub passes for a civic pillar in Cudahy. Cars disappear from the Potrero at an alarming rate, according to police reports obtained by the Weekly. When asked about Cudahy’s use of the Potrero for official events, Perez says, “It’s not my favorite place, but we’ll continue to use it.”
Even before recent threats against the upstart Cudahy City Council candidates, politics and violence bled together in the surrounding and equally troubled immigrant suburbs.
The widely publicized nonfatal shooting of a councilman in South Gate by an unknown assailant in 1999 ushered in a brutal era. Soon afterward, police investigated the mayor of neighboring Bell Gardens for allegedly trying to run over a former city councilman. Former South Gate Treasurer Albert Robles allegedly threatened to rape and murder his political opponents. No charges resulted from the alleged threats, but Robles was convicted of bribery and sent to prison. In January of this year, a city council candidate in Huntington Park reported to police that he received “terrorist threats” on the street from three men in dark suits who sped off in a luxury car.
Some Mexican-American politicians are apologists for the dark side in these troubled little cities, chalking up the chaos to lack of experience on the part of the Latino officials who took power as the demographics changed.
“Just like a mother never gives birth to a criminal, no politician ever gets elected with criminal intent,” says Rosario Marin, former U.S treasurer and former Huntington Park mayor, who was followed in her car and terrorized by unknown assailants as her city struggled with gang violence, drug trafficking and federal investigations.
“I have to believe that,” adds Marin, a prominent California Republican with close ties to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed her as secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency. “Yet it hurts me to see how people get corrupted.”
Confronted with an alarming pattern, District Attorney Steve Cooley distinguished himself from his predecessors by going after public corruption in L.A. County — with mixed results. Some say his convictions of officials in Compton and South Gate were low-lying fruit, and that Cudahy got away from him.
Ever-present in Cudahy and its neighboring cities are three attorneys who have, over the years, blended municipal law and lobbying to great effect. Arnoldo Beltran, Francisco Leal and David Olivas have made a small fortune representing scandal-plagued cities. Today, Olivas represents Cudahy and Leal represents Maywood, with the two cities sharing a police force that is in disarray.
Perhaps foremost among the many controversies in which these lawyers have been embroiled are allegations explored in a 1999 L.A. Times story that Beltran, a Stanford-educated lawyer, and Leal, a Harvard Law School graduate raised by immigrants in El Paso, were threatening to launch recall campaigns against elected officials in Lynwood, Commerce and Bell Gardens if they did not vote to retain the two men’s legal services.
Beltran and Leal, former partners in a now-defunct law firm that also included Olivas as an associate, at the time denied the allegations. Beltran would not comment for this article. Leal did not return several calls for comment. But they would be hard-pressed to deny that their political savvy has earned them a reputation for being influential advisers to many small cities.
In 1999, the firm split, with Leal and Olivas going off to form Leal, Olivas & Jauregui, which represented the city of Cudahy in 2000 when Perez made the revolving-door move, through a series of ordinances drafted by David Olivas, from city councilman to city manager. The resulting grand-jury investigation did not lead to criminal charges but left a lasting mark on the city.
Less than a year later, in Bell Gardens, Beltran drafted a slightly different ordinance with the exact same effect: to upgrade a city councilwoman, Maria Chacon, to city manager. The move had serious consequences. Investigators from the D.A.’s office searched Beltran’s offices in 2001 in connection with an investigation of Chacon, whom they later charged with criminal conflict of interest. Beltran hired celebrity defense lawyer Mark Geragos, though Beltran was not named as a target of the investigation, nor was he charged with a crime.
Chacon spent the next several years defending the charges on grounds that Beltran advised her it was okay to vote on the ordinance that allowed her to switch roles from council member to city manager. The state Supreme Court rejected that defense recently, clearing the way for Cooley’s office to take her to trial.
The methods of Beltran, Leal and Olivas left a mark on their former law partner Jesse Jauregui, who broke all ties with the group in 2001. Jauregui has this — and only this — to say about his old colleagues: “I’m glad to no longer be a part of Tammany Hall–style politics. How far it goes, I do not know. It became a seamy situation.”
The legal maneuvering that led to new leadership in Cudahy was part of a larger strategy, says former Cudahy councilwoman Araceli Gonzalez, a child of Mexican immigrants. “They were very outspoken,” says Gonzalez of the lawyers who advised Cudahy and Bell Gardens. “They were telling people they were going to take over these cities and put Latinos in power.”
Olivas, now in his own law practice while wearing two hats — as Cudahy city attorney and councilman in Baldwin Park — argues that the move to anoint Perez as Cudahy city manager was about Latino self-determination, and that change in leadership in small southeast L.A. County cities was for the better.
“People were tired of being governed by outsiders,” Olivas says. “This was people from Cudahy, of Cudahy and for Cudahy.”
But since that time of upheaval, certain actions by Cudahy officials have raised questions about whether they are acting in the public’s best interest as Maywood struggles to get the two cities’ shared police force under control.
Near downtown Cudahy, a thick haze hovers over the 710 freeway, with the Los Angeles skyline barely visible beyond an expanse of rail yards, storage containers, terminals and freight cars. Billboards for casinos and strip clubs and a tangle of power lines clutter the skies surrounding this bleak stretch of highway.
The cities around the 710 freeway — a gateway from the Port of Long Beach to the rest of the nation — are so small they share freeway exits. Graffiti is scrawled on overpasses, exit signs and the concrete banks of the L.A. River, informing visitors that they are about to enter gangland. The grimy strip malls, auto-body shops and fast-food joints further speak to a loss of prosperity.
