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Inside the Black Panther Party (1 of 2)
Oakland Police officers were forced to deal with Black Panther violence in the late 1960s. In one year, police arrested 348 Panthers.
9
September 06, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Black Panther Party logo courtesy of Richard Valdemar.
Black Panther Party logo courtesy of Richard Valdemar.
A recent TV documentary on Los Angeles Crip gangs included voice-over narration that Crip founders were inspired by the Black Panther Party. I've even heard the outrageous allegation that the word "CRIP" is an acronym for Communist (or Community) Revolution in Progress.

The two organizations were entirely different creatures and, except for their mutual hatred of the police, had very little in common. Watch out for politically motivated revisionist history.

In 1966, Huey P. Newton was a newly released California inmate, and he met his friend Bobby Seale at Oakland City College, where they both joined a black power group called the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). They were greatly influenced by Malcolm X, the late former Nation of Islam speaker and writer. In October of 1966, they founded an organization called "The Black Panther Party for Self Defense."

The Panthers were formed to protect and defend African-American neighborhoods from police brutality, according to Black Panther Party writings. In the 1950s and '60s, there was some merit to these allegations. I remember growing up in this era in my own Compton-Willowbrook neighborhood of South Los Angeles, where I witnessed some of what passed for normal police procedures that would shock the American conscience of today.

Editor's note: Former Compton Police Officer John "Rick" Baker covers this era in his candid unapologetic "Vice: One Cop's Story of Patrolling America's Most Dangerous City."

Evolution and Division

As the Black Panther Party grew and expanded their membership, they adopted many other black power and black nationalist social and political ideologies. Outspoken members opposed and sometimes criticized various leaders and platforms or programs within the party. After I returned from Vietnam in 1968, I heard and read some of these debates among intelligent and motivated leaders in the organization. These men and women were nothing like Crip gang thugs. Even so, tension also developed with other rival Black Power groups over the years. Confrontations were inevitable.

The Black Panthers were modeled on socialist and communist ideals. They primarily followed a path advocated by revolutionary communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Panthers often quoted from Mao's Little Red Book and Maxims by Mao. Panther leaders advocated an armed revolution and the overthrow of the federal government. Some Panthers felt that they could create the revolutionary changes by working within the system.

In May of 1967, a group of Panthers surprised the California State Assembly by appearing in the legislative chamber in Sacramento armed with shotguns openly displayed in their hands. This shocking but legal protest against anti-gun legislation drew national attention. Before this, the Panthers had been largely unknown to the rest of the country. By October of 1967, whites supported Huey Newton in his trial for the murder of an Oakland policeman by wearing "Honkies for Huey" buttons.

The organization also published its own newspaper, The Black Panther. Eldridge Cleaver eventually took over the editorial leadership and broadened the circulation to over 250,000 readers. The BPP also published its manifesto, "What We Want, What We Believe," a 10-point program for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace." They also demanded exemptions for African-Americans from military service in Vietnam.

By 1968, Black Panther chapters were established in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, New York, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Panthers could be found on most large college campuses and throughout the jail and prison system. Official membership reached 10,000 by 1969.

For a short time, the Black Panthers maintained an office in Compton. My uncle Julio Hernandez was a Compton Police officer at the time. In a related incident, he responded with his partner Johnny Cato to a shots-fired call on Fig Street in the Fruit Town gang area of Willowbrook. Two Compton brothers had been sitting on the front porch shooting their AK-47s at palm trees—a diversion to draw the police into an ambush. The front door of the residence had been booby trapped with C-4 military explosives, and the home was over an underground tunnel in which the Panthers had stockpiled weapons and explosives.

In "Vice," Baker describes how they avoided the booby traps and recovered a dozen MAC-10 submachine guns (page 94).

All this occurred during the counterculture period of anti-authority and anti-war movements. The Black Panther Party programs of free breakfast for children, free busses for families visiting prisoners, drug and alcohol abuse awareness, consumer education, community health classes, free community pantry (food), child development centers, welfare and veteran benefit counseling, disabled persons services, drill teams and community drama classes, helped to soften the Panther's harsh rhetoric and won over left-wingers and even some in the establishment.

After shortening their name to the Black Panther Party in 1968, the Panthers focused their efforts on political action. Members who were traditionally recruited as "brothers off the block" continued to defend themselves against violence. They armed themselves with guns and as more college student activists joined the group a split began to emerge. For some, the Panther political and social programs became paramount, while others maintained their gang-like street mentality that had made them an icon in the black community.

Cop Killers

Officer John Frey of the Oakland Police Department was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P. Newton during a traffic stop on Oct. 17, 1967. Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also sustained gunshot wounds. Huey Newton was arrested for the murder. Newton was touted as a political prisoner framed by the police—"Free Huey" became the battle cry of the Panthers—even though he would later admit to and even brag about the murder. At a "Free Huey" birthday rally on Feb. 17, 1968 in the Oakland Auditorium, several Black Panther Party leaders spoke, including H. Rap Brown, the party's minister of justice.

"Huey Newton is our only living revolutionary in this country today," Brown declared. "He has paid his dues. How many white folks did you kill today?"

James Forman, the party's minister of foreign affairs, spoke next.

"We must serve notice on our oppressors that we as a people are not going to be frightened by the attempted assassination of our leaders," Forman said. "For my assassination—and I'm the low man on the totem pole—I want 30 police stations blown up, one southern governor, two mayors, and 500 cops dead. If they assassinate Brother Carmichael, Brother Brown, Brother Seale, this price is tripled. And if Huey is not set free and dies, the sky is the limit!"

In April 1968, a group of Panthers led by Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver was involved in a gun battle with Oakland police in which 17-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton was killed. Cleaver was wounded along with two Oakland officers. He would later say that it was a deliberate ambush of the police officers. It occurred two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Dec. 4., 1969, a Chicago Police tactical unit raided the home of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. In this raid, Hampton was shot and killed along with his Panther guard Mark Clark. Cook County States Attorney Edward Hanrahan, his assistant and eight Chicago Police officers were indicted by a federal grand jury over the raid, but the charges were later dismissed.

Between the fall of 1967 to the end of 1970, as a result of confrontations between police and Black Panthers, nine police officers were killed and 56 were wounded. The Panthers lost 10 members killed and an unknown number injured. During 1969, police arrested 348 Panthers for a variety of crimes.

Outside the Black Panther Party headquarters in Portland, Ore., on Feb. 18, 1970, Black Panther Party member Albert Wayne Williams was shot by officers with the Portland Police Bureau. Although Williams was critically wounded, he made a full recovery.

Black Panther member H. Rap Brown is currently serving a life sentence for the 2000 murder of Deputy Ricky Leon Kinchen of the Fulton County (Ga.) Sheriff's Department and the wounding of another officer in a gun battle. Both of these officers were black.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Inside the Black Panther Party (2 of 2)
The Black nationalist group eventually disintegrated when its members were killed or imprisoned.
8
September 12, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Logo courtesy of Richard Valdemar.
Logo courtesy of Richard Valdemar.
By the late 1960s, internal and external strife were beginning to divide the Black Panther Party (BPP).

In May of 1969, New York Black Panther Party members murdered Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old member of that chapter. His fellow Panthers suspected him of being a police informant and tortured him into an admission. Three party officers—Warren Kimbro, George Sams, Jr., and Lonnie McLucas—later admitted taking part. Sams would later claim that the order to kill Rackley came from Bobby Seale.

In 1966, after the assassination of Malcolm X, the black leader's cousin Hakim Jamal and Ron "Maulana" Karenga (the creator of the Kwanzaa holiday) founded an organization known as US. The organization was a political rival of the Black Panther Party, whose members referred to it as "United Slaves." The FBI agitated this rivalry.

Violence erupted in January of 1969, when the two groups attempted to take control of the Afro-American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Black Panther members John Huggins and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter were killed and one US member was wounded in the resulting shoot-out between the two organizations.

The Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) was another Black Panther rival organization spawned in the California prison system by George Jackson in 1966. Jackson, a former Black Panther, rallied inmates throughout the prison system. He believed that the Black Panthers were not radical enough, and didn't adequately represent the imprisoned black man. He vowed to form an organization that would supporting his imprisoned people like a family and become the vanguard in the coming revolution.

Many of the former Black Panther members had, like Jackson, become BGF members in prison and had become disenchanted with Newton for his perceived neglect of imprisoned black people. They also listened to allegations of Newton's mismanagement and murders within the Black Panther organization.

Decline and Fall

Many of the Black Panther Party leadership had become entangled in criminal trials or were serving long prison sentences. Some had been killed. The remaining BPP leaders could not agree on how to overcome these issues. A serious split occurred within the party. Panther leaders Huey Newton and David Hilliard favored a focus on community service coupled with self-defense. Others such as Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information, embraced a more militant strategy.

Cleaver deepened the schism in the party when he publicly criticized the party for adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda. He openly called for Hilliard's removal. As a result Cleaver was expelled from the BPP's Central Committee. However, Cleaver went on to lead the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the party.

