[BIO AND PHOTO APPEAR BELOW]
Today, there are 1,000,000 gang members in the United States. They are individuals, they are active, and males and females comprise their ranks. The U.S. Army currently has 1.5 million trained and battle-ready soldiers. According to the FBI, gangs are increasing in number in and among the U.S. armed forces. There are currently some 8,000 gang members in the armed forces of the United States, the majority being in the Army. Gang presence in the country's military forces is a fact. The FBI says that every gang in the U.S. is represented in the military, the difference being in size and number. Do you think gangs in the military have the same sense of patriotism and national security as do their non-gang counterparts? Gang presence in the military compromises the honor of the armed services and weakens the nation's defense. Said another way, should the Statue of Liberty shed a tear and look upon gangs in the military with shame and revulsion? What about us? What should our response be?
The FBI says that Al-Qaeda is viewing gangs in the U.S. military with deep interest. Why? Because a gangsta' (the street term) fulfills al-Qaeda's four-point profile criteria: (1) the gangsta has deep feelings of alienation and anger, usually due to not having or knowing his father; (2) the gangsta yearns for a sense of achievement to fulfill his feelings of emptiness; (3) the gangsta longs for a father-figure from whom he can take orders--the direction he missed in his childhood years; and (4) the gangsta wants to be well-paid (money) so he can show off his bling (ostentatious jewelry), as proof, reward and recognition of his achievement. Al-Qaeda identifies with the gangsta's mindset and respects it as being of value and equivalent to the A-Qaeda mind. The gangsta and Al-Qaeda operate on the same paradigm. Al-Qaeda has no shortage of money to substitute for the gangsta's unquenchable thirst for adoration, respect, kudos, and self-fulfillment.
I have done work for military defense lawyers (Judge Advocates General) at West Point Military Academy and in the United States Navy. But if gangs are growing in number and, presumably, in strength in the nation's military and in communities across the country, why is a Gang Expert needed to assist lawyers in trials involving alleged gangs? Isn't a duck a duck no matter whatever else you call it? According to the reasoning of many people, including court jurors and military prosecutors, isn't the fact that gangs are growing enough reason to try and convict an alleged gang member standing trial in criminal court or facing adjudication in juvenile court?
Alleged gang members, as do we all, have the inalienable right to a full and fair court trial. That is a legal hallmark that separates and distinguishes United States courts from the guilty-until-proven-innocent paradigm on which courts in most of the world's countries operate. Following are just some of the reasons Criminal Defense Attorneys need a Gang Expert to help them to achieve their client-objectives in court.
1. Police often "mis-hear" and "re-translate" what a gang suspect tells them about his or her affiliation: The common testimony police officers make in court is "I made a consensual contact with Joe Gangster and he said he's a member of XYZ gang." Defendants frequently tell me that they were either pressured by the arresting officer to admit being in the gang or they admitted growing up with known gangbangers and going to school with them--and that's all. A Gang Expert, through skillful interviewing of neighbors, school administrators, and employers, can verify or refute purported affiliations. Often, a Gang Expert is very knowledgeable about the gang in question, as well as familiar with its members, as well as thoroughly knowledgeable about its rivals.
2. Police often testify that "common knowledge" is what confirms their suspicion about and allegation that a defendant is a gang member and the crime for which he is being tried was done specifically at the behest of the gang, to enhance the gang's stature, and inspire fear in and exercise control over the community. A Gang Expert can aid the Criminal Defense Attorney by analyzing police documentation of the gang's past violations and, specifically, noting whether or not the defendant has been named in any incident reports or cited in Field Interview Cards (F.I.C.s). I had a gang case, in Sacramento Superior Court, where the police officer stated he never profiled my client, a female defendant, but that he "could have." The prosecutor argued with me that "could have" was enough proof that my client was in fact a gang member and her having GSR (gunshot residue) on her hand was further proof that the act she was alleged to have committed was done for the benefit of her gang.
I responded that "could have" was so far removed from the criteria the Sacramento Police Department uses to profile gang members, that it cast reasonable doubt as to whether the officer had sufficient training and even suggested his own confusion. I further stated that against Sacramento Police Department's eleven-point criteria for profiling a gang member, the police officer failed to testify as to which criteria, exactly, framed his sophomoric "I could have profiled her, if I'd wanted to." I told the prosecutor the police officer had not finished his job. "I could have profiled her" is a defective testimony and only suggested the officer's dereliction of duty. The judge threw the case out of court and released my client with no prison term or probation.
