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.'"




*
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.
*
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 OpiniĆ³n, 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

WHY DO THE LA RAZA DEMS FIGHT E-VERIFY SO HARD? Expanding the Mexican Welfare & Crime State

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

CAN YOU HEAR THE LA RAZA WHORES SCREAMIN NO E-VERIFY FOR ILLEGALS GETTING ILLEGAL MORTGAGES? LIKE THEY DO ILLEGALS GETTING OUR JOBS!

You can bet that LA RAZA WHORES, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, LOFGREN, WAXMAN, BACA, FARR, HONDA, BECERRA AND THE MEX SISTERS SANCHEZ, LORETTA AND LINDA, WILL OPPOSE THIS BILL.

YOU CAN BET LA RAZA HARRY REID WILL!

WHORE FEINSTEIN HAS TAKEN MUCHO PESOS FROM LA RAZA DONOR BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO AND BANK OF AMERICAN TO MAKE SURE THERE’S NO BANKSTER REGULATION, THE BAILOUTS KEEP FLOWING AND THERE’S OPEN BORDERS AND AMNESTY.
WELLS FARGO AND BANK OF AMERICAN HAVE LONG MADE DIRTY PROFITS FROM FUCKING OVER ILLEGALS.
WELLS FARGO HAS LONG HAD THEIR CA MORTGAGE LICENSE REVOKED FOR CORRUPTION AND MALFEASANCE. THE BANKSTER CONDUCT THEY WENT AROUND THE COUNTRY FUCKING PEOPLE OVER BY THE MILLIONS.
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In Rep. Dan Tancredo’s district there have been more than 10,000 mortgages owned by illegals that went into foreclosure. It’s only part of the border to border crime wave perpetrated by illegals from Mexico.

Time to fight AMNESTY and OPEN BORDERS?
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E-Verify for Mortgage Applications (fraudulent claims from illegal immigrant)
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Date: 2010-02-15, 10:38AM PST
Reply to: comm-whuqc-1601882525@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
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Rep. Kenny Marchant Proposes Bill to use E-Verify for Mortgage Applications
Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 9:56 AM EST - posted on NumbersUSA

Rep. Kenny Marchant
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) has offered the Mortgage E-Verify Act that would require a mortgagor to be verified through E-Verify when applying for a modification of a home loan owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

"As a member of the House Financial Services Committee, I am happy to introduce my bill, the Mortgage E-Verify Act, which would require, as a condition for modification of a home mortgage loan held by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), that the mortgagor be verified under the E-Verify program," Rep. Marchant said in a press release. "My bill will potentially save millions by cutting down on fraudulent claims from illegal immigrants and protect taxpayers from subsidizing the restructuring or renegotiation mortgages of illegal immigrants."

Rep. Marchant's bill is a result of a major case in Nevada where a loan officer submitted false income and employment documentation to help illegal aliens secure FHA loans. The scam totaled $6.2 million in loans with many going into default, costing HUD nearly $2 million. The loan officer was found guilty on 32 counts of submitting false information.

"E-Verify is a fantastic program which I have supported making permanent for employers," Rep. Marchant said. "Mandating its use as a condition for home mortgage loan modifications would help eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the system and bring integrity to the process. In fact, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement division (FinCEN) estimates that mortgage fraud increased 1,411 percent from 1997 to 2005. Furthermore, two-thirds of fraud reports in the last decade are due to falsified statements on loan documents. My bill would curb these abuses and protect the taxpayers."
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WELLS FARGO, AND BANK of AMERICA ARE MAJOR DONORS TO LA RAZA, AND ACTIVELY ILLEGALLY OPEN BANK ACCOUNTS FOR ILLEGALS. CNN REPORTS THAT 20% OF THE MONEY ILLEGALS WIRE BACK TO MEXICO MAY BE FROM MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL SOURCES.