In 1972, Bobby Seale was released from prison following the Alex Rackley murder trial. He ran for the office of mayor of Oakland, and paced a respectable second in the election. His relations with Newton became strained and in 1974 they argued about a proposed movie to be made about the Black Panther Party. Newton allegedly had Seale beaten severely, and Seale went into hiding for a year. Seale would later deny the incident, but he ended his association with the Black Panther Party.

In August of 1974, Huey Newton shot and killed 17-year-old prostitute Kathleen Smith for calling him "Baby," a moniker he hated. He also pistol-whipped his tailor, Preston Callins, for making the same mistake. Arrested and charged with the murder and the assault, he managed to post $80,000 bond and flee to Cuba with a girlfriend. He remained there until 1977.

These internal political disputes and the costs of so many legal battles were decimating the BPP. Before he jumped bail in 1974, Huey Newton appointed Elaine Brown as the first female BPP chairwoman. Under Brown, the party became a significant force in local politics. Several BPP candidates or BPP-backed candidates, made runs for various offices, culminating in the election of Lionel Wilson as the first black mayor of Oakland.

Some say that by the time Wilson took over the BPP it was already on its death bed, but the influence and numbers of the Black Panthers continued to decline. Only 27 members could claim membership by 1980, and in 1982 the Oakland Panther-sponsored school closed after it had become known that Newton was embezzling funds from the school to pay for his drug addiction.

Like many others in the black community, Huey Newton had become a crack addict. This was in violation of the party's stated rules. Shortly after leaving a crack house in the 1400 block of Ninth Street in West Oakland on Aug. 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot by BGF member and drug dealer Tyrone Robinson. In 1991, Robinson was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 32 years in prison.

The year Newton was gunned down, a group calling itself "The New Black Panther Party" was formed in Dallas, Texas. By 1999, Khalid Abdul Muhammad became that organization's chairman. Today, the membership is primarily made up of former members of the Nation of Islam (NOI). Members of the original Black Panther Party insist that this New Black Panther Party is illegitimate and have strongly objected to the new organization's name.

Another connection to the party comes in the form of 1990s gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur, who was killed in 1996 in a drive-by. Tupac's mother was Black Panther Aferi Shakur. His biological father was Black Panther Billy Garland. Tupac's stepfather was Black Panther Mutulu Shakur, and his godfather was Black Panther Geronimo Pratt.

In the early 1970s, Pratt was facing a murder conviction and confined in the "High Power" module (2500) of the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail along with other Black Panthers and members of the Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood, and Black Guerrilla Family. I was their 2500 module officer and law library deputy. For almost two years, I had daily contact with these dangerous individuals and sometimes discussed their own and rival gang ideologies with them. These inmates were intelligent and diabolically cunning, much higher on the food chain than any Crip.

 

[re'up]

that first one was a good read...GQ articles are well done, but that guy is the lowest fukking person someone could be almost, is nauseating to read.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Two Effective Gang Enforcement Strategies
The Long Beach (Calif.) Police Department's chief credits database access and innovative injunctions for gang enforcement success.
5
August 15, 2012 | by Jim McDonnell


Grace Park in Long Beach, Calif., looked just as it should late one recent April afternoon as Det. Chris Zamora took two guests on a tour of the city's north side. Children on swings. Parents chatting on benches. Kids playing basketball. Then the appearance of a young man in a Lakers jersey and baggy shorts riding a bicycle on the sidewalk prompted Zamora to slow down and take a harder look.
"You know you’re not supposed to ride that bike on the sidewalk," Zamora said, as he brought his unmarked black Impala to a slow stop. The young man said he didn't know that and thanked Zamora for the warning. Then Zamora asked about the tattoo, three small dots between the young man's thumb and forefinger. The young man looked down at his hand, smiled sheepishly and said, "Oh, that? It's nothing."

The tattoo is something. The three dots stand for "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)," and they're commonly worn by gang members in Southern California. "He's no gangster," Zamora said, as he pulled away. "He just wants to look tough. It impresses girls."

It was the tattoo that prompted Zamora to stop the young man, but it was the bike riding that could have landed him in jail for 90 days. Long Beach, like many other cities in Southern California, has a gang problem. Yet in five hours patrolling the city's toughest neighborhoods, the closest Zamora came to finding a bona fide gang member was the young man on the bike. In the past two years gang-related killings in the city have dropped nearly 60 percent. As the whole state struggles under a spike in crime due to budget cuts in overcrowded prisons, Long Beach residents are no longer fearful of walking their streets at night or enjoying places like Grace Park.

All in large part due to the police department's decision two years ago to completely re-engineer the city's 18-year-old gang injunction program and take enforcement of that program out of Zamora's hands and place in the hands of the hundreds of officers patrolling Long Beach streets night and day. Court injunctions have been used to curb gang activity in Southern California cities for 25 years.

But Long Beach's use of technology to leverage their impact on its streets is entirely new, and that impact is obvious on the streets, alleys and parks of Long Beach. Everywhere, there is gray paint crudely brushed over garbage cans and building walls to cover the graffiti gang members rely on to communicate turf ownership. It is only along the narrowest of Long Beach's back allies that fresh graffiti can be found. In five hours of driving such neighborhoods, not one real gang member was seen. How is this possible in a city the Centers for Disease Control determined in January 2012 to have one of the nation's five highest gang murder rates? As he showed his guests around, Zamora explained.

Old Gangs Become New Mafia

Long Beach and its neighbor to the north, East Los Angeles, are ideal breeding grounds for gangs. They thrive in the maze of squat cinderblock buildings jammed with tiny apartments. These are swing communities where poor families from diverse ethnic backgrounds regularly move in and out, providing ideal recruiting grounds for gangs always looking for new members. While gang activity here reaches back to the 1920s, it is only in the past two decades that it has evolved into a new kind of Mafia with East L.A. serving as the West Coast version of the famed Mulberry Street of the Manhattan, N.Y.-based Italian crime legends.

But there's no Ravenite Social Club here. The Dons and Capos presiding over this gangland do so from Pelican Bay State Prison and they call themselves the Mexican Mafia. Prison is the one place every gang member knows he will likely spend some time and Pelican Bay's Security Housing Unit has the nation's highest gang inmate population. The Mexican Mafia dictates what happens on the streets of Southern California gang neighborhoods by having absolute authority over any gang member brought into the prison. Popular wisdom among gang experts and members is: The Mexican Mafia owns the Outside by running the Inside.

Over the past 20 years, this circumstance has allowed the Mexican Mafia to consolidate the bulk of L.A. County gangs under an umbrella group called the Sureños. Whether an individual gang member pledges allegiance to Barrio Pobre, Eastside Longos, Compton Barrio, 18th Street, or any of the other gangs operating in the area, they all are governed by, and pay tribute to, the Sureños.

This all-inclusive group works like an administrative arm of the Mexican Mafia. Sureño organization reaches deep into the fabric of some Southern California neighborhoods and, for gang members, has made prison an extension of those neighborhoods. There are extortion rackets inside the prisons which levy a food and drug tax—called "the kitty" and "hot money" respectively—on all Sureño inmates, the proceeds from which finance various gang activity outside the prison. The money collected just from Ramen noodles, those square packets of curly noodles and Asian spices that soften with hot water, can be as high as $5,000 a month, according to corrections sources Zamora cited.

However, the sale of drugs on the street is the primary source of revenue for Southern California gangs and the explosion of methamphetamine use has changed that enterprise dramatically. Meth makes a lot of money for the gangs. As a result, competition for blocks and neighborhoods where meth sales are high has become fierce and totally dominated by the gangs. The Mexican Mafia leverages that competition to its advantage by rewarding prized turf to those who are most ruthless in furthering the gang’s criminal enterprises. Because it is easier to act with impunity in a community where you are less known—it's hard to be vicious when your grandmother lives around the corner—there is constant pressure on gangs to move into new territories.

The organizational sophistication of the Sureños and the constant flow of its members from one community to the next is what gave rise to the adoption of court-ordered gang injunctions targeting them. Injunctions can turn minor violations of civil law, such as public drunkenness or riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, into a criminal violation for the individuals or groups defined in the court order. They can also ban perfectly legal behaviors, like being found in the wrong crowd in a park at night, for those same individuals and groups.

It's like a restraining order, only it can apply to dozens, even hundreds of people at a time, barring them from engaging in anything the local legal system deems to be gang activity. Stopping such activity becomes a lot easier when it is criminal, which is why injunctions appeal to cities where gangs are a problem. Gangs need a prominent public presence to thrive and grow and injunctions can keep gangsters off the street.

In Long Beach several such injunctions have been ordered by the court since 1992. They target certain gangs, and individual members of those gangs, and the parts of town where they are known to operate. The Long Beach Police Department's Gang Suppression Section works with the city prosecutor's office to draw up the specifics of each injunction and then they make their case before a Los Angeles county judge who is asked to turn it into a court order.

However the increasingly complex operations of the Sureños has made determining who should get served with the court order, and then successfully arresting and prosecuting those violating it, a costly intelligence and administrative challenge to many L.A. County cities employing gang injunctions.