3. Some police officers magnify their gang expertise to show their "best side" to the jury, having already won the prosecutor's heart (most prosecutors use only police officers as their gang experts--could this be because (a) police officers have a natural prosecutorial bias? or (b) police officers and prosecutors are paid out of the same county budget, their checks signed by the same budget chief?). In a court in which I frequently work, a police officer identified himself as "Head of the Black Gang Unit." The court reporter dutifully typed this into the transcript. In a conference with the attorney representing our client, I complained that such identification would prejudice the jury toward guilt. I explained that the jury would see an African-American police officer introduce himself as "Head of the Black Gang Unit" and then proceed to state how he happened to arrest the African-American defendant, my client. The jury would subconsciously figure who better to know an African-American defendant on trial than an African-American police officer? Reasonable doubt would go out the window and the jury's view of my client would be tainted.
Further, I explained, such an introduction as the officer used begs the question about his competence and qualifications. If he is the head of the "African-American Gang Unit," what would happen to his job if the police department experienced budget declines? Would he be laid off or terminated because of a decision that he could work only with or among African Americans rather than as an equal opportunity, full-service police officer able to serve the entirety of the city? Moreover, I pointed out, such an introduction of himself as "Head of the Black Gang Unit" is a racist statement that ought to have been protested just as the Italian-American community protested the use of "Cosa Nostra" during the Senate Racketeering Hearings on Organized Crime during which Mafia lieutenant Joe Valachi "sang like a canary," according to the attorney general."Cosa Nostra" is a term no longer allowed in a court of law. Likewise, since there are other ethnicity-based gangs as well as multi-racial lawbreakers, "Head of the Gang Unit" should have been what the officer said, not "Head of the Black Gang Unit."
I have just touched on a mere few areas in which I can materially help an attorney defending a client on gang-allegation charges. There are many other ways in which I can aid and abet an attorney's client-objectives, as well as reasons for employing me as a Gang Expert. In addition to providing court testimony throughout the United States, I consult with attorneys, in both the Civil and Criminal bars, provide litigation support, and write preliminary as well as full and complete case opinions. Using my expertise can result in an efficient, economical, and easy strategy for winning your client's case. Gangs are growing throughout the country and in the military. Therefore, those of us in the defense bar need to increase our defensive and Constitutional strategies, in order to address the increasing vulnerability of juries to prosecutors' arguments about gangs, their growth and our defendants' alleged roles in both. No matter the growth on the "gang tree" the nation's prosecutors hold up to jurors, my objective in court is to separate and distinguish my gang-alleged clients from allegations that they are branches on that tree. I am grateful and honored for my success in helping attorneys achieve their Constitutional goals for clients.
I can be reached at 310-678-6950 or courtexpert@gmail.com. I look forward to working with you to help you achieve your case objectives.
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Showing posts with label gang expert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gang expert. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Columbine High School (Littleton, Colorado) Memorial Speech by Dr. Shaw
Why Are We Here, Or: If not Now…When?
Dr. James E. Shaw
Address for the “Day of Commemoration and Change” Ceremony for Columbine High School, April 20, 2000
Littleton, Colorado
Good evening: My remarks are dedicated to all the victims of adolescentcide: children slain in acts of homicide committed by other children. We are a poorer nation bereft of: the leadership they might have provided; the cures they might have discovered; the books they might have written; the verses they might have penned; the songs they might have sung; the journeys they might have taken; and the voices they might have raised. May they rest in peace, for we, the living, must not.
We mourn the horrific deaths of 12 students and a teacher in Littleton, Colorado, and the two teen-aged student shooters who killed them before committing suicide themselves. But in our hours, days weeks, and years of mourning, we must require of ourselves that we do more than grieve over the tragic losses of Littleton’s “bright promises” and the other fallen children in the nation whose young lives and gleaming promise were extinguished when they fell victim to children-terrorists. Columbine High School is regarded by some as the Pearl Harbor of school violence. Yet, there are countless isolated, alienated, confused, depressed and angry children throughout the country who, in the last year, have tried, in their own words, to “out-columbine Columbine.”
Although it is only the second quarter of the new millennium, it is awfully late in the day, to use a figure of speech. We must act with a sense of urgency that gives us a truer perspective of “national security” when seen from the point of view of children so viciously and abruptly denied it. For when our children are not safe, neither, then, are we. Guns killed 75,640 children between 1979 and 1996 and injured over 340,000 more. These statistics mean there were more children who suffered gun injuries than Vietnam war veterans injured in combat.
Currently, every 48 hours in America, 26 children—an entire classroom full—are killed by guns. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that since the Columbine High School tragedy last April 20, guns have killed 4,745 children. Death’s clock continues ticking and, at the rate of 0.54 deaths per hour—as we are comfortably ensconced here in the Hilton Hotel—I must inform you that 10 children will not be safely tucked into their beds tonight or any night hereafter. By midnight, tonight, three more will have joined them in death, too.
What kind of inspiration, motivation, or direction do we need to make us protect our children against violence at home, in school, and in their communities? For the past nine years, since 1991, I have been studying what I call “adolescentcide,” a word I coined and mentioned earlier, meaning the phenomenon of children killing children. I spent four of those nine years inside the prison cells of boys and girls incarcerated for murder and homicide. And during those four years, 103 children tracked the trail for me as they graphically described their odysseys from life at home to life in prison. Despite their wide diversity of ethnicity, economic status, and social standing, all of these children were “united” in one respect: They had shown a dominant preference for violent behavior. They had all chosen to “solve” their problem by pointing a gun at “it”—usually another kid.
I figured that by talking to these kids, over and over, they might tell me the ways parents and teachers could have made a difference in their lives. You see, in 1991, when I began my research, in the country’s 75 largest counties, 370,424 juvenile defendants were formally processed through the juvenile courts; 22% of them were murder defendants, and 1,638 of these were prosecuted as adults! As a former teacher who had been threatened, attacked, whose classroom exterior had been strafed by gunfire, and who had to command my elementary school charges, playing outside, to take duck-and-cover maneuvers whenever screeching tires and gunshots were heard, I saw, with my own eyes, school yards being turned into grave yards.
A number of the incarcerated children I interviewed had been cradled in a culture of violence. Resorting to it was as natural as watching their mother, sister, aunt, or grandmother getting smacked around and brutalized by some insecure, ignorant barbarian, otherwise known as husband, lover or boyfriend. Six of “my” kids—as I came to view the 103 children over the years—had killed an immediate blood-relative.
Other children who talked to me from their prison cells and from their hearts, claimed to have grown up in “good” homes where they neither witnessed nor personally experienced violence or brutality. Yet they told stories of verbal and emotional abuse, and lives so bleak, that they desperately wished they could have lived away from their families or, simply, not lived at all.
Still, other children had been physically beaten and tortured, on a regular basis, almost from the time they cut their first teeth. Years of such child abuse conditioned them to be chronically angry, depressed, and waiting for an opportunity to avenge themselves. One of these admitted that, even today, she feels relaxed only “when I see the sight of my own blood.” That had always been her personal signal that whoever was beating her, would finally stop. Today, she regularly injures herself to the point of bleeding.
Still, others of my incarcerated children population stated the coldness, isolation, and indifference that passed for “parenting” in their homes “freaked” them out, drove them “up the wall,” “filled me with hate,” and used other expressions to mean they had been going insane because of the lack of love, warmth, and caring from adults responsible for their care and maintenance: their own parents.
These 103 children told me they killed because they felt alienated, isolated, unloved, unlovable, depressed. They also had experienced verbal, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse by an adult, or some other form of adult betrayal. And they had ready access to alcohol, drugs, and…guns! In 1995 4,236,942 firearms were manufactured. These included pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and other miscellaneous firepower. Most of these weapons have nothing whatsoever to do with hunting animals. On the contrary, it is people, including children, whose lives have been snuffed out by this tonnage of firearms.
Gunfire killed 4,643 infants, children, and teens in 1996—134 murdered before their 10th birthday. More children under 10 years of age are killed each year by guns than police are killed in the line of duty or U.S. soldiers killed by hostile action. The Centers for Disease Control reports that American children under 15 are 12 times more likely to die from gun violence than their peers in 25 other industrialized nations combined.
