The
highly organized street gang is known for prolific drug trafficking and
violence.
Founded
in the 1940s by Puerto Ricans, it is now mostly made up of Mexican members.
There is believed to be 160 chapters in the U.S. with 20 - 35,000 members.
Many
chapters have developed strong alliances with Mexican cartels to tighten their
grip on the U.S. drugs market.
Woman,
44, discovered by chance during drugs bust after being kept in padlocked room
'for a decade'
- Police had been searching Michael Mendez's New Jersey apartment for
drugs when they found her
- Alleged member of violent Latin Kings street gang charged with
kidnapping and held on $1m bail
PUBLISHED:16:10
EST, 13 August 2012| UPDATED:17:25 EST, 13 August 2012
A narcotics squad on a drugs bust found a
woman padlocked in a bedroom where they believe she may have been kept for up
to ten years.
The third-floor apartment of Michael Mendez,
41, was being searched because he has strong links to the violent Latin Kings
street gang.
Officers found the 44-year-old woman
imprisoned at the home in Paterson, New Jersey.
Drugs bust: Michael Mendez, 41, allegedly
held a woman in a padlocked room at his home in Paterson, New Jersey
A police spokesman told MailOnline that based
on evidence at the scene, detectives believed that the woman had been locked in
the room on and off for at least two years and potentially up to a decade.
There was a bucket in the room as a chamber
pot, according to NBC New Yorkand Mendez allowed his victim access to a TV.
The woman, who has not been identified
because she is a victim, was sometimes let out of the room when her captor was
home.
There was no indication that she had been
malnourished but she was currently receiving medical treatment at St Joseph's
Medical Center in Paterson.
Captive: The woman was kept locked in a room
at Alois Place in Paterson, New Jersey
One neighbor at the brick building on Alois
Place said he had known Mendez for around 12 years and that Mendez would hang
out in the communal areas of the apartment complex.
THE LATIN KINGS
The
highly organized street gang is known for prolific drug trafficking and
violence.
Founded
in the 1940s by Puerto Ricans, it is now mostly made up of Mexican members.
There is believed to be 160 chapters in the U.S. with 20 - 35,000 members.
Many
chapters have developed strong alliances with Mexican cartels to tighten their
grip on the U.S. drugs market.
Primary sources of income include street
dealing of cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
Gang colors are black and gold with tattoos
and graffiti consisting of five or three-point crowns.
Last year, 15 gang members or associates of
the Latin Kings - including two Chicago police officers - were indicted in an
alleged racketeering conspiracy that resulted in 19 murders.
He said he had seen the woman a few times in
the past although it was rare.
The man, who refused to give his name because
of worries over safety, said he remembered seeing the woman get into a car a
few times.
A maintenance worker, who also declined to
give his name because of concerns over his safety, remembered the woman
'cussing me out one time when I was doing my work'.
Neighbors on either side of Mendez's
top-floor apartment said they weren't aware that another person lived in the
apartment.
'I didn't see any woman,' said a man who
identified himself only as Buddy and opened his door only a few inches as he
spoke.
'This is the first I'm hearing of it.'
Mendez, whom police said has strong gang
ties, was being held at Passaic County Jail on $1million cash bail.
The Latin Kings is a violent street gang who
have been previously been investigated by the FBI for drug trafficking, weapons
and racketeering.
Mendez was charged with kidnapping, false
imprisonment and other counts related to drugs.
State police said they found 4,200
prescription pills valued at $100,000, 190 grams of marijuana valued at nearly
$2,000 and nearly $23,000 in cash inside his apartment.
According to court records, Mendez has two
prior convictions for aggravated assault, one of which carried a three-month
jail term.
Prolific violence: Mendez was said to have
ties to the Latin Kings gang, who are known for violence and drug trafficking,
and can be identified by their striking tattoos
Danger: Mendez, 41, was being held on $1m bail at Passaic County Jail on charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment
THE MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE SPREADS ACROSS THE UNITED
STATES
Everyday there are 12 Americans murdered by Mexicans and 8
children molested!
California Attorney Gen Kamala Harris announced that nearly
HALF of all murders in Mex-occupied CA are by MEX GANGS!
*
WILL MEXICO BANKRUPT AMERICA?
CALIFORNIA UNDER MEXICAN-OCCUPATION PAYS OUT $22 BILLION PER
YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS!
*
WILL OHIO BE BANKRUPTED BY THE LA RAZA MEX-OCCUPATION THAT
NOT ONE LEGAL VOTED FOR?
*
HOW MANY BILLIONS ARE MARYLANDERS FORCED TO PAY FOR MEX
WELFARE AND LOOTING?
*
BARACK OBAMA, FIRST HISPANDERING LA RAZA “THE RACE”
PRESIDENT – HIS LA RAZA SUPREMACIST INFESTED ADMINISTRATION:
*
OBAMA AND MEXICO PROMISE ILLEGALS JUMPING OUR BORDERS
OBAMACARE, “FREE” MEDICAL, “FREE” ANCHOR BABY BIRTHING = 18 YEARS WELFARE, AND
OUR JOBS!
*
ROBERT RECTOR: THE STAGGERING COST OF MEXICO’S INVASION,
OCCUPATION AND EVER GROWING WELFARE STATE
*
ONE OF MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORTS NEXT TO DRUGS, AND CRIMINALS
ARE PREGNANT WOMEN. THESE POOR DESPERATE WOMEN JUMP OUR BORDERS FOR “FREE”
ANCHOR BABY BIRTHING = 18 YEARS OF WELFARE FOR EACH CHILD.
THE CHILDREN BORN OF MEXICANS THAT ILLEGALLY CROSSED OUR
BORDERS IS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN BUT STILL A CITIZEN OF MEXICO.
*
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA BY MEXICO, BARACK OBAMA and ERIC
HOLDER
OBAMA’S HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA:
*
ANCHOR BABIES – HOW MEXICO ANCHORS THEIR OCCUPATION AND
EXPAND THEIR WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS!
*
FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE”
by Michelle Malkin
Only in America could critics of a group called
"The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing
identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have
succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."
Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this
week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza,
the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race."
Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who
called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media
have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and
marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that
the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars
and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.
*
Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race":
15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
*
14."The Race" demands in-state tuition
discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S.
citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.
*
13. "The Race" vehemently opposes
cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal
authorities.
*
12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border.
*
11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds
from entering immigration information into a key national crime database -- and
to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.
*
10. "The Race" opposed the state of
Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to
illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal
cooperation and information sharing.
*
9. "The Race" joined other open-borders,
anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227, California's
bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
*
8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."
*
7. "The Race" has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
*
6. Former "Race" president Raul
Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S.
English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was
referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group
dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United
States. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and
advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while
avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."
*
5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a
poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP
Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as "a radical
racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has
permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a
racist nation out of the American West."
*
4. "The Race" is currently leading a
smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called
for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off
the airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut
up their foes. The New York Times reported that current "Race"
president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be
tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment
rights."
*
3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic
nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8
million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in
Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez
Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los
Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink from a White
water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of
collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain …
ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of
life will eventually lead to our own destruction."
*
2. "The Race" has perfected the art of
the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan
standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage
counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and
partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
*
1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy
-- and the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian
Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The
National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the
contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the
meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people'-- and that's precisely why we
don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would
not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."
The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza?