245: October 2008 Archives

Looks like it was another busy weekend for law enforcement with violent acts reported throughout the region.

HACIENDA HEIGHTS -- A man's body was discovered in a residential driveway Sunday with apparent gunshot wounds, authorities said.

EL MONTE -- A man stabbed to death in a motel room over the weekend was bound and gagged when a maid found his body, according to a motel employee.

SAN GABRIEL -- A man was hospitalized with serious injuries Saturday after he was stabbed at a shopping center, authorities said.

PICO RIVERA -- Gunfire ended a Halloween party in Pico Rivera Saturday, leaving one person wounded and at least one suspect on the run, a sheriff's sergeant said.

There are some fascinating peeks at the workings of the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang in the federal grand jury indictment released Tuesday.

Their brutality is apparent:

"On August 18, 2006, in Los Angeles County, defendant (William `Dago Bill' Shawley) advised an undercover law enforcement officer that he and defendants (David `L.A. Bull' Gil) and (Aaron `Sick Boy' Price) had captured an individual and tortured him for three hours, by breaking the man's knuckles with a pair of pliers, breaking his knee by hitting it with a metal pipe."

Alongside the action, a sub-plot emerges from the pages and pages of court documents.

It lies in the ongoing feuds among individual Mongols and a turf battle between bikers and area street gangs who are loyal to La Eme.

While there's been a push by former Mongols president Ruben "Doc" Cavazos to recruit street gang members, old-time members have been resistant.

Meanwhile, newer members have been reluctant to pay taxes on illicit drug sales to La Eme, because they are already paying the Mongols.

Last year, Cavazos wanted to broker an agreement between the organizations, but instead found himself targeted, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, an informant told an undercover ATF agent that "Cavazos was attempting to negotiate with La Eme to compensate them for the narcotics-trafficking being conducted by Mongols members.

"Cavazos had met with

Although the meeting took place on the other side of town, it's pretty clear the San Gabriel Valley is fertile ground for organized crime.

This is prime turf for credit card scams, dope deals, money laundering, extortion, prostitution, assault and murder.

Stuff that happens here every day. Stuff that often gets reported in the newspaper, but in a disconnected, bullet-points-on-a-blotter sort of way that occasionally fleshes out the big picture.

Think about all the groups that operate in our neighborhoods. There's La Eme. We have the Wah Ching and assorted other Asian gangs. Crips and Bloods rule some neighborhoods, while Armenian and Russian gangsters continue to filter into the SGV from Glendale and Los Angeles.

If anything it's a Balkanization of sorts. And from time to time, each gang has its moment in the spotlight because of a large-scale federal or county prosecution.

Despite turf battles and rivalries, the prosecutions of these gangs highlight plenty of similarities - mainly the desire to make money. Lots of it. By any means necessary - including beatings and murder.

But it also paints a picture of young men who believe they are the last true individualists in America.

In his 1966 book "Hell's Angels," Hunter S. Thompson saw violent motorcycle gangs as part of the bleak and terrible rise of a new form of gangsterism dispensing equal amounts of violence and dope.

"(They are) not some romantic leftover, but the first wave of a future that nothing in our history has prepared us to deal with," Thompson wrote.

Lawrence Phillips, an outstanding tailback at Baldwin Park High and in the pros for the Rams and 49ers, got 10 years state prison time for an assault at a pick up football game. AP, NFL Blog