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, November 12, 2007

Mortgage giants Wells Fargo and Countrywide Financial are accused of slapping dubious fees on homeowners struggling to save their homes. With fewer new mortgages being written, these
companies appear to be leaning on these lucrative fees to stay profitable—with devastating consequences for homeowners. We’ll have that report.
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No. Of Illegal Aliens On Welfare Doubles In Nevada
Last Updated: Tue, 11/03/2009 - 12:51pm
A relatively new federal program that allows illegal immigrants to use their American-born anchor babies to collect welfare for the entire family has expanded nationwide and nearly doubled in a western state that already spends hundreds of millions of dollars to provide undocumented residents with public services.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) was created by the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services a few years ago so that illegal aliens could get monthly welfare checks to help support the entire family. It is the only public assistance program where parents can apply in their children’s name as opposed to applying in their own. It also does not require parents to demonstrate that they are in the U.S. legally since most aren’t.
In Nevada alone, the TANF program’s caseload has grown 96% since the recession hit the state like an atomic bomb two years ago. A news report reveals that around 4,250 of the families receiving the benefit in Nevada have “mixed immigration status.” In other words, U.S. taxpayers are supporting thousands of illegal alien families because they have at least one anchor baby.
Nevada already blows a whopping $630 million a year to provide its rapidly growing illegal immigrant population with public services that should be reserved for legal U.S. residents. The Silver State spends $470 million annually to educate the children of illegal immigrants in public schools and an additional $45 million for limited English programs. Eighty five million goes to healthcare for illegal immigrants and $31 to incarcerate them.
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GROUND ZERO FOR FORECLOSURES IS HARRY REID’S LAS VEGAS!
FORECLOSURES ARE HIGHEST IN STATES WITH THE HIGHEST FORECLOSURE RATES.

Illegal aliens are also largely responsible for Nevada’s home foreclosure crisis, reportedly the nation’s worst. Around 5 million fraudulent mortgages nationwide are in the hands of illegal aliens, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and it is no secret that a substantial chunk of them are in Nevada.
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states that border Mexico caused the meltdown (simply loans to ILLEGALS)
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September 25, 2008

It’s also no accident that the vast majority of the mortgages already defaulted on or about to default come from states where illegal immigration is the most rampant. According to the New York Times: California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. It was time to scam America internally and externally.

(THE POPULATION OF HARRY REID’S STATE OF NEVADA IS NOW 25% ILLEGAL. REID HAS WORKED TIRELESSLY FOR MORE ILLEGALS AND OBTAINED $5 MILLION ADDITIONAL TAX PAYER DOLLARS FOR LA RAZA! LAS VEGAS HAS ONE OF THE HIGHEST RATES OF FORECLOSURES IN AMERICA!)

The mortgages, with an average size of about $450,000, were Alt-A loans — the kind often referred to as liar loans, because lenders made them without the usual documentation to verify borrowers’ incomes or savings. Some of the loans came only via an on-line application with no appearance of the person getting the loan was needed. Nearly 60 percent of the loans were made in California, Florida and Arizona, where home prices rose — and subsequently fell — faster than almost anywhere else in the country.

But there’s so much more, according to blogger and journalist Michelle Malkin:

Regional reports across the country have decried the subprime meltdown’s impact on illegal immigrant “victims.” A July report showed that in seven of the 10 metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, Hispanics represented at least one-third of the population; in two of those areas – Merced and Salinas-Monterey, Calif. – Hispanics comprised half the population. The amnesty-promoting National Council of La Raza and its Development Fund have received millions in federal funds to “counsel” their constituents on obtaining mortgages with little to no money down; the group almost succeeded in attaching a $10 million earmark for itself in one of the housing bills past this spring. ( Proving corruption in high levels of our government) our SENATORS are operating in a Clandestine manner.

(A clandestine operation is an intelligence or military operation carried out in such a way that the operation goes unnoticed).

Come on people it is 1776 all over again. Some of the owners of the Federal Reserve live in England and Germany. The largest shareholder in the illegal stock of the Federal Reserve lives in England, by the way, this is why England's money is worth the most on earth. Gold prices are set in London each morning. The Euro is the second strongest currency followed by the USA.....we are mere puppets for paying the piper to make these people rich beyond imagination.

So, once again, U. S. citizens will pay for the lawlessness of our leaders and their friends on Wall Street. It is a very bad time for our country!

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

“The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor

MILLIONS of UNEMPLOYED FACE YEARS WITHOUT JOBS - What About 38 Million Illegals?

WHAT WOULD THIS PICTURE BE IF IT WERE NOT FOR 38 MILLION ILLEGALS?

WHAT WOULD THIS PICTURE BE IF YOU WERE NOT PAYING FOR THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE?

WHAT WOULD THIS PICTURE BE IF YOU WERE NOT PAYING FOR THE MEXICAN PRISON SYSTEM?

WHAT IF THE 800,000 MEXICAN GANGS (source:Lou Dobbs) WERE NEVER ALLOWED OVER OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS?

STILL GOING TO VOTE BACK AN INCUMBENT?