As a nation, we have expended Herculean amounts of time, money and effort preparing to meet the twenty-first century by immunizing our ubiquitous computerized-technology systems against the notorious “Y2K Bug.” However necessary that crusade might have been, the larger issue is: How much time, money and effort are we prepared to continue to pour into the real “Y2K’s—Years 2000 Kids—who possess the power to change the course of American history forever? As the Honorable William Bennett, former White House Cabinet member stated, it is only young twenty-first century America that can legitimately be called “history’s most violent ‘civilized’ nation.”
How much longer are we going to put up with the constant magnification and glorification of violence and guns on our movie, television, Internet, and video game screens? Who was asleep at the switch when guns became the only unregulated consumer product in America? Why do we regulate toy guns, but not the real guns that kill a child every two hours? Why are real guns so easy for children to find…in many cases, as easy as toy guns? How much more child carnage and future “Day of Commemorations…” will occur before we decide enough is enough?
Will today be the day when parents across the nation demand changes in the public education format so that mental detectors become as important as metal detectors? If not now, when? Tests for depression, specialized counseling, and behavior monitoring might prove to be positive interventions for those students who are emotionally armed and dangerous.
Is this the day we realize and accept that security cameras take fine external pictures but fail to photograph what is in a student’s heart or what is lacking in his character? If not today, when?
A 1993 report published by the American Psychological Association stated: “There is absolutely no doubt that higher levels of viewing violence on television are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behavior. Children’s exposure to violence in the mass media, particularly at young ages, can have harmful lifelong consequences.”
Television, in many homes is the electronic fireplace. I would strongly advise parents whose television sets have grown up with, and are now members of, the family to analyze the hours spent in front of the tube versus the minutes spent in real, heart-to-heart conversation. Then, turn that around: Spend minutes in front of the tube but hours in each other’s faces involved in engaging talks, stimulating discussions, and resolutions to problems.
Since last year, how many of you parents, or other parents across America, have increased the amount of time you talk to your children about moral principles, right and wrong behavior, good and bad choices? If you leave it up to the schools to do it, you’re copping out…big time. Moral education, moral direction, and moral intelligence begin at home. It has always been that way, and it will always be that way. It seems that schools would rather teach the right and wrong of Driver Training, or the right and wrong about fouling in basketball or clipping in football, than teach children good, safe, sane behaviors based on the “M” word: Morality. Some schools think that teaching morality is teaching religion. Yet, few people are ever hear complaining about how “straight-laced” and moral the Driver Training rules of the road are, or how strangulating the character-and-moral-development regulations that govern school athletics and other team sports are.
Is there anybody complaining about the smear that 6-year old Elian Gonzalez’s father made about American schools on “60 Minutes” last Sunday? Mr. Gonzalez, a self-admitted communist who embraces the communist regime of Fidel Castro, in a country where bread lines are so long they have “Stop” and “Go” signs and modern medicine got lost in the Bay of Pigs, said American schools are where kids go to get shot. Now, wait a minute. We don’t like to use the words “moral” or “moral education” because they are too closely-aligned with religion, with God. Yet, all of the nation’s state constitutions—and that’s 50—unabashedly acknowledge and otherwise refer to God, in reverential, devout and gracious terms. Are we going to declare those state constitutions unconstitutional?
Mr. Gonzalez’s belief system prohibits that he acknowledge a Supreme Being. Our country was built on freedom of religion. Yet, somehow, that cherished concept has eroded into freedom from religion—or moral teachings, or spiritual guidance. The result is a moral vacuum that breeds immoral children whose god is a gun. And from a backward country where it takes people like Mr. Gonzalez an hour-and-a-half to watch “60 Minutes”, he, who professes no belief in a Supreme Being, calls it like he sees it: “American schools are where kids go to get shot.”
Somebody once asked me if America’s turning its back on—and not fearing—God has put us in the position of now having to fear our very own children, as punishment. That is a very important question. And while I am not suggesting that we turn our schools into seminaries and monasteries, I am suggesting that we begin immediately instituting right-and-wrong concepts, character development frameworks, and life-ethics training in our nation’s kindergarten through 12th-grade school curricula. And some states already have. Incidentally, let’s not throw our hands up and join with Elian Gonzalez’s father in championing Cuba’s educational system.