Reengineering the Gang Injunction Process

In 2010, Long Beach decided to reengineer its injunctions and how they are enforced. Since so many of the gangs operating in the area were under the control of the Surenos, that organization was enjoined in new injunctions. These were much broader than previous injunctions, targeting a group that encompassed hundreds. It was supported by the newly elected City Prosecutor Doug Haubert and soon signed off on by the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles.

Under the latest injunctions, any member of any gang affiliated with the Sureños can be arrested and face three months jail time for a host of activities including being seen with known gang members, disobeying a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew, obstructing public right-of-ways, intimidation, gang signaling, and having spray paint or other graffiti tools. Since the approval of the Sureño injunctions, the number of suspected gangsters named in Long Beach injunctions has swelled to 600, with 400 having been served. New names are added to the injunction as new members are observed in the community.

Around the same time the Sureño injunctions were drafted, Zamora paid a visit to the L.B.P.D.'s information technology department. Zamora, a 10-year veteran and student of Southern California's gang culture, knew these injunctions could be much more effective if every patrol officer in the department knew what the officers in the department's Gang Suppression Section knew about the area's gangs.

Previously, when a patrol officer wanted to make an arrest based on a gang injunction, the officer had to make numerous phone calls to headquarters to confirm the identity of an individual and whether that individual had been served with the injunction. It was a time-consuming task that resulted in missed opportunities to make arrests. Keeping gang records up to date also greatly complicated injunction enforcement.

Zamora asked the department's IT staff if it was possible to make all the information at headquarters available to officers on the street. The IT staff came back a few weeks later with an internet portal to a gang injunction database built through a three-way integration involving the department’s Laserfiche records repository, its Tiburon records management system and Crystal Reports, the business intelligence software which coordinates between the two databases. Now officers can pull up photos of served gang members, maps of safety zones—those parts of the city subject to the injunction—a copy of the injunction and a hyperlink to the image of the proof of service form.

"That hyperlink is key," says Zamora. "It pulls up the image in Laserfiche of the signed notice of service showing that an individual has been served with the injunction. With that image on the sector car computer screen an officer can make an injunction arrest that's going to stand up in court."

That certainty has produced very real results. Long Beach's gang murder rate was cut in half the first year the new injunctions and software systems were in place and cut another 20 percent in 2011. (The CDC's report relied on statistics compiled only through 2008.) The city's gang injunction program has been in place since 1992, but arrests enforcing it jumped from 35 in 2009, 140 in 2010, and 180 in 2011. As of April, 92 arrests have been made for violation of the city's gang injunctions.

Those arrests have been very disruptive to the Sureño organization at all levels, Zamora says. It is not just the street-level gangsters getting arrested, but the higher ups as well. With the Mexican Mafia increasingly running its street operations from behind prison walls, corrections officials have been intercepting intelligence on those operations and forward that to local police departments. In Long Beach that intelligence is passed on to the duty officers heading out on patrol each day. Armed with that intelligence, the gang injunction factual database stored in Laserfiche and Tiburon, and the sweeping arrest powers provided by the injunction, L.B.P.D. patrol officers can then target the individuals involved in those operations and get them off the street all while on routine duty.

"We're using the very organization that has made the Sureños so successful as a weapon to disrupt that organization," Zamora says. "With the range of criminal records we have and our ease of access to those records, any officer can use the injunction to quickly and easily get a gangster off the street if we have reports that they could be a threat to others. Our department is working with the smallest roster it has had in 10 years and yet last year violent crime was at its lowest level in 40 years."

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

The Technology Behind the Arrests

At the same time, Long Beach has avoided the community backlash that has hampered injunctive efforts in other cities. Critics in Oakland, Calif., call that city's gang injunctions modern day Jim Crow laws while the city of Orange, Calif., recently lost a court ruling to the American Civil Liberties Union that weakens the injunction put in place there in 2010. The ACLU has challenged gang injunctions in other cities with claims of arrests based on mistaken identity and racial profiling. Long Beach's new injunction program is less susceptible to such charges largely because of the technology behind it.

Long Beach gang experts used to draw up injunctions based on field investigation notes and their own knowledge of the territory. Now those injunctions, and who get named in them, are drawn up using maps and booking records, incident reports and individual arrest records which include pictures, tattoos and admissions of gang affiliation. All are stored digitally in the new records repository which makes them instantly available for cross reference and fact checking.

Finding the right records repository software was key to building this process, according to Braden Phillips the department's administration bureau chief. The records repository software needed an open architecture to allow the integrations with the department's existing software systems. The department scraped its old records repository software and installed Laserfiche which readily integrated with Tiburon and Crystal Reports. It now holds many of the records the department depends on to draft court injunctions with teeth.

Draft injunctions are presented to Haubert's office, where they are vetted again. Nobody is subject to getting served with the injunction until he has been so screened, according to Haubert. The court's review and approval is another layer of oversight before the injunction becomes a court order and arrests are made. The gang injunction factual database is updated every hour with the names of those served, arrested or added to the injunction list.

"In the old days, if you happened to have associated with gang members, you might get served with the injunction because the police just assumed that you were in the gang," Haubert says. "That doesn't happen anymore because we're using technology to better screen who gets served with the injunction. We're getting much better at targeting the right people."

And should a person feel he has been wrongly served with the injunction, he can appeal the city prosecutor's decision before the county court that authorized the injunction. "The vast majority of people who get served with the gang injunction do not try to dispute it or deny it," Haubert says. "They would not have been served if there wasn't substantial evidence to show they deserve to be included in the injunction, and through our new gang injunction database we can readily prove that. So those served with the injunction realize they have no basis to make a claim that they are not really an active gang member."

Oddly enough, even some gang members and potential gang members seem equally appreciative. The injunction can be looked upon as a law enforcement tool, but it also provides a level of cover for members looking to leave the gang life. It is a lot easier to avoid the gang life if you know you are likely to get arrested. At the same time, if you are in a gang, the injunction is making it a little easier to get out. It may not be an alternative to joining a gang, but it certainly provides a powerful incentive not to, and that's what the LBPD set out to accomplish.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

The Black Guerrilla Family Prison Gang
Bloods, Crips, and other Black gangs trace their origins to the radical Black Guerrilla Family prison gang.
32
July 17, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Ray Ray's crew. Photo courtesy of Richard Valdemar.
Ray Ray's crew. Photo courtesy of Richard Valdemar.
Black Guerrilla Family Oath:

If I should ever break my stride, and falter at my comrades side,

This oath will kill me.

If ever my world should prove untrue, should I betray this chosen few,

This oath will kill me.

Should I be slow to take a stand, should I show fear to any man,

This oath will kill me.

Should I grow lax in discipline, or in time of strife, refuse my hand,

This oath will kill me.

Long live comrade George Jackson!

Long live the Black Guerrilla Family!

The culmination of months of undercover drug buys, wiretaps, and covert surveillances was called Operation Sting Ray. It was June 30, 1987, a warm Wednesday afternoon. Hundreds of police officers from various federal, state, and local agencies were receiving their briefings for the next day's warrant service. They met at a secret location near the Pasadena (Calif.) Police Department headquarters.

I was the sergeant in charge of a seven person surveillance team, and we were part of a multi-jurisdictional federal task force headed up by the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.). We had been sworn in as federal agents. While the rest of the participating agencies received their briefing and warrant assignments, my surveillance team was spread out across Los Angeles bedding down the most important targets to insure that they would be swept up in the early morning raids. My friend and mentor, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Rufus Downs, monitored the equipment in the wiretap room in the L.A. World Trade Center.

This was the biggest case Los Angeles would see for a long time. The targets were mid-level and higher cocaine and crack drug dealers with direct ties to the Colombian drug cartels. They were also gang members associated with the revolutionary Black Guerrilla Family (B.G.F.) prison gang and Elrader (Ray Ray) Browning drug trafficking organization. Browning was a Denver Lane gang member, and most of his organization was formed from Blood gang members and a few scattered Crips. Together the gang formed a multi-million dollar business stretching from L.A. to Kansas City and Detroit. They grew rich and helped finance the Marxist-Maoist B.G.F., or B.L.A. (Black Liberation Army) as it is known on the East Coast. We expected to deal the B.G.F. a psychologically devastating surprise blow, but we had been betrayed.

We were betrayed by fellow law enforcement officers. Hours before the appointed kickoff time, a voice from the W.T.C. wire room came on the radio telling us that they had just intercepted a telephone call from a cop going into our main target location telling the leaders of the drug trafficking organization that we were on our way to serve the search warrants. My surveillance team was the only team in the field, and we scrambled to form arrest teams as the key targets attempted to flee with large suitcases of cash. Several arrests were accomplished single-handedly.

By late evening, we had arrested 19 of the 44 who would eventually be indicted. Among those arrested were the two most important targets—the head of the organization, Ray Ray Browning, and the Supreme Commander of the B.G.F., James (Doc) Holiday. Even though the targets were warned of our approach, we seized over 15 pounds of crack and powdered cocaine, more than $300,000 in cash, and 10 vehicles (mostly Porsche, Mercedes Benz, and Rolls Royce). More than $13 million dollars in real property and bank accounts were seized for forfeiture.

