Monrovia: March 2008 Archives

A veteran Monrovia police Sergeant had been treated and released from a local hospital following a gun battle on city streets early Sunday morning.

Sgt. Dan Verna, who grew up in Monrovia and was a member of the Police Explorer program took at least one bullet to the chin and perhaps another in the shoulder.

Meanwhile, the man suspected of shooting Verna, was himself shot several times in an exchange of gunfire between Monrovia and CHP officers and the suspect.

The suspect has not been identified. He was apparently wanted in connection with some vehicle burglaries in both Monrovia and Arcadia, officials said.

*UPDATE: The Foothill Cities Blog has an entry, authored by Frazgo, devoted to the incident, including details about the suspect, who apparently has a lengthy rap sheet and was wanted in connection with a hot prowl in Arcadia.

The photo is of a memorial at the site in unincorporated Monrovia where Sammantha Salas was shot to death as she and a friend walked home to her father's apartment from a nearby dairy on Myrtle Avenue. The case remains unsolved. I receives this letter as one of several asking that a reward be established in the case. Sheriff's detectives and the Los Angeles County Supervisors have been reluctant to set up a reward in the case for fear that any information they receive will be suspect. Here's the letter:

On behalf of the family of 16 year old Samantha Sales,
killed January 26, 2008 in Monrovia by two young men,
I want to urge you to encourage Monrovia Mayor Rob
Hammod and Sheriff Lee Baca to establish a monetary
reward for anyone with information leading to the
arrest of these suspects.

with best regards,

Jim Weiss  President, Council of Los Angeles Archdiocese St. Vincent DePaul Society

The one-man Azusa crime wave known as Ralph  "Swifty" Flores, 26, received the death penalty Tuesday, as Tribune night guy Brian Day reported:

Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee, who prosecuted the case along with Deputy District Attorney Ian Phan, said Flores deserves to be put to death, "Because he smirks when he plans to kill people, he laughs when he does it, and he brags about it afterward. That's what the evidence showed."

She added that Flores has shown no compunction for his crimes, as he demonstrated by assaulting a sheriff's deputy before the trial began and ordering a "hit" on a deputy during the jury selection process.

Flores sat silently and motionless as the verdict was read, Hanisee said. He showed no reaction at all, she added.

Defense attorney Pierpont M. Laidley said he believes negative feeling toward gang members in general caused jurors to overlook problems in the prosecutions case. "That's why I feel my guy was lynched," he said.

Los Angeles Times' EME expert Sam Quinones extensively covered the trial and put some context in his story about the significance of the sentence and the effect of Flores' crime wave on Azusa politics. Quinones also notes the connection between Azusa 13 and Jacques Padilla, an Azusa emero who's been in the news lately. Here's a snippet from the Times:

For Azusa, the case marks the end to a violent chapter in which a handful of gang members called the "trigger clique" terrorized the town with a series of shootings, killings, robberies and hate crimes targeting blacks.

Their rampage lasted from 1999 to 2004.

Besides Flores, seven other Azusa 13 gang members were convicted of the crimes and sentenced to lengthy prison terms -- five of them in one 2004 trial.

"It was a violent time for the city," said Sgt. Mike Bertelsen, Azusa's gang expert. "We were having a murder a month at the end of 2002."

What brought this violent period to an end "was a combination of citizens, the clergy, City Council and police all working together," said City Manager Francis Delach. "I think that had a big impact."

Azusa's experience shows how a few gang members following directives from the Mexican Mafia prison gang can become a public policy issue, scaring residents while taxing the budget and police resources of an otherwise peaceful town.

 

 

 

 

The shooting of 17-year-old Davien "Day Day" Graham got underway in Alhambra Tuesday with some chilling testimony from "Day Day," who recalled hearing someone holler a gang slogan before opening fire.

As a result of the shooting, Graham was paralyzed. The attack was part of a string of shootings that plagued Monrovia in December and January.

This from Fred Ortega, who attended the hearing for 19-year-old Jimmy Santana of Duarte, a suspected member of the Monrovia Nuevo Varrio 13 gang. Graham is black, Santana is Latino. Much of the violence has stemmed from an apparent race war, officials say.

He described how he was riding his bike back home from the dairy on Jan. 12 in unincorporated Monrovia when a burgundy compact rolled up slowly behind him.
“I heard someone say ‘Hey fool, (expletive) Dirt Rock,’ and then he started shooting,” said Graham, whose 17th birthday was on Monday. Dirt Rock in a derogatory term for the Du-Rock Crips, a Duarte-based black gang.