Cudahy, the smallest, poorest and most violent of these cities, feels like a place the law has forgotten — a feeling that intensifies along Santa Ana Street, where a large “18” is spray-painted on a telephone-utility box at one end of the block, and another large “18” is tagged at the other end — on a government dumpster, no less, at Cudahy City Hall.
City Hall is a squat brick structure in a remote corner of the city bordered by the L.A. River and next to an often-empty park, a school and a weed-filled would-be basketball court with a sign that reads “Opening Fall 2006.”
Inside, City Manager George Perez sits behind his desk listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on his iPod. His walls are adorned with photos of him and his ’64 Chevy Impala, with a license plate that reads, “2 Cudahy.” Perez, stocky with helmetlike black hair, is equally feared and loved in Cudahy.
He likes to tell people he has the city “locked down.” In his mid-40s, he’s the consummate Mexican-American political boss — just don’t tell him that. Perez, a man who sports a T-shaped tattoo between his thumb and forefinger, argues: “This is so different from Mexican politics.” Perez refuses to discuss the tattoo, or say much about the other one, on his leg — of Cudahy’s official city seal. “I’m not from Mexico; I’m from here.”
Perez is bracing for the March election, although he is not a candidate. He knows that two novice candidates are out there, hearing from poor immigrants, renters and property owners about how they are afraid to walk the streets at night, how there is nowhere decent to shop, and how other cities mock Cudahy, calling it “Crudahy.”
“We’ve never had greater public service in this community,” Perez insists. “We’ve broken down barriers by hiring more bilingual staff. I have an open-door policy. My wife and I grew up here and understand the underprivileged families.”
Thirty years ago, Perez started as a janitor, “fishing turds out of the toilets,” he says with bitter pride. Perez now owns four parcels in Cudahy and recently purchased a $700,000 house in Hacienda Heights, in the San Gabriel Valley, where he lives part-time. In addition to his Impala, in mint condition, he tools around in a convertible BMW, a luxury made possible by his $120,000-a-year salary plus a $600-per-month stipend — an unusually large fee to act as a commissioner on the board of one of three water companies serving Cudahy.
How Perez got to where he is today is a controversial subject in Cudahy.
As they did in Bell Gardens, investigators swept down on Cudahy City Hall and Perez’s house in 2001, looking for evidence that he violated criminal conflict-of-interest laws when he backed the maneuvering that led to his switch from councilman to city manager on the same day.
According to sworn statements and memos from District Attorney Steve Cooley’s office obtained by the Weekly, Cudahy employees were pressured to use the same law firm that represented Perez in the investigation. (That firm, astonishingly, was headed by Cooley’s best friend, former District Attorney Robert Philibosian.) A clause in the document that city employees were pressured to sign stated in part: “An advantage of using a single law firm in a criminal matter may be to help assure a common position and increase the likelihood that none of the clients will cooperate with the prosecution.” Other city officials, later named as targets, also retained top-shelf attorneys on the city’s dime. The result was a stonewall defense that cost Cudahy taxpayers $1 million in legal fees.
The aftermath has not been as promised by the upbeat Perez. Some of his harshest critics — L.A. Sheriff’s deputies who worked in Cudahy — accuse him of seeking out a predatory tow-truck company to tow cars for minor violations and thus boost city coffers. Property owners accuse him of being quick to aggressively ticket them for small building violations, even as the city's main commercial corridor wallows in blight.
L.A. Sheriff’s Detective Raul Gama patrolled Cudahy in the mid-1990s, trying to eradicate gangs. He claims that Sheriff’s Department raids and sweeps, aimed at catching gang members with probation and parole violations and putting them back behind bars, were reducing gang-related crime by 35 percent.
Gama describes his interactions with then-councilman Perez as “a game of cat and mouse.” He says Perez preferred him to focus on vehicle checkpoints, which allowed the city to tow cars and charge impound fees when the city nabbed mostly illegal immigrants for not having driver’s licenses.
“I had a problem with preying on people,” Gama says. “It wasn’t the best use of our resources.”
Later, as city manager, Perez eliminated jobs, concentrating power in his office, according to internal city memos obtained by the Weekly. After disagreeing with a member of the Chamber of Commerce, he stopped the city’s longtime contributions to the chamber, causing the chamber to leave Cudahy, which contributed to disarray in the city’s business community.
L.A. County Deputy Sheriff Miguel Mejia, who served for several years in Cudahy, says he always was baffled by Perez’s obsession with wielding power while law enforcers were fighting an uphill battle against gangs and drug dealers, who, he alleges, seemed to have an inside line into Cudahy City Hall.
Says Mejia, “We brought in helicopters, a special gang-enforcement unit. I seriously believe gangs felt our presence.” But, he says, “If we suspected someone of committing a crime, we’d have to keep it from the city.” Interviews with two former Cudahy municipal officers, who asked to remain anonymous, confirm that part of their job was to report to City Hall about what the police were doing, and who they were talking to.
Perez’s revenue-generating activities paid off —? sort of. The city reserve climbed to $3.8 million in 2006 — an unusually high reserve for any California city with an $8 million annual budget.
Yet unpaid bills mounted. The Weekly has reviewed internal e-mails from city employees warning that road-repair companies were threatening to send the city to collections and reminding Perez that payroll expenses were reported for employees no longer with the city. Despite the huge city reserve, payment on the police contract fell behind last year by $245,000, according to a June 20, 2006, letter to Perez from former Maywood City Attorney Cary Reisman.
A 2003 decision shows where the city’s priorities are — and may begin to explain why Maywood’s current police troubles are not easily separable from Cudahy.
Perez and the sheriff had already been at cross-purposes for years when, three years ago, Perez moved to oust two local tow-truck companies the Sheriff’s Department had long worked with. Perez wanted to bring in Maywood Club Towing, giving it access to sensitive law-enforcement data, according to Sergeant Ruben Martinez of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department.