During the yearlong investigation, the Browning organization maintained good public relations and spread some of its profits around the neighborhoods. They would often pay utility bills and buy groceries for the elderly and for other neighbors surrounding the residences they utilized in the communities. They payed teens to monitor police frequencies on scanners and gave tips to local children who reported strangers in vehicles driving through the area. But how could it be that brother cops betrayed us?

Suspicion fell on a couple of Pasadena P.D. detectives, because they knew the Ray Ray Browning family personally and even attended the same Sunday church services. The federal authorities looked hard at my team and also at the L.A.P.D., some of whom also had connections to the Browning family. But it was the D.E.A.'s own agents—Darnell Garcia, Wayne Countryman, and John Jackson—who were finally tied to the leak.

These three were not directly assigned to Operation Sting Ray, but they were connected to large thefts of cocaine and heroin from the D.E.A. evidence lockers. They had sold the dope back to the bad guys. They used local informants to make the necessary connections, and had become compromised. Looking back, it should have been obvious to the rest of us because these guys were living way beyond their means.

This is not an indictment of the D.E.A.; it is a fine organization that I'm proud to have worked for. This kind of thing can happen to any law enforcement agency when dealing with vast amounts of money these organizations produce. Shortly after this case, seven members of our own L.A. County Sheriff's Major Narcotics Unit would go to prison for skimming millions from narco seizures.

The Black Guerrilla Family was started by the charismatic George Jackson in 1966 at San Quentin State Prison in northern California. Its identifying tattoos and symbols are the letters "B-G-F," the corresponding numbers 2-7-6, a crossed machete and rifle, or a black dragon climbing a San Quentin prison tower. It's the most political of the four major prison gangs in the California system, and has set a goal to the overthrow the U.S. government. Because of its espoused revolutionary ideals, the gang has an unusual mix of allies and supporters.

At times, even its natural enemies in the Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood have come to the aid of the B.G.F. Its supporters include the American Indian Movement, Symbionese Liberation Army, Weather Underground, Tribal Thumb, Red Guerrilla Family, Chicano Liberation Front, United Prisoners Union, Venceremos Organization, National Lawyers Guild, and Prison Law Collective.

The gang was founded by George Jackson, a former Black Panther and excellent orator who rallied inmates by speaking about the system's injustice to prisoners, especially black inmates. He believed thst the Black Panthers were not radical enough and didn't represent imprisoned black men well. He vowed to form an organization that would support his imprisoned people like a family and become a vanguard in the coming revolution against the U.S. government.

The group was originally called the Family or the Black Family. It also went by the Black Vanguard and the Black Foco. Lawyers and paralegals from the National Lawyers Guild helped write the constitution for the B.G.F., which is structured on a paramilitary ranking system and Marxist-Maoist politics. Many of the communication systems utilized by B.G.F. involve the Swahili language, and all the leaders have Swahili names in addition to their true names and gang monikers. The B.G.F. oath (see above) was required to be memorized and recited upon initiation into the prison gang.

On Aug. 21, 1971, Jackson was shot by a prison guard while attempting to escape San Quentin. A lawyer was suspected of bringing in the weapons used by Jackson and Mexican Mafia members Louie Lopez and Luis Talamantes, who killed prison guards during this incident. Bob Dylan wrote and recorded "George Jackson," a song glorifying the BGF founder and his murderous attempted escape.

A former Symbionese Liberation Army leader, Doc Holiday became the next supreme commander. Again, the B.G.F. had chosen an intelligent and cunning warrior to lead it. Under Doc, the B.G.F. grew in power and numbers, recruiting from the armies of Crips and Bloods that were imprisoned in the 1980s. The gang maintained a revolutionary militant faction and a criminal faction, which had as its goal personal monetary gain but continued to support the revolutionary cause.

Other factions grew in opposition to the recognized BGF leaders such as Otis "Jitu Sadiki" Smith and Ronald "Red" Burton in Southern California; Michael Stover, James and Harold Benson in the Bay Area; Romain Fitzgerald in Soledad; and Shaun Garland in Pelican Bay. Using the old Vanguard name, a new faction started in 1978 at Deuel Vocational Institute that opposed the revolutionary politics, and the severe methods used by the B.G.F. to purge its ranks. Several were hardcore Crip gang members who felt the B.G.F. favored Bloods. They declared war against the B.G.F. at Folsom Prison in 1979. In 1981, the B.G.F. moved against the Vanguard, killing one and injuring several others. Henry "Sugar Bear" Wilds and Michael Doroiugh are identified as Vanguard leaders and have attempted to reorganize.

In 1977, a group organized within the B.G.F. in the headquarters cities of Oakland and San Francisco that called itself the Black August Organizing Committee (B.A.O.C.). Its purpose was to unite all Blacks in West Coast gangs on the street and in prison under one banner.

The Black Panther Party (B.P.P.) was founded in 1968 also from Oakland. Eldridge Cleaver from San Francisco, Hugo Pinel at San Quentin, Elmer Pratt at Susanville, Red Burton in Los Angeles and Bobby Seal in Colorado were among the B.P.P. leadership. They had close associations with B.G.F. founder George Jackson and others in the B.G.F. They also supported the B.A.O.C. and the Nation of Islam (N.O.I.) and Louis Farrakhan as well. This strange coalition has lead to the BGF as it exists today.

Whether inmates enter the prison system as Crips, Bloods, N.O.I., Black Panthers, or members of the 415 gang, the B.G.F. recruits them covertly and encourages them to continue to claim their prior affiliation after taking the B.G.F. oath. They therefore are not readily detected and validated as B.G.F. members by prison gang investigators and the members continue to operate undercover in the system.

Within a week of the arrests of Doc Holiday and Ray Ray Browning, the key informant was abducted from her Altadena apartment and murdered. This didn't stop their prosecution, and the two were convicted in federal court under drug and conspiracy indictments. They received life sentences.

Although he's getting to be an old man, Doc Holiday continues to run his organization through his common law wife Diane Dally (Holiday), and his son James Junior. A couple of years ago, Doc proved he still had what it takes and stabbed a fellow prisoner to death in federal prison. Doc was also called to testify in behalf of the Aryan Brotherhood defendants in the RICO case against the A.B. The Aryan Brotherhood was charged with killing two members of the D.C. Blacks gang. In this case, the B.G.F. and A.B. have the D.C. Blacks as a common enemy. Ray Ray Browning continues to run his part of the organization through his common law wife Hazel Douglas and brother Rodney

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Why Chicago is So Violent
Displaced gang members have gone to war in the Windy City.
20
June 28, 2012 | by Tony Avendorph

Photo: Paul Clinton
Photo: Paul Clinton
Chicago has always been a violent city. When I grew up there in the 1950s and 1960s, you had neighborhood gangs like the Deacons and 58th Street. Then when the Blackstone Rangers were formed in 1959, a new episode of gang violence began.

I remember Englewood being a violent neighborhood growing up. And I remember taking the "El" train to 63rd and Halsted Street. I remember going to "lounges" ("clubs") between 75th and 79th and Halsted. There were places like The Green Bunny and The Skyway Lounge, and you could party without problems. Today that is not the norm.

I remember working an off-duty security job in the mid-1970s for a sorority party on 79th and Halsted and some Disciples wanted to come inside. I knew some of them from the neighborhood, and they promised me they would behave. About 30 minutes after I let them in they left. I had gone downstairs to my car, and came back up, when two of the Disciples walked up to me, and handed me my wallet, which I had somehow dropped by the car. My badge, ID, and money were still intact. Today that is not going to happen.

I guess what I am getting at, is I don't know my hometown anymore. I remember when a promising basketball player named Ben Wilson was gunned down by Gangster Disciples in 1984. My partner, Ed Christian and I were assigned to assist the Chicago Police Department, and all of a sudden Chicago had a "gang problem." I've got new for you, Chicago has always had a gang problem, and it’s not just Al Capone and Sam Giancana and the "Outfit."

Now Chicago's homicide rate is out of control. Since when has it been under control? Yes, the Chicago street gangs are wreaking havoc. They have always "wreaked havoc." This is not about "old school" gangsters coming out of prison and trying to re-establish themselves. It's about the youngsters having no respect for anyone.

They are many reasons why this has happened. Consider the following:

• Former mayor Richard M. Daley tore down all of the high-rise housing developments known as the "jets." There were approximately 91 of these projects throughout the city, and the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords controlled 75% of them. The poor people who lived in them have been displaced, and some of them are hardcore gang members.

So the gangs have gone to other neighborhoods. Some of these neighborhoods were controlled by rival gangs, some were neutral. Either way, the displaced gang members from the high rises have tried to take over and that's led to violence.

• Federal law enforcement has done an outstanding job in convicting gang leaders, who before their incarceration controlled their soldiers and demanded respect. There is no respect with the younger generation of gang members today. You don’t see the discipline of past years.