This from the Associated Press:

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Bone-white stretches of salt, leached up from the lifeless soil, lay like a shroud over the high desert where a paranoid Charles Manson holed up after an orgy of murder nearly four decades ago.

Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness — gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live. But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were leading forensic investigators searching for new evidence of death — clues pointing to possible decades-old clandestine graves.

And the results of just-completed followup tests suggest bodies could indeed be lying beneath the parched ground. The test findings — described in detail to The Associated Press, which had accompanied the site search — conclude there are two likely clandestine grave sites at Barker Ranch, and one additional site that merits further investigation.

Next step, the ad hoc investigators urge: Dig.

The SGV connection?

Leslie Van Houten,  former Monrovia High School homecoming queen. 

 This comes from a friend of Sammantha Salas, 16, of Alhambra. Salas was shot to death outside her father's apartment in Monrovia. No arrests have been made. Her mother and others are hoping that a reward will be established to help capture the killers, who used a machine gun in the attack.

  In Loving Memory of Sammantha Salas
                                         December 19, 1991 - January 26, 2008
 
 
                                     You left us loving memories
                                      your love is still our guide.
                                      Although we cannot see you,
                                      You're always by our side.
 
These are a few phrases of "The Chain of Family" quoted on Sammantha's prayer card at her funeral.
Sammantha Salas in her 16 years on this earth left beautiful memories, she was a great student at Alhambra High School. She was a member of Saint Vincent de Paul Society at All Souls Catholic Church in Alhambra, serving the most needy in our Community. She along with her mother Jeanette help serve Thanksgiving dinner to All Souls Community last November.
She help care for her Grandmother who is ill and loved both her Grandparents, Great Grand Mother Mercy and the rest of her family.
She looked after her little sister Brittney, who does not quite understand the impact of the most cruel thing that happened to her big sister.
She loved to knit, sew and design hand bags.
So please join us in the gathering scheduled for March 18, 2008, Tuesday night at 7:00 PM at Pamela Park, 2236 Goodall Ave, Duarte, Ca 91010
Mr. Edmund Chavez, Sammantha's stepfather will give a speech to the Community.
Let's not fail Sammantha's memory and for all the children that were victims of crime.

Even as civic leaders have been talking about cracking down on crime in Monrovia neighborhoods, they are in a dispute with their cops. Over at the Foothill Cities Blog, RCJ Parry and Frazgo have done a nice job of putting the various pieces into context.

From Parry:

At exactly the moment when the City most needs our men and women in blue - when the anti-gang full-court-press is increasingly shifting from mutual aid agencies over to MPD - the City elects to post classless allegations against the Monrovia Police Officers’ Association on its Web site. The City’s statement, which was posted Friday, calls the MPOA’s “demands” “unrealistic” and hints strongly that the City would go bankrupt and cut services to meet MPOA’s positions.

Moreover, the City has made statements and claims without offering any substantive supporting information. Most specifically, the City claims its offer (a 16.5% raise over 3.5 years) will place MPD officers’ compensation “in the top five” of 13 surveyed San Gabriel Valley Cities. In other words, they will be in the middle 1/3 of other cities, hardly an “unrealistic” position. However, the City posts no data to support this claim.

Parry also picks up a graph from the MPOA's website that points out the pay disparities. And there's this from the MPOA itself, a list of former officers and where they've gone:

As for Frazgo, he's one of the more passionate observers of Monrovia politics. Here's a portion of his take:

Disagreements between the city and the MPOA are nothing new. 3 summers ago there were a series of articles referencing officer surveys showing overall job stress and satisfaction concerns. After some public outcry and a web site with some biting commentary by Cyrus Vance an outside source was brought in to review and report. The report basically said nothing was wrong, the claims of discrimination, harassment in the officer survey had no merit.

Following that we have had 2 officers successfully bring claims against the city for discrimination and harassment. Successful in that they received monetary compensation for their claims. Officers Solarez and Cobb were only the first in the last few years to bring suit. A retired MPD officer I recently spoke with advised one other office has a claim for similar damage pending against the city and will progress to a suit. He also advised that potentially there is one more claim pending and the officer no longer on the force will have to make his decision soon as his statute of limitations is running soon.

 

Needless to say. Monrovia has got to deal with this problem. The city can't continue to ignore its crime problem and ignore its police department. Something will give and when it does it's not going to be pretty.