But what you can do right away is suggest to your school administrators that World History can wait and children ought to be taught how to stop the bloodshed flowing over their modern history today. Tell school leaders that dry Mathematics and arid Algebra might be brought to life if students were repeatedly asked to link raw numbers, equations and theorems to the national daily child homicide death toll.
Tell them also that the Language Arts program might produce more scholarly, articulate, and effective journalists if they were given field assignments in visiting the morgue where juvenile corpses lay; observing court proceedings on juvenile homicide; and interviewing homicide cops in the local precinct.
Don’t forget to tell them that Social Science might be more relevant if students created their own Teen Court, under the watchful eye of a local judge, and heard cases on a variety of campus behavioral infractions, and levied fines and discipline sanctions. If you don’t begin all of this today…when would you?
In the meantime, instill principles of honesty and integrity in your child. Children appreciate knowing what the standard is and reaching it. Knowing right from wrong clears up heir thinking and develops their moral intelligence. Children lacking in moral intelligence do not have the capacity to make moral decisions. If no moral teaching has been instilled in them, there exists a void that will be constantly filled with anti-social thoughts and actions. There is a direct link between a child’s ignorance of life-ethics, his disregard for right and wrong moral behavior, and his decision to kill another child or other human being.
Help your child set clear attainable objectives and thus have the satisfaction of controlling his own future. That’s what really produces genuine self-esteem. Children who lack the capacity for self-love and self-esteem can never realize their full possibilities. One of the most important gifts you can give your child is to teach him to be “response-able”—able to respond.
Teach your child to seek and become aligned with a spiritual purpose. You may find that a church or house of worship can help you to dot his in an organized, efficient, and consistent way. You are the ultimate model for your child, whether you know it or not. You were his first teacher. From you, it is important that he learns there are more good people than bad people and more reasons to be happy and optimistic than sad and sullen.
Teach your child nonviolent communication strategies and peace-building skills. Repeatedly emphasize that a gun or other weapon is never, ever an acceptable alternative to nonviolent interaction and positive communication.
Your child is exposed to you but a fraction of the time, in contrast with his exposure to ideas, people and events outside the family. Try to make each of your interactive moments with him joyful, meaningful, rewarding, and loving experiences. Parents who are in touch with themselves and their loving attitudes and inclinations are more effective parents.
All children who make the decision to kill somebody else are alienated and isolated from important adults in their lives. We must constantly give our children a sense that they are loved and valued and safe. A recent study of students in grades 7-12 showed that teenagers who feel “connected” to their schools and families are less likely to engage in risky or violent behavior. This is hardly a surprise. We cannot underestimate the importance of family, teachers, and faith communities, and we must nurture that feeling of “connectedness” very early. Parents’ voices are the ones children recognize first and fastest. And parents, especially fathers, need to express their love to their children verbally and often. Silence may be all right for strangers, but not for families. Bad kids can happen to good parents, and it is better to take time and lovingly persist in coaxing your son to “talk out” whatever’s on his chest, so he won’t put a bullet into your or somebody else’s chest.
Emotion often drives behavior. Always consult your child’s feelings; how he feels will tell you how he is coping. Children’s emotions are dynamic and their flare-ups illuminate their feelings. Addressing the emotional needs of your child should be a constant priority. Teenagers appreciate and admire parents who patiently stick it out with them, no matter what they throw at their parents, in terms of behavior. Parents who never give up, no matter the emotional “weathers” of their teens, are highly-praised (yes, teens often praise their folks to others), highly-valued and –loved parents.
Parents, you should be able to say to your children:
"I am your parent, you are my child, and I vow, as of this moment and until time is no more, to love you. You are the best part of me. I hold you, hug your, touch you, teach you, and shine my eyes upon you in love. With patience, I joyfully share my strength with you. With kindness and praise, I show you right from wrong, good from bad. When you fall, I gently pick you up and the feather of my kiss brushes your tears away. The rhythm of our hearts is the beat of our love. It is with pride that I am your model of gentleness, your mirror of sensitivity. I am the grownup you will become. You are my joy and it is with total love that I touch and teach you, guide and lead you.