• Traditionally neutral areas that had little or no gang activity in the past now have it.

• Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and Los Angeles-based gangs have set up inside Chicago and in the suburbs. MS-13, Crips, Bloods, and Sureños have a foothold in the area, and Chicago is a major distribution point for Mexican cartels.

• Guns have been purchased or stolen in the South by Chicago street gangs. It is very easy to buy weapons through straw purchases in the South. There has also been an increase in burglaries of gun stores in the South. These break-ins have been orchestrated by Chicago street gang members.

There is absolutely no regard for life among the warring gangs of the Windy City. In recent weeks numerous innocent victims, some six years old or younger, have been killed by stray bullets. A teenage girl sitting on her porch struck by a bullet and killed.

People ask me all the time if I know a solution to the problems in Chicago. For the record, I don't.

People also say to me, "Well you don't live there anymore. So what do you know?" That may be true, but I go back three times a year; I also have friends and former co-workers who live there, and I worry about their safety.

A fraternity brother of mine recently told me about some young Gangster Disciples trying to take his cell phone at an "El" train stop. He fought them and they ran. A Chicago officer told him, "You are lucky they didn't kill you." He grew up in that very same neighborhood, and thought nothing of protecting himself.

Chicago is my hometown. It will always be a part of me. But the city is in trouble, and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Tony Avendorph retired in 2009 after 40 years in law enforcement, serving with the Illinois Department of Corrections, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and Prince George's County (Md.) Police Department

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

20 Years After the Rodney King Riots
The acquittal of four LAPD officers in 1992 triggered rioting in Los Angeles that was primed to occur.
1
May 01, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles. In 1992, major rioting would continue until May 25. Much has changed since those days of anti-police rioting, yet much has remained the same.

In the years preceding the riot, the dominos had been set standing on their ends to tumble down in a chain reaction. The chain reaction was touched off by the acquittal in Simi Valley of four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney King. If this had not been the spark, I believe, one of many other incidents might have set off a similar conflagration. Los Angeles was ripe for a riot and many forces conspired to make it happen.

One of the primary causes that set the stage for the riot was government and police policies based on politically correct thinking rather than common sense and public safety. The Los Angeles media fanned the embers with sensational headlines and race-baiting coverage.

Prior to King's arrest, in an LAPD booking area, a sarcastic sign read, "Smoke 'em, don't choke 'em!" This referred to the LAPD policy of forbidding the arm bar choke hold (carotid restraint) once used to subdue suspects in a PCP rage. Several experts including Chief Daryl Gates had opined that African Americans were physiologically different in their anatomy, making this hold especially deadly to them. The sign suggested that it would be easier to justify shooting a hysterical, combative suspect rather than try to justify a choke hold to subdue him.

Grappling and swarming techniques were also frowned upon by police instructors during close-quarters combat. Too many officers are shot by suspects with the policeman's own weapon in these types of confrontations, according to this line of thinking. In training, officers were told, "Don't get too close to the suspect."

As a result, officers began to rely more heavily on pepper spray and TASERs. These were considered more modern, kinder and gentler methods of subduing a violent combative suspect. The PC proponents disliked "man handling" suspects. If this failed, they might endorse batons. The old but very effective Gonzales sap was frowned upon. Police batons had evolved from wooden clubs to plastic versions. Eventually, the LAPD issued the side-handled (PR-24) baton. Training and practice in the use of these weapons was sparse. Finally, the plastic batons were replaced by aluminum ones.

During the Rodney King incident, the TASER failed to work on King. Remember, the media-edited video only showed the officers standing away from the suspect and swinging their batons (at times very ineffectively).

The more effective tactic of swarming an uncooperative suspect or grappling him into a choke hold would have ended this incident much more quickly and would have looked better. The department's PC policy and training ensured an uglier standoff where officers beat the suspect with metal batons.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles media helped stir up racial unrest by focusing on every incident as racial profiling and mistreatment of minorities by police. The victims of these minority suspects were usually of the same race, and many of the police officers were women or men from racial minority groups. Because of complaints in the Latino community, Special Order 40 was instituted to forbid LAPD officers from inquiring about a subject's immigration status. Gang members, drug traffickers and human smugglers loved these law-enforcement-limiting conditions.

Before rioting exploded in Los Angeles, the seeds of violence were planted in government housing projects in South Central by political and racial groups like the Nation of Islam (NOI), Revolutionary Communist Party, the New Black Panthers, and organized criminal gangs like the Crips, Bloods, and Black Guerrilla Family (BGF). The media missed this agitating and fermenting of tension, but police intelligence units did not.

During the initial rioting, individuals were arrested wearing T-shirts calling for unity between Crips and Bloods against the police. Pre-printed NOI fliers called for "Jihad against the LAPD!" If the riots were spontaneous, how did these T-shirts and fliers suddenly appear? They were obviously prepared beforehand in certainty of the riot.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

20 Years After the Rodney King Riots
The acquittal of four LAPD officers in 1992 triggered rioting in Los Angeles that was primed to occur.
1
May 01, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

During the turbulent 1960s and '70s, Los Angeles Police officers and sheriff's deputies frequently trained in riot control tactics (DART). In the 1980s, Los Angeles cops stepped up this civil disturbance training for the 1984 Olympic Games. When demonstrations and rioting didn't materialize, riot training was no longer a priority. By 1990, the equipment and training for these disturbances was mothballed. Although the signs and symptoms of civil unrest were evident, law enforcement in Los Angeles was largely unprepared for major rioting.
When the rioting began following the non-guilty verdict, police were told by their administrators and Los Angeles politicians not to "over react." Every properly trained police officer knows that the best opportunity to defuse a growing riot is to not hesitate, to act immediately to contain and arrest the rioters. This is the proper time for a show of force.

Instead, this lack of a strong response from Los Angeles law enforcement allowed the riot to grow and spread. The most obvious symbol of this lack of positive police reaction was when we watched gang members attack and burn the guard shack in front of LAPD's Parker Center on live television. When criminal gangs can burn down the police headquarters' front door without consequence, they run the city.

Los Angeles watched as Reginald Denny was pulled from his vehicle at Florence and Normandie avenues and beaten nearly to death by Damien "Football" Williams and members of the Eight Trey (83) Gangster Crips gang. The media focused on Denny, who was white, but most of the victims beaten and robbed at Florence and Normandie were Latino or Asian. Fidel Lopez was one of these victims. When the cameras caught Eight Trey gangsters pulling down the lifeless victim's pants and spray painting him, it sparked Brown-on-Black rioting in the jails and later throughout the California prison system. The then largely unheard of MS-13 gang was given the Mexican Mafia's contract to murder Williams when he was finally arrested.

Chief Gates had been a field commander during the 1965 Watts Riots. During the rioting of 1992, he responded to the 77th Division station—the epicenter of the rioting—and he was unhappy with what his commanders had done or, more correctly, not done.

Gates subsequently said it was a mistake in assuming that his senior officers were prepared to deal with civil disorder. "Since I'd been through it, I kind of thought that fellow members of top command knew what to do," Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon reports Chief Gates saying in "Official Negligence."

Gates was angry and uncharacteristically berated his senior officers in front of subordinates. Even the Webster Commission report, which was otherwise critical of Gates, found the chief had "reason to be upset."

LAPD had lost the opportunity to contain and suppress violence that spread into greater Los Angeles. The estimated damage from the riot and 3,600 arson fires reached $1 billion. More than 10,000 people were arrested and 53 lost their lives. Of those, 35 were killed by gunfire—8 shot by police and 2 by National Guard. Six others died in arson fires. Rioters killed two in beatings. Two more were stabbed to death. One was strangled. Six died in automobile accidents.

In "Official Negligence," LAPD Lt. John Dunkin is quoted as saying, "Rodney King was a defining incident. I used to wish we could take back those five minutes, but more good than harm has come from them for the LAPD."

I disagree. Motivated by the Rodney King incident and the Rampart Scandal, the U.S Department of Justice mandated a consent decree in 2000 that forced oversight of the LAPD by the federal government and monitor Michael Cherkasky. Federal oversight that was supposed to last five years stretched to almost nine. A transitional agreement extended oversight for several more years. Mark Rosenbaum, the ACLU's legal director, lobbied hard to keep a decree that was finally lifted by U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess in July 2009.

Today, the L.A. media continues to be motivated by ratings, polls and sensationalism. Television sound bites rarely give the law enforcement side a fair review. The media refuses to self monitor their coverage or admit that they are part of the problem.

In Los Angeles, political correctness and political whim continue to be more influential than the safety and security of the citizens. LAPD's Special Order 40 is still in place, and now the police practice of towing and impounding of vehicles driven by unlicensed and uninsured illegal aliens is forbidden.