“You’ve dealt with two companies for years that are located right in your city, and all of sudden you go outside with a company you’ve never worked with before?” asks Martinez. “We weren’t comfortable with that.”
Not to be thwarted by the Sheriff’s Department, Perez shopped for another agency to police Cudahy — and Maywood, despite sharing no boundaries with Cudahy, liked the idea of earning $2 million a year, which allowed Maywood to double the size of its small force. Perez says the move had nothing to do with a towing dispute.
Dumping the sheriff’s contract was bizarre. Interviews with local drug police and a review of search-warrant records from 2006 confirm that Cudahy — all 1.2 square miles of it — is a crime hotbed, even as Maywood police work overtime on traffic patrol. In April, federal agents seized automatic weapons and 270 pounds of marijuana and caught Cudahy-based suspects on a wiretap discussing plans to buy and sell “20 to 30 pounds” of methamphetamine and large amounts of cocaine.
“The Sheriff’s Department is a large, professional organization,” says former Cudahy City Attorney Michael Colantuono, who was fired by Perez. “But the city manager does not have as much control over the Sheriff’s Department . . . the sheriff won’t protect your friends or punish your enemies.”
Along with the Maywood Police Department came Maywood Club Towing. A mess ensued — at least in Maywood, which last week imploded in scandal. On February 13, under intense community pressure, the Maywood City Council unanimously voted to ask California Attorney General Jerry Brown to probe allegations of kickbacks to cops and city officials by Maywood Club Towing, as well as claims of police sexual and racial abuse. Among the accusations is that Maywood police flew to Las Vegas, courtesy of the towing company, getting free rooms and the services of prostitutes.
A spokesman for Brown said on Tuesday that the attorney general will defer to District Attorney Cooley, who announced last Friday that he has launched a criminal investigation of Maywood officials and police.
Last August, Maywood police officer Alfred Hutchings received anonymous letters at his office at Chapman ?University, where he works part-time as an ethics professor. The letters, copies of which were obtained by the Weekly, ?apparently were written by a Maywood Police Department ?whistleblower and contain graphic descriptions of racially and sexually abusive cops who were protected if they met quotas for impounding vehicles. The letters also accused two City Council members of taking kickbacks from Maywood Club Towing.
Hutchings turned the letters over to Maywood Police Chief Bruce Leflar, who in November named Hutchings to head the department’s professional-standards unit. But within a week, Leflar went on medical leave, according to an internal e-mail from Lieutenant Paul Pine, who, as the new ranking cop, promptly dismissed Hutchings.
The letters claim that Pine lived rent-free in an apartment in Maywood owned by the owners of Maywood Club Towing, and that many Maywood officers, including Pine, left previous jobs under pressure from superiors. According to civil rights lawyer Tom Barham, the new acting police chief, Richard Lyons, was promoted from patrol sergeant with no command experience or training, after leaving jobs with Santa Ana Park Police and the city of El Monte. “He’s no Audie Murphy,” Barham told a packed Maywood City Council hearing last Tuesday.
Sergeant Enrique Gonzalez, the Maywood Police Department’s official liaison to Cudahy, insisted to the Weekly recently that the allegations “are isolated to Maywood. In Cudahy the citizens want us there. They cooperate with us.”
In recent months the Weekly paid numerous visits to the Maywood Police Department to gather Cudahy crime statistics and ask about public safety. During one of our visits, in January, acting Maywood chief Lyons refused to discuss the Cudahy police contract or anything related to policing or public safety, referring all questions to the new Maywood city attorney, Francisco Leal, formerly of Leal & Olivas. (Leal’s former partner, David Olivas, served as Maywood city attorney until 2004.) The Weekly has called Leal for comment several times, but he has not responded.
Why did Cudahy want Maywood police and Maywood Club Towing in the first place, and why is Cudahy City Manager George Perez satisfied with them amid all the problems?
The Weekly confirmed with Perez that several of the officers named in the anonymous letters to Hutchings have policed the streets of Cudahy, including a current motorcycle officer named Florencio Mesa. Mesa stands publicly accused of sexual misconduct, and also is known as a prolific ticket writer, racking up some 100 impounds a month, which brings in $100,000 in revenue, according to the letters. Perez acknowledges Mesa’s ticket-writing prowess but says the allegations against Mesa are “out of character.”
Perez says that in Cudahy, people don’t tolerate bad police behavior. But some residents are extremely unhappy with the job Maywood police are doing in Cudahy.
Three months ago, 15-year-old Joseph Garcia was shot and killed on Santa Ana Street, less than 100 yards from Cudahy City Hall. Perez was at the scene when police arrived, and he received an earful from Garcia’s father, according to police sources, who say Garcia’s father was blaming Perez for his son’s death — not enough Maywood police patrolling the streets. Perez, when asked by the Weekly about the father's anger, replies dismissively, “People are always looking for someone to blame.”
Two weeks later, with residents still shocked by the City Hall–adjacent killing, a Neighborhood Watch meeting attracted 200 people — but crime was never discussed. Instead, Perez presided over a surreal pep rally featuring “happy birthday” sing-alongs, rounds of applause for new parents, sales pitches from Herbalife and New York Life, and a gift raffle.
For two hours, nobody mentioned murdered teenager Joseph Garcia, or street violence. The most pressing matter raised was speed bumps. “That’s how George plays it,” Sheriff’s Sergeant Martinez says. “He’s into petting puppies and kissing babies.”
Perez urges folks to call him with problems, but one woman went too far and ended up with an unwanted visit from Maywood police and a vandalized car. After the odd Neighborhood Watch meeting last November, the woman reminded Perez that he had advised her to call police about young men loitering outside her apartment, a chemical smell she thought was related to drugs, and strangers suspiciously running into the building from idling cars.