TIME TO STOP VOTING FOR LA RAZA ENDORSED POLITICIANS?


NEW YORK TIMES

February 21, 2010
THE NEW POOR
Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs
By PETER S. GOODMAN
BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.
Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.
Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.
She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious — an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material — finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.
“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”
Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.
Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group — women from 45 to 64 years of age — whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.
In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.
Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.
“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.
Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.
Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.
Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.
A New Scarcity of Jobs
Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce — particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.
Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.
“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”
During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.
“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”
Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.
After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.
Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million.
It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say.
Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.
At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.
All of which helps explain why Ms. Eisen — who has never before struggled to find work — feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings on her computer: There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.
If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people like Ms. Eisen will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.
“The system was ill prepared for the reality of long-term unemployment,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director for the National Employment Law Project. “Now, you add a severe recession, and you have created a crisis of historic proportions.”
Fewer Protections
Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Social services are less extensive than during the last period of double-digit unemployment, in the early 1980s.
On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.
“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”
When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month — $25 less than her husband’s disability check.
Reforms in the mid-1990s imposed time limits on cash assistance for poor single mothers, a change predicated on the assumption that women would trade welfare checks for paychecks.
Yet as jobs have become harder to get, so has welfare: as of 2006, 44 states cut off anyone with a household income totaling 75 percent of the poverty level — then limited to $1,383 a month for a family of three — according to an analysis by Ms. Albelda.
“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”
Here in Orange County, the expanse of suburbia stretching south from Los Angeles, long-term unemployment reaches even those who once had six-figure salaries. A center of the national mortgage industry, the area prospered in the real estate boom and suffered with the bust.
Until she was laid off two years ago, Janine Booth, 41, brought home roughly $10,000 a month in commissions from her job selling electronics to retailers. A single mother of three, she has been living lately on $2,000 a month in child support and about $450 a week in unemployment insurance — a stream of checks that ran out last week.
For Ms. Booth, work has been a constant since her teenage years, when she cleaned houses under pressure from her mother to earn pocket money. Today, Ms. Booth pays her $1,500 monthly mortgage with help from her mother, who is herself living off savings after being laid off.
“I don’t want to take money from her,” Ms. Booth said. “I just want to find a job.”
Ms. Booth, with a rƩsumƩ full of well-paid sales jobs, seems the sort of person who would have little difficulty getting work. Yet two years of looking have yielded little but anxiety.
She sends out dozens of rƩsumƩs a week and rarely hears back. She responds to online ads, only to learn they are seeking operators for telephone sex lines or people willing to send mysterious packages from their homes.
She spends weekdays in a classroom in Anaheim, in a state-financed training program that is supposed to land her a job in medical administration. Even if she does find a job, she will be lucky if it pays $15 an hour.
“What is going to happen?” she asked plaintively. “I worry about my kids. I just don’t want them to think I’m a failure.”
On a recent weekend, she was running errands with her 18-year-old son when they stopped at an A.T.M. and he saw her checking account balance: $50.
“He says, ‘Is that all you have?’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Are we going to be O.K.?’ ”
Yes, she replied — and not only for his benefit.
“I have to keep telling myself it’s going to be O.K.,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d go into a deep depression.”
Last week, she made up fliers advertising her eagerness to clean houses — the same activity that provided her with spending money in high school, and now the only way she sees fit to provide for her kids. She plans to place the fliers on porches in some other neighborhood.
“I don’t want to clean my neighbors’ houses,” she said. “I know I’m going to come out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be homeless and poverty-stricken. But I am scared. I have a lot of sleepless nights.”
For the Eisens, poverty is already here. In the two years Ms. Eisen has been without work, they have exhausted their savings of about $24,000. Their credit card balances have grown to $15,000.
“I don’t know how we’re still indoors,” she said.
Her 1994 Dodge Caravan broke down in January, leaving her to ask for rides to an employment center.
She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.
“You have to have money for first and last month’s rent, and to open utility accounts,” she said.
What she has is personality and presence — two traits that used to seem enough. She narrates her life in a stream of self-deprecating wisecracks, her punch lines tinged with desperation.
“See that,” she said, spotting a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Standing on a sidewalk, he waved at passing cars with a sign advertising a tax preparation business. “That will be me next week. Do you think this guy ever thought he’d be doing this?”
And yet, she would gladly do this. She would do nearly anything.
“There are no bad jobs now,” she says. “Any job is a good job.”
She has applied everywhere she can think of — at offices, at gas stations. Nothing.
“I’m being seen as a person who is no longer viable,” she said. “I’m chalking it up to my age and my weight. Blame it on your most prominent insecurity.”
Two Incomes, Then None
Ms. Eisen grew up poor, in Flatbush in Brooklyn. Her father was in maintenance. Her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.
She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company. They rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.
“I never asked him how much he earned,” Ms. Eisen said. “I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.”
By the early 1980s, gas and rent strained their finances. So she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.
When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus — enough for presents under the Christmas tree.
But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments — diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure — leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.
And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.
For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.
Their daughter has back problems and is living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.
“I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,” Ms. Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.
When her name is called, she steps into a windowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.
“Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?” Ms. Eisen asks.
For one thing, no pinto beans.
“I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,” she says. “And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.”
Local job listings are just as mysterious. On a bulletin board at the county-financed ProPath Business and Career Services Center, many are written in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.
“Nothing I’m qualified for,” Ms. Eisen says. “When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”
Her counselor has a couple of possibilities — a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.
“I’ll e-mail them,” Ms. Eisen promises. “I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.”