The local police intelligence units that once monitored radical political and racist groups are almost completely dismantled today. But then departments run by politically correct chiefs and administrators rarely listened to them anyway. So the next riot (or terrorist attack) will again be unprepared for. There is still too much police reliance on gadgets, pepper spray and tasers. And I don't know of much riot control training going on out there. Not much I'm afraid. I think things have gotten worse in the last 20 years.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Gang Truces Usually Turn Out Badly for Cops
When they are no longer fighting each other, they turn all of their attention on you.
2
April 17, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

El Salvador's El Diario De Hoy newspaper announced on March 23 that the leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 Street gangs in El Salvador had reached a truce. The gang leaders met to negotiate the peace in prisons located in Ciudad Barrios and Cojutepeque.

The talks leading to the proposed truce were facilitated and mediated by the Salvadorian government and the Catholic Church. The head of the army and police chaplain corps Monsignor Fabio Colindres said, "We never spoke of a negotiation between the government and the gangs, nor between the church and gangs." And "we were mediating an understanding between rival gangs to decrease the violence."

According to a recent U.N. report, El Salvador and Honduras have the greatest rate of homicide in the world, 66 per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador, and 82.1 per 100,000 in Honduras. Guatemala with a rate of 41 homicides per 100,000 makes up the third part of the Central American killing ground for these two murderous gangs.

The Salvadorian authorities facilitated the movement of the imprisoned rival gang members for the truce talks but were not directly involved in the negotiations.

Romero Henriquez represented the Mara Salvatrucha gang and Ernesto Mojica represented the Mara 18 (18th Street) gang. The El Diario newspaper claimed that it had confirmation of the truce from Ernesto Mojica and with half a dozen other gang leaders.

Judging from the general celebratory commentary from the clueless American media and the reaction from police commenters on the Worldwide Web, you might presume that this is a good thing. Excuse me good senors and monsignor, but I think this treaty is only good for the predatory gang monsters in and out of those Central American prisons; it can't be good for us.

For years racist Black leaders have attempted to unite Crip and Blood gang members in well publicized "peace treaties." And like the MS-13 and 18th Street treaty the media just ate it up. The original Crip-Blood treaties were financed by local drug dealers, facilitated by the Nation of Islam (NOI), and supported by local politicians. The Crip and Blood gang wars were bad for business and the truce allowed the dope trafficking to continue. It also meant that the bothersome police would concentrate their efforts somewhere else.

The Nation of Islam utilized the truce to recruit young men and women into their movement. The strong presence of the NOI's security force the Fruit of Islam (FOI), that mediated the gang truce, gave NOI and FOI street credentials with the community. However their real intent was to turn the gang hate and violence against the police. About the time of the 1992 Rodney King Riots the NOI circulated flyers in the Los Angeles projects calling for jihad against the LAPD.

The local Los Angeles politicians had no fraternal motivation either in supporting the Crip and Blood truce, they were just looking for photo opportunities to be seen shaking hands with African American gang members hoping to reap votes in the South Central L.A. communities. They hired gang members into their failed gang intervention programs and paid them with millions of taxpayer funds. But the truce and the programs all failed to make it safer in the L.A. Projects.

Even in the U.S. prison system these gang truces have been tried several times. They have all failed within a short time.

And thank God for that. Can you imagine what a gang formed from all aligned Crip and Blood gangs or between the Mexican Mafia and the Nuestra Familia might be capable of? No longer distracted by their war against their rival gangs, they could direct all their efforts into victimizing citizens, killing cops, and industrializing their drug production and distribution.

History backs me up. In August 1939, Russia and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This truce was a non-aggression pact that enabled both nations to invade Poland without fear that the other would attack them. Before this they were bitter enemies. Shortly afterward, the pact failed. But imagine what would have happened in World War II if Hitler hadn't attacked Russia. It's unlikely that the Western allies could have prevented Hitler from conquering Europe if his armies weren't committed to the Russian campaign.

In 1931, the Commission was formed in New York, the Commission was actually part of a peace plan or truce devised to end the Italian Mafia wars. The truce established a governing gang commission and divided the mob into five New York families; Luciano, Magano, Gagliano, Propaci, and Maranzano.

While this for a time reduced the number of "made men" murdered annually, it did not make New York a safer place. The man who brought the truce plan into being became one of the first victims of the commission. On Sept. 10, 1931, "Lucky" Luciano assumed leadership by murdering Salvatore Maranzano, the commission founder.

Today, an alliance between the two largest criminal transnational gangs in the world, Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street, could be a very dangerous thing in Central America and here in the United States. Members of both gangs have not signed truces with the government or with law enforcement. They will continue to traffic in drugs and humans, and they will continue to use violence against their victims. This truce will not reduce the violence it will merely redirect it.

All the experienced gang officers I've contacted agree that this truce will also soon fail. But well-intentioned people will continue to try to get these gangs to the peace table, and others will try to utilize a truce for their own political purposes.

As thinking citizens of a lawful government our goal should be, disrupting, dismantling and eradicating all criminal gangs, not brokering dialog and peace treaties between them. Gang truces can only make the task of ending criminal gangs more difficult.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Sureños: Understanding Kanpol and Pilli
The soldiers of the Mexican Mafia prison gang identify themselves with various levels of sophistication.
3
March 14, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Two expressions of Sureño gang allegience include the Aztec symbol for 13 (left) and the Nahuatl word "kanpol." Photo: Rich Valdemar
Two expressions of Sureño gang allegience include the Aztec symbol for 13 (left) and the Nahuatl word "kanpol." Photo: Rich Valdemar
Threats posed by Latino Sureños may be one of the most misunderstood and underestimated gang problems in this country.

"Sureños are focused on a complete ideology and belief in their gang, and they display a dedication and loyalty that surpasses that of any gang I've ever dealt with," Chuck Schoville of the Rocky Mountain Information Network (RMIN) writes in the report "Sureños 2008."

The confusion about Sureños may stem from the various expressions of this umbrella movement, so let's start from the beginning.

In the 1930s and '40s, a Latino gang culture spawned at the U.S.-Mexico border near El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico. This "pachuco" (from "chuco," meaning a person from El Paso) culture migrated with the legal and illegal immigrants to California. These Texas-style pachucos came from gangs like the El Paso Tip (ept) and tattooed themselves with a "t" to represent the Texas Tip.

In Los Angeles, similar pachuco-style gangs were spawned, especially from the area around the Maravilla Projects in East L.A. To distinguish themselves from the Texas chucos, they used tattoos such as "LA," "M" (for Maravilla) or "13" (M is the 13th letter of the alphabet).

Gangster style characterized this movement. There were many different Latino gangs in northern and southern California with this "Califas" (California) pachuco style. The movement pre-dates the Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia prison gangs.

By the mid-1950s, this Califas style and mostly the Maravilla gang coalition formed the base that spawned the Mexican Mafia at the Deuel Vocational Institute (DVI) in Tracy. Back then, northern and southern California Latino gang members joined the Mexican Mafia. From 1956-'65, there was no other prison gang. The Mexican Mafia expanded from controlling inmates at the DVI youth authority facility to controlling gang inmates in most California prisons and jails.

Gang members who objected to this control broke from the Mexican Mafia and formed Nuestra Familia in about 1965. Some of those who objected and opposed the Mexican Mafia were from Los Angeles gangs, while others were from as far south as San Diego. It was not geography that divided California gangs; it was the two prison-gang lifestyles and whether members felt loyalty to the Mexican Mafia or aligned with Nuestra Familia.

The over simplification of the Sureño (southerner) and Norteño (northerner) conflict seems to be leading gang investigators to believe that the terms only denote and differentiate gangs from north and south of the Bakersfield line. This is wrong thinking. Investigators have even entered Sur 13, South Side, or Sureños as a specific gang in their computer databases. Sureños are an umbrella designation, a coalition.

And despite what you hear about Norteño gang migration, Norteño gangs don't exist for long in Southern California. However, numerous Sureño gangs thrive in Northern California. Both have migrated to other areas of the country.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Sureños: Understanding Kanpol and Pilli
The soldiers of the Mexican Mafia prison gang identify themselves with various levels of sophistication.
3
March 14, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Just what is a Sureño? A Sureño is a Latino gang member who belongs to a street gang that identifies with, and is subservient to, the Mexican Mafia. He may be from northern or southern California, or from your city, or from Central America. Sureños identify with the color blue and use tattoos with the number 13, sureño, sur, south sider, or "kanpol" (a word taken from the ancient Aztec language of Nahuatl that means southerner). In this culture, the number 13 was expressed with the symbol (see above picture).

The Nahuatl word "pilli" can be translated as "señor" or sir, but is more correctly noble man or royalty. This is term used by Sureño gang members to refer to actual made members of the Mexican Mafia. The subtle differences these Nahuatl terms convey can help you understand how the huge Sureño army is controlled by the Mexican Mafia.

The terms are similar to those used during the American Civil War. At that time, southerner meant more than just a person from the southern portion of the U.S. It also conveyed that the person supported the rebellion, slavery, and war with the Union forces. A northerner supported the Union, the freeing of slaves, and the Union army.

When a gang member identifies himself as a Sureño either verbally or by clothing or tattoos, he escalates his position from a mere Latino gang member to a soldier in the service of the murderous Mexican Mafia. This is what kanpol is meant to convey.