After she complained to Perez, police loudly knocked on her door in full view of the trouble spot. Then, someone scraped her car with a key. She was afraid to let her children outside after that. Perez listened intently, as she described her fear. “Call me next time,” Perez was now telling her, “and I’ll see it doesn’t happen again.”
The next day, Perez presided over another community event in which he once again acted as the benevolent political boss: free turkeys and bags of food for everyone — compliments of the city with a $3.8 million reserve and one of the highest unemployment rates in Los Angeles County.
Such events enhance Cudahy’s south-of-the-border image. While residents get these nominal handouts, the Weekly has learned, gang members get city jobs. In May 2006, according to a Maywood Police arrest report, police were attempting to pull over 20-year-old city employee Robert Garcia in traffic, when Garcia drove into Perez’s driveway and started yelling, “George! George! George!” Police searching Garcia’s car found a knife and less than a gram of meth and booked Garcia, identified in the report as an 18th Street gang member, for possession of drugs. Garcia pleaded guilty and is receiving drug counseling, according to the District Attorney's Office.
Perez says he believes in second chances. But when asked by the Weekly whether he believes he should be held accountable for the dangerous conditions in his city, Perez offers an anecdote that suggests he is unable to confront them.
In December 2005, 28-year-old Cudahy resident Francisco Lopez was shot and killed, Perez says, a murder which prompted a woman to loudly criticize Perez in public while her son, an active gang member, looked on. Perez, knowing about the son’s gang involvement, said nothing about the mother’s hypocrisy.
Clearly proud, Perez tells the Weekly, “The next day the son came and thanked me” for not publicly mentioning his gang affiliation.
Others find that benevolent attitude outrageous. “That is empowering a gangster and telling him it’s okay,” says former councilwoman Araceli Gonzalez.
At the same time, Perez has cordial relations with Hector Marroquin Sr., an 18th Street Gang member who, despite touting himself as a gang-intervention worker, also is a street enforcer for the Mexican mafia, according to confidential law-enforcement documents obtained by the Weekly. (See “Broken Bridges,” L.A. Weekly, December 15-21, 2006.)
Perez is hardly shy about his relationship with this alleged mafia associate whose street nickname is “Weasel.” Marroquin owns a bar called Marroking’s Deuces on Atlantic Avenue in Cudahy. This month, campaign signs for the longtime Cudahy City Council incumbents adorn the property, the scene of an alleged assault in 2005 during which Marroquin, according to an arrest report, warned a patron who owed him money: “You’re messing with the Mexican mafia. I run all of Cudahy.”
Last March, police searched the bar and adjacent buildings in connection with a home-invasion robbery they suspected Marroquin’s son had committed. The police found ammunition, drugs and gang literature.
Marroquin’s reaction to the police search? He called City Manager Perez.
Perez pauses briefly before conceding that he placed a call to then-Maywood Police Chief Bruce Leflar, going to the top on behalf of a dubious associate. “I’m concerned any time a business owner in this community feels harassed,” Perez says.
Perez fumbles for an explanation when asked why Marroking’s Deuces, according to city records, has not had a valid business license since 2004: “I don’t know how that happened.” When asked about the community’s low perception of the bar Marroquin owns, Perez shrugs, “We’ve noticed a certain element hanging out there.”
A key figure in the upcoming election is Cudahy Vice Mayor Osvaldo Conde, the owner of a meat market and check-cashing store. Conde, at times a Perez ally, seems to lead a double life.
A regular at the Potrero Club, where he doesn’t bother to clear security but just walks right in, Conde was arrested in the early-morning hours in December in Huntington Park on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, according to information released by Huntington Park Police.
He was not booked as Osvaldo Conde but as Osvaldo Lopez. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge of drunken driving. But the Weekly has learned that Conde has two different birth dates and two different Social Security numbers on business-license records in Cudahy. Conde lives part time in Lynwood, four miles south of Cudahy. Conde would not respond to the Weekly’s requests for an interview.
It’s hard not to feel for Cudahy, the little city plagued by gang and drug crime — and no apparent interest on the part of local, regional or federal authorities in stopping it. Observers say the government won’t act until residents raise a big enough stink — as Maywood residents just did.
“People in Cudahy are immigrants and renters, and all they want is to come home from work and enjoy a barbecue on weekends,” says L.A. Sheriff’s Detective Gama. “There are good people there, but they don’t want to challenge authority.”
Drug police say that many drug shipments crossing the Mexican border make two stops in San Diego and head straight for Cudahy. Drug runners from Cudahy return from Arizona and Texas and bring new guns into the community, police say. Meanwhile, 18th Street is engaged in violent conflict with a group called Just Blazing It, and the Clara Street and Cudahy 13 gangs remain active.
Nothing is likely to change in Cudahy until elected officials and appointed City Manager George Perez take a different approach. That seems unlikely. Perez is campaigning for the longtime incumbents he appears to influence — and he is guaranteeing victory on March 6. “We’ve already won,” he declares.
Former councilwoman Araceli Gonzalez is concerned that upstart city council candidates Danny Cota and Luis Garcia, seen as challengers not to their rivals running on the ballot but to Perez, don’t stand a chance because they refuse to raise money for their campaigns.
Garcia says he doesn’t want to owe anyone. Cota seems like he’s just enjoying the thrill of an election. Despite the thuglike tactics that scared off their friend Tony Mendoza, Cota and Garcia are not intimidated.
Still, Garcia confides he has misgivings about life in Cudahy. “Our parents left Mexico to have a better life here,” he says, implying that Cudahy is falling short of that dream.
Gonzalez, who left Cudahy after George Perez took over as city manager, has moved back. She says she is interested in teaching people how to stand up to the city’s bullying. But she too knows her limitations. As a longtime resident of Cudahy, she seems to sense the darker forces at play. “Some things are not worth getting ?killed over.”