OBAMA'S FAKE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT - Selling Us Out To Illegals

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
THE LA RAZA DEMS – NO BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY HERE.
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While Obama pushes war over there, he is equally intent on leaving our borders with NARCOMEX undefended, open and ready for business with the Mexican drug cartels.
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The Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.
By Ira Mehlman
Published on 12/07/2009
Townhall.com
The setting was not quite the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with a “Mission Accomplished” banner as the backdrop, but it was the next best thing. Speaking at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Nov. 13, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared victory over illegal immigration and announced that the Obama administration is ready to move forward with a mass amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens already living in the United States.
Arguing the Obama administration’s case for amnesty, Napolitano laid out what she described as the “three-legged stool” for immigration reform. As the administration views it, immigration reform must include “a commitment to serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.”
Acknowledging that a lack of confidence in the government’s ability and commitment to effectively enforce the immigration laws it passes proved to be the Waterloo of previous efforts to gain amnesty for illegal aliens, Napolitano was quick to reassure the American public that those concerns could be put to rest.
“For starters, the security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where it was in 2007,” stated the secretary. Not only is the border locked up tight, she continued, but the situation is well in-hand in the interior of the country as well. “We’ve also shown that the government is serious and strategic in its approach to enforcement by making changes in how we enforce the law in the interior of the country and at worksites…Furthermore, we’ve transformed worksite enforcement to truly address the demand side of illegal immigration.”
If Rep. Joe Wilson had been in attendance to hear Secretary Napolitano’s CAP speech he might well have had a few choice comments to offer. But since he wasn’t, we will have to rely on the Department of Homeland Security’s own data to assess the veracity of Napolitano’s claims.
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department. DHS claims to have “effective control” over just 894 miles of border. That’s 894 out of 8,607 miles they are charged with protecting. As for the other 7,713 miles? DHS’s stated border security goal for FY 2010 is the same 894 miles.
The administration’s strategic approach to interior and worksite enforcement is just as chimerical as its strategy at the border, unless one considers shuffling paper to be a strategy. DHS data, released November 18, show that administrative arrests of immigration law violators fell by 68 percent between 2008 and 2009. The department also carried out 60 percent fewer arrests for criminal violations of immigration laws, 58 percent fewer criminal indictments, and won 63 percent fewer convictions.
While the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers willing to accept substandard wages.
In Janet Napolitano’s alternative reality a mere 10 percent of our borders under “effective control” and sharp declines in arrests and prosecutions of immigration lawbreakers may be construed as confidence builders, but it is hard to imagine that the American public is going to see it that way. If anything, the administration’s record has left the public less confident that promises of future immigration enforcement would be worth the government paper they’re printed on.
As Americans scrutinize the administration’s plans to overhaul immigration policy, they are likely to find little in the “three-legged stool” being offered that they like or trust. The first leg – enforcement – the administration has all but sawed off. The second – increased admissions of extended family members and workers – makes little sense with some 25 million Americans either unemployed or relegated to part-time work. And the third – amnesty for millions of illegal aliens – is anathema to their sense of justice and fair play.
As Americans well know, declaring “Mission Accomplished” and actually accomplishing a mission are two completely different things. When it comes to enforcing immigration laws, the only message the public is receiving from this administration is “Mission Aborted.”
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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, September 28, 2009

And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed.
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