When pilli is used to identify an Eme member, it signifies that he's held in high regard. He's considered a noble man or royalty lording over the kanpol (common soldier) army. Initially, the Mexican Mafia's ambition was simply to control the DVI facility. Later, they warred to control the California prison system, and then the federal prison system. Today, they covet control of the southwest and the entire nation. They plan to do with their growing kanpol army.

How do you measure the danger posed by your local Sur 13, South Side, or Sureño gangs? Their level of sophistication will tell you. Talk to them. Do they use the terms pilli or kanpol? Do they identify themselves as a Sureño? Have they tattooed Southside, Sur or Sureño on their body? Are they "piasas" (a person from Mexico) or are they from Central America?

The most dangerous Sureños are hard-core California gang members who have done prison time and have been indoctrinated in the schooling system of their master (pilli). The second type of Sureños are converted local Latino gang members who emulate the Sureño gang style, even if they've never been to California. Some of them are still dedicated enough to act just like kanpol soldiers.

Following the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Sureños locked up in Nevada and Arizona jails and prisons rioted and attacked blacks on orders originating in the Los Angeles County jail. During the Los Angeles Mexican Mafia RICO investigations (1995-'99), we learned from gang informants that the Mexican Mafia was running Sureño gang meetings in Phoenix parks.

I've read that these local Sureño converts are not real Sureños because they don't pay taxes or follow all the Mexican Mafia edicts. Many gangs in Los Angeles aren't taxed as they were in 1995. The amount of tax depends on which Mexican Mafia member controls the turf. Some Eme members only tax drug dealers and not the Sureño gangs themselves. Many unsophisticated young gang members deny that their gang takes orders or is taxed by the Mexican Mafia, even in Los Angeles, but the truth is that they do. So if your 15-year-old local Southsider says his gang doesn't pay taxes, he may be right or may not know. That's not the measure of his loyalty.

I've heard so-called experts say that MS-13 and 18th Street gang members are not really Sureños, because they don't pay Eme taxes in some states. On their mother turf, I've personally witnessed them paying taxes many times and booked the many thousands of dollars of "tax" money into federal evidence.

The further away from California that Sureño gangs are, the more autonomy they exercise. This is because they're on the frontier outposts of the Eme's control. The MS-13 "Mara" in El Salvador may act independently, but when they find themselves in the U.S. facing federal prison or state commitments in facilities controlled by Sureños they tow the Sureño line and follow the Sureño "reglas" or rules.

By far, the strangest Sureños are Mexican born or Central American Sureños. These piasas Sureños are under the influence of the American Sureño gangs that operate on the border and facilitate human smuggling. During their odyssey from their native land to the U.S., they have adopted the style of the Sureño gangs that transported them.

There are also a few Sureño gangs that have been spawned in Mexico, but most of the illegal-immigrant Sureños have never heard of kanpol or pilli. They have never been to California, and really don't get what the Norteño and Sureño war is all about. Don't judge your Sureños by these gang members.

Kanpol Sureño gang members will become more sophisticated with time. Their codes of conduct and rules of engagement will be more regulated and controlled by their pilli prison-gang heavyweights in California's Pelican Bay State Prison and at ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado. Don't underestimate them.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

SMH AT THE AUTHOR COPPIN PLEAS FOR DIRTY COPS... ALOT OF GANG UNITS ESPEICALLY IN SOUTH LA ARE BORDERING LINE GANG BANGERS....




Movie Review: Rampart
With "Rampart," Hollywood once again engages in bad-cop myth making.

February 14, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Screenshot: Rampart
Screenshot: Rampart
Just what caused the LAPD "Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums" (or CRASH) anti-gang unit scandal? And what are the lessons to be learned from this tragic police corruption investigation? There are many complicated and conscience-probing answers and opinions to be considered, but don't look to find any of them in "Rampart," director/screenwriter Oren Moverman's exploitation movie.

"Rampart" is the opposite of "Courageous," the outstanding law enforcement film made by Hollywood outsiders. What else could we expect from traditional Hollywood movie-makers and their left-wing mindset? "Rampart" is another depiction of the evil white-guy cop, played this time by over-the-top Woody Harrelson, and the good black guy played by gangbanger-gone-actor Ice Cube.

The movie is set in Los Angeles in 1999. According to the synopsis, Officer Dave Brown is a Vietnam vet and Rampart Division cop who's dedicated to doing "the people's dirty work" and asserting his own code of justice. Officer Brown often blurs the lines between right and wrong to maintain his action-hero state of mind. When he gets caught on tape beating a suspect, he finds himself in a personal and emotional downward spiral as the consequences of his past sins and his refusal to change his ways during a department-wide corruption scandal seal his fate."

If you want to understand what really went wrong, you should listen to the training presentation of retired LAPD Commander Daniel Schatz. He was the assistant commanding officer of LAPD's Operations-Headquarters Bureau when the Rampart scandal broke. Commander Schatz assumed command of the Rampart Corruption Task Force. His lecture is illuminating.

Commander Dan Schatz points out that this was not so much a case of police power corrupting good officers, as much as a case of the LAPD recruitment liberalizing of the application and background investigation process that allowed the systematic "hiring of losers" such as Kevin Gaines, Nino Durden, Rafael Pérez, and David Mack.

KEVIN GAINES

On March 18, 1997, at about 4 p.m., LAPD undercover officer Frank Lyga shot and killed Rampart CRASH officer Kevin Gaines following a case of apparent road rage. Officer Lyga reported that Gaines was the first to pull a gun, and that he responded in self-defense. On "Frontline," Lyga said, "In my training experience this guy had 'I'm a gang member' written all over him." According to witnesses to the incident, Gaines was flashing gang signs at Officer Lyga. Further investigation would later reveal that Gaines was driving a green Mitsubishi Montero registered to the wife of Death Row Records CEO and Compton Mob Piru Blood gang member Marion "Suge" Knight.

In fact the investigation also revealed that most of the other officers entangled in the Rampart scandal were associated with Suge Knight and rap recording label Death Row Records. Most of them had spent time as well paid armed security and had been seen partying with the Death Row crew and their groupies.

BIGGIE SMALL'S MURDER

On March 9, 1997 Brooklyn rap star The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher George Wallace) was murdered in front of the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Wallace's estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and named Rampart officers Durden, Pérez and Mack as defendants in April of 2007.

An 18-year veteran LAPD Robbery Homicide detective, Russell Poole, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and Chief Bernard Parks on Sept. 26, 2000. Detective Poole had been the lead investigator on the Lyga-Gaines shooting. Poole made the claim that Chief Parks had shut down his efforts to investigate corruption within the department. Poole exposed in his lawsuit specific conversations and direct orders in which Chief Parks prevented him from furthering his investigation into the criminal activities of Mack and Kevin Gaines, as well as the Wallace murder investigation.

Many city officials expressed a lack of confidence with Chief Parks' handling of the investigation. His daughter had allegedly been among the party animals associated with Perez and the Death Row crew. On Sept. 19, 2000, the Los Angeles City Council voted 10 to 2 to accept a five-year consent decree allowing the U.S. Department of Justice to oversee and monitor reforms within the LAPD. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Chief Parks opposed the consent decree, but were forced to back down in the face of overwhelming support by the City Council.

DAVID MACK

On Nov. 6, 1997, one of the Los Angeles branches of the Bank of America was the victim of an armed robbery that netted the suspects $722,000. Later the assistant manager, Errolyn Romero, confessed to her role in the crime and implicated her boyfriend, LAPD officer David Mack. Subsequently convicted of the armed robbery, Mack was sentenced to 14 years and three months in federal prison. Even before his arrest, Mack commonly dressed in the Blood gang color red, even in his choice of expensive suits. After reaching federal prison, he renounced all affiliation with LAPD and openly joined the Bloods. He has never revealed the whereabouts of the money, bragging to fellow inmates that he will be a millionaire by the time he is released.

RAFAEL PEREZ

By far the worst "loser" LAPD hired was Officer Rafael Pérez. A native of Puerto Rico who was raised in the streets of Philadelphia, he joined the Marine Corps after his high-school graduation in 1985. He joined the LAPD in 1989. Prior to this, he had been a reject and passed over for hiring by background investigators from several other departments in Southern California. He also looked and acted in a "gang like" manner.

On Aug. 25, 1998, Perez was arrested for stealing six pounds (or $800,000 worth) of cocaine from a department property room. Detectives say that when he was arrested, Pérez reportedly asked, "Is this about the bank robbery?" But Pérez would later deny that he had any knowledge of David Mack's bank robbery, and never testified against Mack. In addition to the six pounds of cocaine stolen, there were 11 additional instances of missing or suspicious cocaine transfers.

On Sept. 8, 1999, Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti and City Attorney James Hahn cut a deal with Perez to implicate 70 other officers in misconduct. For this deal, Pérez received a five-year prison sentence as well as immunity from further prosecution of misconduct short of murder.