MEXICANS and Their Looters' Mentality ENABLED BY THE LA RAZA DEMS!

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

WHO IS FIGHTING MEXICAN TERRORIST ON OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS? NOT OBAMA!

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Identity theft is the fastest growing white collar crime in America today and is often motivated by organized rings that sell these stolen identities to illegal aliens seeking illegal employment.

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“This organization is considered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as one of the largest internationally, with connections in Central America and Mexico.”

*

THERE ARE ONLY EIGHT STATES THAT HAVE A LARGER POPULATION THAN LOS ANGELES COUNTY. L.A.C. IS UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION. IN LOS ANGELES, 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB IS AN ILLEGAL USING A STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER! THIS SAME COUNTY PAYS OUT $50 MILLION PER MONTH IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS AND HAS A TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE $2 BILLION PER YEAR.

AS OBAMA AND THE LA RAZA DEMS WORK FOR NON-TRANSPARENT BIT BY BIT AMNESTY, YOU WON’T EVER HEAR THEM TALK ABOUT THE STAGGERING MEXICAN CRIME WAVE THAT SWEEPS THE NATION ALONG WITH THE MEXICAN INVASION AND OCCUPATION!

THE LA RAZA DEMS WILL NEVER STOP HISPANDERING FOR THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES!


GET YOUR FREE MEXICAN GANG PRODUCED ID HERE

MEXICAN CLAN OF DOCUMENT FORGERS OPERATES IN 33 STATES


This story was first broken on the Wake Up America Talk Show "A Minuteman Project Chapter" Hosted by Steve Eichler.

Go to: WWW.Wakeupamericausa.com

A Mexican clan of document forgers operates in 33 states, including Illinois. In Chicago, their annual take is around $2.5 million, and their main collaborators are gang members.

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THE MEXICAN LOOTER’S MENTALITY



“I know that many aliens who come here to work want to remain here, yet all too many come to the United States with a "looter" philosophy, giving the lawful immigrants who want to share in the “American Dream” a bad reputation.” In my former INS experience, it was not uncommon for the illegal aliens I arrested to make it clear that they were here for one purpose: to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible and send it all home. I know that many aliens who come here to work want to remain here, yet all too many come to the United States with a "looter" philosophy, giving the lawful immigrants who want to share in the “American Dream” a bad reputation. Part of the problem is that the relationship that businesses have with the United States is one of greed. These companies couldn't care less about the damage that they do to this country or the average working American. They are happy to exploit the illegal aliens and in so doing, get a lucrative piece of the action. And the bankers and money wire services like Western Union have become the silent partners of the illegal aliens. Of course, if the American dollar plummets far enough many illegal aliens will probably just head home, leaving this country in financial disarray. But when you read about the amounts of money being sent out of the United States that is lost to our economy, you must realize that the money you are reading about is not being earned by Americans or by lawful immigrants, because they have been displaced by illegal aliens who are willing to work for substandard wages. Unfortunately, Congress has just passed what has been billed as an "Economic Stimulus Package." This bill will undoubtedly be signed into law by the President and will call for taxpayers to be mailed one-time rebate checks that (it is hoped) will be used to spend on consumer goods that – get this – for the most part are not even produced in the United States. A large part of the problem we are having right now is that Americans are not saving enough money. Our citizens have been cashing in the value of their homes with second mortgages and huge credit card debts and now, the value of most of those houses has fallen into the basement! There is an utter lack of fiscal responsibility in abundant evidence in Washington and around kitchen tables across the United States and meanwhile, the front runners in the Presidential elections are eager to provide amnesty and thus more incentives for still more illegal aliens to drain still more money out of our economy. They will do this through remittances and other means of sending money back home. They will do this when they show up in the emergency rooms of hospitals across our nation demanding medical treatment without medical insurance. The criminal element of this massive influx of illegal aliens will injure and kill more victims in our country, destroying lives and the lives of family members of the victims of those crimes. Some of the crimes will also result in property losses and in fraud.

Identity theft is the fastest growing white collar crime in America today and is often motivated by organized rings that sell these stolen identities to illegal aliens seeking illegal employment.

The Congressional Budget Office has recently done a study that concludes that contrary to the assertions of the open borders / pro-amnesty crowd, illegal aliens represent a net drain on the economy. Finally, the attacks of September 11, 2001, in addition to the death and destruction they wrought, hammered our economy and the economies of other countries. Trade suffered, travel and tourism suffered – yet the travel and hospitality industries are pushing a program known as "Discover America" wherein they are attempting to have the United States government expand the Visa Waiver Program beyond the current 27 participating countries to as many as 39 countries. In the end, the United States and its working poor and middle class that is shouldering the greatest burden of the open borders and cash movement mess. Interestingly, with all of the interviews that were conducted in the article linked above, not a single interview was conducted to find out what the impact of the decline of the dollar has had on the average American family. ..............................

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

“When these guys come out of Compton — when they do their rape, rob and pillage in the rest of the county because they've maximized what they can get in Compton — they're going to come to other cities," said McBride, who headed Operation Safe Streets before retiring in 2002.Sheriff's officials count a crime as gang-related only if it is directly tied to gang activity.

