gangs: February 2008 Archives

Somehow sheriff's deputies were able to determine that a man who said he was shot in Duarte was actually shot in Altadena.

Last night we reported another Duarte shooting. The victim had taken himself to an area hospital and we were going to fill in the gaps.

TUrns out it didn't happen in Duarte at all or Arcadia or Monrovia. The shooting took place several miles away in Altadena.

Injured was a Latino man. Sheriff's detectives said the shooting was gang related.

County probation officer picked up in parole sweep with a dozen felons.

Here's a snippet:

Among those named in the indictment is a reputed leader of the Crips street gang, 27-year-old Jerron Johns of San Bernardino, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. His girlfriend, Crystal Dillard, a Los Angeles County Probation Officer, is also named. Both were arrested late last month after Johns sold more than 2 pounds of crack cocaine to a police informant, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Meanwhile, police say they are hunting another high-profile gang leader with ties to the operation. They say Raymond King, 37, is the main source of crack cocaine in Pomona.

"We will continue to work with local authorities to go after the worst street gangs that traffic in narcotics and terrorize neighborhoods with their violence," U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said in a written statement.

NY man upset with daughter for text messages; suspected of killing her.

Once a month, the Hispanic Outreach Taskforce gets together with the police chief in Whittier to discuss topics of interest to the community at large.

The meeting is a brown bag deal. There are sandwiches, sodas and a lot of conversation.
Topic A last week was a gang injunction the police are beginning to enforce against Whittier Varrio Locos, near Uptown.

Police Chief David Singer said officers are still in the process of notifying 40 gang members that they can’t do certain things in their neighborhood anymore. Among those things: carrying weapons, loitering, throwing gang signs and tagging.

Montebello has a similar ordinance on the books and officials claim that since it was enacted in 2004, there has been a marked decrease in gang crime.

In the wake of recent violence in Monrovia and Duarte, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. David Shaw of the sheriff’s Temple Station, which patrols unincorporated areas of the community, suggested a gang injunction was being explored as a possible way to get gang members off the streets. No action has yet been taken.

While the injunctions in Montebello and Whittier are relatively new, the tool has been in law enforcement’s toolbox since the mid-1990s.

For example, Norwalk used one with great success against a particularly violent Latino gang. Pasadena hoped to duplicate the effort and enjoined the Pasadena Denver Lanes Blood gang.

The move essentially flowed from a community reaction to the Halloween Homicides. On Oct. 31, 1993, Edgar “Eddie” Evans, Reginald Crawford and Stephen Coates were gunned down as they walked home from a friend’s Halloween party.

Herbert “Monster” McClain, Lorenzo Newborn and Karl Holmes, all members of the Denver Lanes gang, were convicted of murder and ultimately sentenced to death.

Enforcement of the order against PDL was fairly effective, and the neighborhood around Summit Avenue became safer for a while.

Nearly a year later, city officials and the District Attorney’s Office came close to taking similar action against the Villa Boys and Krazy Boys Latino gangs.

But when Bernard Melekian took over as chief in 1996, he derided the injunctions and chose to fight gangs with a mantra of “community policing” that was popular at the time. The injunctions faded away from lack of enforcement and Pasadena’s gangs went back to being Pasadena’s gangs.

A few years later, Melekian defended the decision to Daniel Sharfstein, a one-time reporter here, who was writing a piece for a publication called The American Prospect.

The chief, now interim city manager, called injunctions “an intellectual substitute for responsible public policy.”
My guess is that officials in Montebello, Whittier and Monrovia know best what they are up against. They also know what makes “responsible public policy” in their communities.

If a gang injunction works in Monrovia, my guess is there won’t be too many law-abiding taxpayers who will complain.

Fred Ortega's piece on the history and influence of La Eme is now online. Here's an excerpt from the bottom of the story:  The SGVN's online look at gangs is here.

The (Lola) Llantada case is only the latest example of the influence that the Eme wields in the San Gabriel Valley.

In April 2006, four men were arrested in Pomona in connection with an attempted Mexican Mafia contract killing. Their trial is scheduled for this year.

Last November, reputed Emero Frank "Frankie B" Buelna, 61, was shot to death in a Pomona sports bar. Buelna was reputed to have broad power within the Mexican Mafia, and officials are still investigating the motive behind his killing. The perpetrators are still at large.

And in December, reputed Eme member Eulalio "Lalo" Martinez, 46, was charged with ordering the killing of former gang member Donald "Pato" Schubert in Rosemead in 1998. In that case, prosecutors allege that Martinez runs the Lomas Rosemead street gang from Pelican Bay State Prison, where he has been incarcerated for the past 15 years.

La Eme's deep roots in the San Gabriel Valley became clearly evident to Steinwand, the sheriff's homicide investigator, when he moved to the Industry Station from the South Central Los Angeles area early in his career.

"Over there in South Central when there were orders from the Eme to stop drive-bys, guys would go out and do five of them in one night just to spite them," said Steinwand, who has been a detective for 18 years. "But they have a lot more control on this side of the 710 (Freeway).

"When I came to work at the Industry Station, it was amazing," he added. "When the Eme said something, (the gangs) listened."

 

Some of this information surfaced during the investigation of Robert Whitehead's killing. Whitehead was killed after confronting taggers near his parents home. Among those suspected in the case was Paul "Malo" Salazar, a graduate of Bishop Amat High School in La Puente, who was also a suspected member of Puente Trece.

Salazar was killed at his home during a get-together in July.

Interesting side note, Whitehead's brother is a Monrovia police officer. 

This occurred Friday night in Duarte. I've heard that residents of the area have seen a significant amount of police activity last night and today.

Brian Day wrote the story:

LA Opinion, the Spanish language newspaper has been covering the recent events in Monrovia. I found and translated two articles that may be of interest.

They are here and here.

Additionally, I uncovered a report from Monrovia City Manager Scott Ochoa outlining some history and again giving the city's take on the ongoing situation.