Rafael "Ray" Perez's credibility at the time of this deal was "lower than a jail house snitch's flip flops." And his credibility has been severely undermined since then. He has since testified in several internal affairs investigations in which three officers, including LAPD Officer Brian Liddy, that were accused of crimes or misconduct were found not guilty or the alleged charges were dropped. During these investigations he has failed several lie-detector tests.

His sweet deal with the district attorney allowed him to get out of prison early, but he was arrested by investigators with the California Department of Motor Vehicles in June of 2005 after trying to obtain a license under the name of Ray Lopez. All he got was a few more months on federal probation.

BAD COP MOVIE MANIA

Yes, there were a few "bad apples" involved in the Rampart CRASH scandal. The Hollywood elite would like America to believe that the corruption at Rampart was systemic and that all the cops were involved. That isn't true, and most of the misconduct alleged by Perez and his "gang-want-to-be" partners, was unfounded.

The true depiction of history has never been Hollywood's strong suit. The police are too often portrayed like our U.S. military, as corrupt trigger-happy racists. That's because that's what the clueless movie makers believe. I found this out while working as a technical adviser in a few Hollywood films. Whenever the police technical adviser tries to correct the director or writer's misconceptions, his opinion is usually trashed in favor of what looks good to them.

The real incidents uncovered by internal investigators in the Rampart CRASH scandal have been sensationalized in fictional exploitations such as the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," and in television series and movies such as "The Shield," "Training Day," "Faster," and now "Rampart."

We don't need this kind of bad-cop Hollywood myth making. It's unjustified and creates distrust in the community and among our youth. We do have real corruption occurring, but not the kind movie makers like to depict. In a great majority of these cases, it's the honest whistle blowers in the law enforcement community who investigate and expose these anomalous incidents. And who in Hollywood would make a movie about these real heroes?

Tags: Rampart Scandal, LAPD, Cops In Movies, Gang Task Force

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Off-Duty Gang Confrontations
Take steps to avoid self-identifying yourself as a cop while off duty. And plan so you'll be ready if trouble finds you.
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February 17, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Photo: Richard Valdemar
Photo: Richard Valdemar
Gang members remember an officer who has had significant contacts with the gang. As an officer specifically assigned to gangs, you will be especially remembered. Eventually, while off-duty, you'll run into a gang banger who recognizes you. Will you be prepared when this happens?

The first thing I learned working gangs in Compton as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy was that our issued Smith & Wesson Model 15, four-inch .38 revolver was not enough. Those who figured this out ordered stainless Smith & Wesson Model 66 six-inch .357 Magnum revolvers and an additional Model 60 five-shot back-up gun. The larger, six-inch-barreled shiny guns definitely got the attention of the gang members, but the change was more for function than form. Since we came into contact with multiple gang members in their natural habitat daily, 11 hot hollow points was better than six.

We also beefed up the issued Ithaca Model 37 12-gauge shotgun by carrying a reserve of rifled slugs and Ferret teargas rounds. Unlike LAPD, the sheriff's deputies were authorized to use these rounds with a nod from the sergeant. Although the patrol rifles were usually locked in the station armory, rendering them all but useless, we qualified and became familiar with the AR-15.

One of the best ways to prevent off-duty confrontations with gang members is to not identify yourself as a target. Don't tape a bull's eye on your back. It was common in my department to display a small police decal on the rear of your personal vehicle. Sometimes deputies would buy license-plate holders marked with the LASD radio call letters of KMA 628. This was also common on the private vehicles of LAPD and California Highway Patrol with their radio call letters. I think this was a method of avoiding traffic tickets. However, gang members have learned to recognize these off-duty cop identifiers. And remember you're not the only one who rides in that car; don't turn your family ride into a bullet magnet.

Here's another illogical cop phenomenon I can't explain. Police officers often work many years in uniform assignments with the goal of obtaining a highly desirable plainclothes or undercover assignment. Yet while these same officers were off duty, they routinely wore police-identifying clothing.

This phenomenon is most observable on the East Coast in and around the D.C. beltway, especially among off-duty federal officers. Unfortunately, this trend seems to be spreading across the nation. This off-duty "uniform" is khaki cargo pants, a dark colored or black golf shirt (complete with some cop logo), and a semi-auto pistol in a Kydex holster exposed on a belt. I call this the "shoot me first" off-duty uniform.

Smart gang members learn to spot undercover and off-duty police officers in public places. So why help them with their target acquisition by standing out in the crowd at the hamburger stand, in a restaurant, or in the mall?

The opposite extreme of this phenomenon is those cops who try to look like gangsters. They dress like outlaw bikers, hip hop rappers, skinheads, or tattooed cholos. This would also draw the attention of gang members and mark them as priority targets.

Off-duty dress should help you blend in with the average citizen, not make you stand out. Concealed carry means that your weapon should not be exposed. Conceal it, if you want the life-saving element of surprise.

Preparing for an off-duty confrontation with multiple gang members while you're alone, without a radio, ballistic vest or foreseeable back-up is a serious matter. Here's how we old gang dinosaurs got ready, or should I say "stayed ready." The LASD OSS gang deputies were some of the first officers to go to the large capacity 9mm semi-autos with the S&W Model 59. My back-up and off-duty weapon became a 12-shot S&W Model 469 9mm with a 20-round spare magazine (33 rounds).

Thinking and acting in a tactical way is not a natural inclination; it must be learned and practiced. It must become part of your on- and off-duty habit. Don't expect this to be easy or well accepted by others. Carry your off-duty weapon everywhere. Carry a knife, and have a flashlight and handcuffs handy. Prepare and rehearse scenarios like bad guys showing up at your family's front door. This happened to me.

 

[Dr Dre's ProductionSkills]

Off-Duty Gang Confrontations
Take steps to avoid self-identifying yourself as a cop while off duty. And plan so you'll be ready if trouble finds you.
Tweet
February 17, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author

Outstanding OSS gang units led by sergeants such as Ed Dvorak, Charlie Araujo and others begged, barrowed and invented police equipment and training far advanced of our regular departmental training. We spent our own time and money to train with LAPD and LASD SWAT teams. We trained with experienced experts from Israel, Jordan, France, New Zealand, and England who belonged to special anti-terrorist units. This somehow seemed to be offensive to those who felt that "the department-issued equipment and training was enough." To be the best, train like the best.

In the early 1990s, I was living in the Southridge area of Fontana, Calif. Though this was a residential area populated by firemen and police officers, my wife and I had several confrontations with local members of the 18th Street gang, the Headhunters and a local tagging crew called TDK.

These gang members seemed to have free reign at night in this area. They knew who I was, although I didn't work in that city. Several times after coming home late at night they would stand down the street in a park and taunt me. Finally one day while skateboarding at the neighborhood park, my middle-school boy was shot at by gang members. He was grazed in the elbow by one of the rounds. We moved out before the inevitable confrontation occurred. My neighbor was not so lucky.

On Sept. 25, 1995 at about 7 p.m. in my quiet middle-class Southridge neighborhood, an elderly man saw a group of taggers crossing out a curb tag on the sidewalk in front of his home in the 11500 block of Winery Drive. The vandals had stopped and unloaded from two vehicles parked in the street in front of the residence. The homeowner exited his door and asked them what they were doing. Instead of running away, four tagger crew members began yelling at the homeowner.

Several of the neighborhood children and teens were in the area playing when they turned their attention to the confrontation. They witnessed the taggers jumping on the homeowner and attacking him with fists and feet, and later told police. An LAPD officer lived next door and was also aroused to the commotion and like a good neighbor ran to the aid of the elderly neighbor. The four young taggers were not used to victims resisting and fighting back, especially when they were adult men. One of the most violent taggers ran to the parked vehicles and returned to the fight armed with a handgun.

The off-duty LAPD officer had no choice but to draw and fire. Witnesses said two or three shots dropped the armed tag banger. The remaining taggers and the witnesses scattered. The suspect vehicles sped away, one north on Winery and the other east on Shadow Drive (past my house). Responding police and paramedics pronounced the teenager dead, taped off the crime scene and covered the tag banger's body. The television news crew showed up.

Beating the suspect to the draw is not the end of the problem. The aftermath of an off-duty shooting can be just as dangerous. The next morning the mother of the slain tag banger appeared on the Los Angeles television news saying that her son was forced to carry a handgun to defend himself from the police who harassed and threatened her poor son. There was a general response from the self-appointed "community spokespersons" who expressed shock and dismay that the off-duty LAPD officer could find no other response but to kill a youthful minority member for a minor act of vandalism.

My sympathy for the poor LAPD officer only increased as he endured the shooting-review process. This could have easily been me. Don't make the false assumption that the negative television and print media coverage of the shooting, and the community activist's anti-police campaign would have no influence on the police shooting review.

Even if the shooting was found justified by the LAPD shooting review process, the Good Samaritan officer might still face criminal and civil trials. His home and his family could possibly now become targets of the surviving gang bangers. The stress and aftermath of this shooting could change the officer's whole future life.

Do yourself a favor. Your planning for the many facets of an unthinkable off-duty situation must be serious and deliberate. Think about it, and be prepared for these confrontations.