There are over 100-plus active violent gangs in Los Angeles County, and you have 100 holes in the dike and the problem is you only have so many plugs

THE MEXICAN CRIME WAVE

Since I filed this article on Compton gang crimes, I’ve read about car thefts going up 23% in Santa Clara county, Modesto being the car theft capital of the country, gang crime exploding in Santa Barbara and Salinas. Gang murders going up in San Fernando. Like the officer quoted said, when they have pillaged everything in Compton, they’re headed for you community.


COMPTON (LOS ANGELES) GANG MURDERS – THE LOOTING MENTALITY
*
By Megan Garvey

Times Staff Writer

December 12, 2005


Gang-related homicides are up more than 30% this year in areas under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, but the department's countywide gang enforcement team is substantially smaller than it was three years ago and remains chronically understaffed. For many years the department dealt with significantly less gang crime than police in the city of Los Angeles. No more. At least half of the homicides in sheriff's territories are now gang killings, about the same level as in the city. Statewide, gang violence accounts for about 16% of all homicides. But although the Los Angeles Police Department under Chief William J. Bratton has reconstituted and increased the size of its anti-gang units, assigning nearly 350 officers to gang enforcement duty, the gang unit under Sheriff Lee Baca has shrunk. The sheriff's anti-gang units have 20 fewer deputies than authorized in the department's budget — about 150 sworn officers instead of 170. Those numbers are down from a high of nearly 190 sworn deputies on duty three years ago. This year, while gang homicides rose sharply in a few small areas patrolled by the sheriff — Compton, East Los Angeles and unincorporated neighborhoods bordering Watts — Operation Safe Streets, the department's anti-gang unit, lacked flexibility to move specially trained personnel out of lower-crime areas and into communities with soaring gang killings, according to its head of operations."Unit commanders should have the autonomy to put their resources in the places they would have the greatest impact based on crime statistics," said Lt. Bob Rifkin. "We are spread too thin to try to do the whole county. Do you do a mediocre job in the whole county or do you do a dynamite job in the quarter of the county where the worst crime is?"In an interview Friday, Baca seemed surprised that gang homicides were up substantially — 210 as of late last week, compared with 164 for the same period last year — but said he needs more personnel to deal with gang crime."We are doing our best with what we have and we don't have enough," he said. "If you doubled what we have, we don't have enough."Baca is promoting a quarter-cent sales tax earmarked for gang intervention and enforcement, which he hopes to get on the ballot next year. Such a tax would generate about $280 million annually for law enforcement agencies in L.A. County, he said. For the time being, Baca said, shifting resources is not the answer because it might suppress crime in one area at the cost of allowing it to increase elsewhere."What one has to understand is the nature of policing gangs," Baca said. "There are over 100-plus active violent gangs in Los Angeles County, and you have 100 holes in the dike and the problem is you only have so many plugs. If you pull one plug in an area where you've plugged up the violence, will it pour out there again?"The department's difficulties responding to the increased rate of killing underscore two of the biggest problems the Sheriff's Department faces: It is seriously understaffed, with nearly 1,000 fewer deputies overall than the 9,500 authorized, and its political structure works against assigning available deputies based on the worst crime problems. The Sheriff's Department patrols unincorporated areas of the county and 41 cities that contract with the department for policing. Cities pay for a specific number of deputies each year and, if they can afford it, may add personnel and specialized teams as needed. Baca said about 55% of his deputies work under city contracts. Maintaining good relationships with the officials of contract cities has long been a high priority for senior officials of the department. There has also been considerable pressure recently from the county Board of Supervisors to ensure that county areas are getting their fair share of services. The gang unit is one of several specialized teams that work countywide for all residents, allowing the sheriff discretion — in theory, at least — in their deployment. But because the department serves an area with 2.6 million residents over 4,000 square miles, distribution of limited resources is challenging. Capt. Mike Ford, who runs Operation Safe Streets and is Rifkin's boss, noted that although other areas have fewer homicides than Compton, gang crime is quite real to people who live in those areas."The reality is we work for the people who live there, and no one likes to deal with graffiti or drug dealing," he said, adding that he would be reluctant to withdraw officers from other areas, even if that were politically possible. But some gang crime experts warn that the department's approach to distributing its deputies could allow crime to spread."If 50% or more of your murders are gang-related, it looks to me like you ought to have a lot of resources doing that," said Wes McBride, president of the Assn. of California Gang Investigators

*
“WHEN THESE GUYS COME OUT OF COMPTON ---- WHEN THEY DO THEIR RAPE, ROB, AND PILLAGE IN THE REST OF THE COUNTY BECAUSE THEY’VE MAXIMIZED WHAT THEY CAN GET IN COMPTON ---- THEY’RE GOING TO COME TO OTHER CITIES.”

*

When these guys come out of Compton — when they do their rape, rob and pillage in the rest of the county because they've maximized what they can get in Compton — they're going to come to other cities," said McBride, who headed Operation Safe Streets before retiring in 2002.Sheriff's officials count a crime as gang-related only if it is directly tied to gang activity. If the wife of a gang member is killed by her husband in a domestic dispute, for example, it is not counted as a gang crime. If she is killed to stop her from telling authorities about the gang, it is. The rise in gang violence in Compton, as well as in East Los Angeles and areas bordering southeast Los Angeles, has pushed up overall homicides for the Sheriff's Department. With three weeks remaining in 2005, homicides of all types in county areas and in cities that contract with the Sheriff's Department total 395, passing last year's 392.By contrast, although the city of Los Angeles continues to record more homicides than the county, its total has fallen and is on track to be at its lowest in half a dozen years. As of the end of October, the LAPD reported a 15% decline in gang homicides over the same period last year, 216 compared with 255.Ford said gang suppression and investigation remain top priorities for the department. "The question," he said, "is how many resources do you have?"Through late last week, Compton had 68 gang-related homicides, up from 42 for all of last year. The nearby territory bordering southeast Los Angeles, patrolled by the Century sheriff's station, had 57 gang-related homicides, up from 37 in 2004.Together, the two areas account for nearly 60% of the county's gang-related homicides, Sheriff's Department statistics show. Yet about a quarter of available gang investigators are assigned to those areas. In addition, each shares a gang suppression team with a neighboring station, a move made last year by Ford when, he said, insufficient staff made regional teams necessary. Ten gang suppression deputies and a sergeant are assigned to the Compton-Carson area, where there have been 72 gang homicides this year. Another team of 11 serves Century and Lennox stations, which account for 70 gang killings. In comparison, the Palmdale and Lancaster area also has a team of 11 gang suppression officers, two paid under Lancaster's contract. That area has had 13 gang-related homicides this year. The sheriff made no move to shift gang officers to Compton when violence shot upward there early this year. At Century station, where a specific gang war was identified, a task force was formed, but the gang unit was not expanded. Another problem area has been East Los Angeles, which has had 20 gang-related homicides this year, up from 11 for each of the previous two years. In that area, too, the number of gang enforcement personnel has not been increased. The need for a larger gang enforcement team is widely acknowledged. McBride, who spent nearly three decades as a gang specialist in the Sheriff's Department, estimated that Compton's gang problem alone would justify 50 gang suppression officers and a team of 10 to 15 investigators. Ford and other gang experts caution that simply moving deputies to a hot spot might not have much impact. Effective gang officers, they note, develop sources on the street over time. Compton's level of gang activity, for instance, complicates law enforcement efforts to get intelligence and also makes it harder to target any one area to significantly reduce criminal activity, sheriff's officials said.The city, which covers 10 square miles and has about 96,000 residents, has at least 10 active and violent street gangs, as well as numerous other crews, said Percy Perrodin, the city's former deputy police chief and brother of Mayor Eric Perrodin."You're talking about a very complex gang situation," said Cheryl Maxson, a UC Irvine professor who studies street gangs. By mid-2005, Compton had as many homicides as all of 2004, but city officials said there were no additional funds to add to the 72 deputies who patrol the city."People need to realize that Compton's problems won't stay in Compton. Absolutely, they ought to be concerned about what's happening, and they ought to help," he said. "We give foreign aid to other countries so they won't fall apart. How about some domestic aid?"


COMPTON’S PROBLEMS WON’T STAY IN COMPTON.... NO, THEY’RE ALL OVER THE 50 STATES NOW

LOS ANGELES - MEX GANG INVESTED

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

“When these guys come out of Compton — when they do their rape, rob and pillage in the rest of the county because they've maximized what they can get in Compton — they're going to come to other cities," said McBride, who headed Operation Safe Streets before retiring in 2002.Sheriff's officials count a crime as gang-related only if it is directly tied to gang activity.

There are over 100-plus active violent gangs in Los Angeles County, and you have 100 holes in the dike and the problem is you only have so many plugs

THE MEXICAN CRIME WAVE

Since I filed this article on Compton gang crimes, I’ve read about car thefts going up 23% in Santa Clara county, Modesto being the car theft capital of the country, gang crime exploding in Santa Barbara and Salinas. Gang murders going up in San Fernando. Like the officer quoted said, when they have pillaged everything in Compton, they’re headed for you community.


COMPTON (LOS ANGELES) GANG MURDERS – THE LOOTING MENTALITY
*
By Megan Garvey

Times Staff Writer

December 12, 2005


Gang-related homicides are up more than 30% this year in areas under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, but the department's countywide gang enforcement team is substantially smaller than it was three years ago and remains chronically understaffed. For many years the department dealt with significantly less gang crime than police in the city of Los Angeles. No more. At least half of the homicides in sheriff's territories are now gang killings, about the same level as in the city. Statewide, gang violence accounts for about 16% of all homicides. But although the Los Angeles Police Department under Chief William J. Bratton has reconstituted and increased the size of its anti-gang units, assigning nearly 350 officers to gang enforcement duty, the gang unit under Sheriff Lee Baca has shrunk. The sheriff's anti-gang units have 20 fewer deputies than authorized in the department's budget — about 150 sworn officers instead of 170. Those numbers are down from a high of nearly 190 sworn deputies on duty three years ago. This year, while gang homicides rose sharply in a few small areas patrolled by the sheriff — Compton, East Los Angeles and unincorporated neighborhoods bordering Watts — Operation Safe Streets, the department's anti-gang unit, lacked flexibility to move specially trained personnel out of lower-crime areas and into communities with soaring gang killings, according to its head of operations."Unit commanders should have the autonomy to put their resources in the places they would have the greatest impact based on crime statistics," said Lt. Bob Rifkin. "We are spread too thin to try to do the whole county. Do you do a mediocre job in the whole county or do you do a dynamite job in the quarter of the county where the worst crime is?"In an interview Friday, Baca seemed surprised that gang homicides were up substantially — 210 as of late last week, compared with 164 for the same period last year — but said he needs more personnel to deal with gang crime."We are doing our best with what we have and we don't have enough," he said. "If you doubled what we have, we don't have enough."Baca is promoting a quarter-cent sales tax earmarked for gang intervention and enforcement, which he hopes to get on the ballot next year. Such a tax would generate about $280 million annually for law enforcement agencies in L.A. County, he said. For the time being, Baca said, shifting resources is not the answer because it might suppress crime in one area at the cost of allowing it to increase elsewhere."What one has to understand is the nature of policing gangs," Baca said. "There are over 100-plus active violent gangs in Los Angeles County, and you have 100 holes in the dike and the problem is you only have so many plugs. If you pull one plug in an area where you've plugged up the violence, will it pour out there again?"The department's difficulties responding to the increased rate of killing underscore two of the biggest problems the Sheriff's Department faces: It is seriously understaffed, with nearly 1,000 fewer deputies overall than the 9,500 authorized, and its political structure works against assigning available deputies based on the worst crime problems. The Sheriff's Department patrols unincorporated areas of the county and 41 cities that contract with the department for policing. Cities pay for a specific number of deputies each year and, if they can afford it, may add personnel and specialized teams as needed. Baca said about 55% of his deputies work under city contracts. Maintaining good relationships with the officials of contract cities has long been a high priority for senior officials of the department. There has also been considerable pressure recently from the county Board of Supervisors to ensure that county areas are getting their fair share of services. The gang unit is one of several specialized teams that work countywide for all residents, allowing the sheriff discretion — in theory, at least — in their deployment. But because the department serves an area with 2.6 million residents over 4,000 square miles, distribution of limited resources is challenging. Capt. Mike Ford, who runs Operation Safe Streets and is Rifkin's boss, noted that although other areas have fewer homicides than Compton, gang crime is quite real to people who live in those areas."The reality is we work for the people who live there, and no one likes to deal with graffiti or drug dealing," he said, adding that he would be reluctant to withdraw officers from other areas, even if that were politically possible. But some gang crime experts warn that the department's approach to distributing its deputies could allow crime to spread."If 50% or more of your murders are gang-related, it looks to me like you ought to have a lot of resources doing that," said Wes McBride, president of the Assn. of California Gang Investigators

*
“WHEN THESE GUYS COME OUT OF COMPTON ---- WHEN THEY DO THEIR RAPE, ROB, AND PILLAGE IN THE REST OF THE COUNTY BECAUSE THEY’VE MAXIMIZED WHAT THEY CAN GET IN COMPTON ---- THEY’RE GOING TO COME TO OTHER CITIES.”

*

When these guys come out of Compton — when they do their rape, rob and pillage in the rest of the county because they've maximized what they can get in Compton — they're going to come to other cities," said McBride, who headed Operation Safe Streets before retiring in 2002.Sheriff's officials count a crime as gang-related only if it is directly tied to gang activity. If the wife of a gang member is killed by her husband in a domestic dispute, for example, it is not counted as a gang crime. If she is killed to stop her from telling authorities about the gang, it is. The rise in gang violence in Compton, as well as in East Los Angeles and areas bordering southeast Los Angeles, has pushed up overall homicides for the Sheriff's Department. With three weeks remaining in 2005, homicides of all types in county areas and in cities that contract with the Sheriff's Department total 395, passing last year's 392.By contrast, although the city of Los Angeles continues to record more homicides than the county, its total has fallen and is on track to be at its lowest in half a dozen years. As of the end of October, the LAPD reported a 15% decline in gang homicides over the same period last year, 216 compared with 255.Ford said gang suppression and investigation remain top priorities for the department. "The question," he said, "is how many resources do you have?"Through late last week, Compton had 68 gang-related homicides, up from 42 for all of last year. The nearby territory bordering southeast Los Angeles, patrolled by the Century sheriff's station, had 57 gang-related homicides, up from 37 in 2004.Together, the two areas account for nearly 60% of the county's gang-related homicides, Sheriff's Department statistics show. Yet about a quarter of available gang investigators are assigned to those areas. In addition, each shares a gang suppression team with a neighboring station, a move made last year by Ford when, he said, insufficient staff made regional teams necessary. Ten gang suppression deputies and a sergeant are assigned to the Compton-Carson area, where there have been 72 gang homicides this year. Another team of 11 serves Century and Lennox stations, which account for 70 gang killings. In comparison, the Palmdale and Lancaster area also has a team of 11 gang suppression officers, two paid under Lancaster's contract. That area has had 13 gang-related homicides this year. The sheriff made no move to shift gang officers to Compton when violence shot upward there early this year. At Century station, where a specific gang war was identified, a task force was formed, but the gang unit was not expanded. Another problem area has been East Los Angeles, which has had 20 gang-related homicides this year, up from 11 for each of the previous two years. In that area, too, the number of gang enforcement personnel has not been increased. The need for a larger gang enforcement team is widely acknowledged. McBride, who spent nearly three decades as a gang specialist in the Sheriff's Department, estimated that Compton's gang problem alone would justify 50 gang suppression officers and a team of 10 to 15 investigators. Ford and other gang experts caution that simply moving deputies to a hot spot might not have much impact. Effective gang officers, they note, develop sources on the street over time. Compton's level of gang activity, for instance, complicates law enforcement efforts to get intelligence and also makes it harder to target any one area to significantly reduce criminal activity, sheriff's officials said.The city, which covers 10 square miles and has about 96,000 residents, has at least 10 active and violent street gangs, as well as numerous other crews, said Percy Perrodin, the city's former deputy police chief and brother of Mayor Eric Perrodin."You're talking about a very complex gang situation," said Cheryl Maxson, a UC Irvine professor who studies street gangs. By mid-2005, Compton had as many homicides as all of 2004, but city officials said there were no additional funds to add to the 72 deputies who patrol the city."People need to realize that Compton's problems won't stay in Compton. Absolutely, they ought to be concerned about what's happening, and they ought to help," he said. "We give foreign aid to other countries so they won't fall apart. How about some domestic aid?"


COMPTON’S PROBLEMS WON’T STAY IN COMPTON.... NO, THEY’RE ALL OVER THE 50 STATES NOW