I promise you a home in which your spirits will lift you to newer and greater heights and where you are free to dream and express the full palette of your talents on the canvas of your personality. I will show you how your desire gives you the energy of angels; you will learn to soar with your enthusiasm. I will show you how to live well—with hope and vision, the confidence to climb any mountain, the trust to reach out and touch. You will learn to help others with a heart that heals. For you I must, and will always be, the sum of patience, the temple of goodness, the soft winds and silent springs of compassion.
I will teach you to love life fully, give to others generously and let your light shine. Perfect love replaces fear, and you will learn how to greet each day with love, salute the Universe with joy and thanksgiving, and to let the quiet night comfort your soul. We are one with this gift called Life, and heirs to the blessings of our grand and glorious Universe. The Universe is filled with abundance and I will teach you to desire only good from the Universe and give only good back to the Universe.
You will learn the importance of sharing the blessings the Universe pours upon you. I will teach you to never look back upon yesterday, nor pine away for tomorrow. You will learn that virtue comes from being thankful for the nowness and newness that is today, for it is the gift we call The Present.
You will learn that the mind is a great source of strength, love is the root of your character, and that life is filled with goodness. I promise to let your talents guide, cheer and support you, for that which you love is where your heart is; and where your heart is, there you will thrive. Through peace, you will learn to negotiate; through love, to communicate; and through respect, to articulate. For by giving to others what they need, you thus build the bridge to what you need. Thinking of others is a virtue you will always value. You will learn that laughter is often the best medicine. I promise you days filled with laughter and learning so that your sleep will be filled with dreams of joy. Life is not a lullaby but you will know that your humor is a music that gives life flavor.
You are an important, vital member of this family, a very necessary member of the human race. You help to make family and community strong. From this moment on, until time is no more, I promise to love you.
Thank you for teaching me what the truest treasure in life really is."
While America is not currently at war with any foreign power, we must know—by our presence here—that our children have declared war on each other. There are millions of children who are depending on us—for protection, for guidance, for the basic necessities. Before one more child is lost, we must promise ourselves that we will do all that is necessary to make our homes safer, our children more secure. For home is where the hate is. Children who kill are homegrown. There is no such as unsafe schools, only unsafe homes. Schools are only as safe as the homes they must serve.
Children are throwing the family gun into their school backpacks along with their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and hauling this lot of problems to school to “share” their pain.
We need to mount an all-out campaign, which the Centers for Disease Control might appreciate: We must vaccinate our children against violence; immunize our children against intolerance; and humanize our children with love. That is the only way we will re-unite the United States in peace.
When a ship capsizes at sea and life boats are heaved overboard, the rule of rescue is “women and children first.” Our great ship of state is capsizing before our very eyes, and our children are drowning in their own bloodshed. When was the last time you heard anybody say, “Children first”? We need to become instantly and actively involved in the greatest rescue effort this country has ever known, saving our children from adolescentcide. Far too many children’s lives are being lost by the love of force, expressed through violence. The only way we can rescue them is with the force of love.
May God save the children. May the nation’s victims of adolescentcide rest in peace, for we, the living, must not. Our mission of saving our children has scarcely begun.
# # #
Dr. James E. Shaw
Address for the “Day of Commemoration and Change” Ceremony for Columbine High School, April 20, 2000
Littleton, Colorado
Good evening: My remarks are dedicated to all the victims of adolescentcide: children slain in acts of homicide committed by other children. We are a poorer nation bereft of: the leadership they might have provided; the cures they might have discovered; the books they might have written; the verses they might have penned; the songs they might have sung; the journeys they might have taken; and the voices they might have raised. May they rest in peace, for we, the living, must not.
We mourn the horrific deaths of 12 students and a teacher in Littleton, Colorado, and the two teen-aged student shooters who killed them before committing suicide themselves. But in our hours, days weeks, and years of mourning, we must require of ourselves that we do more than grieve over the tragic losses of Littleton’s “bright promises” and the other fallen children in the nation whose young lives and gleaming promise were extinguished when they fell victim to children-terrorists. Columbine High School is regarded by some as the Pearl Harbor of school violence. Yet, there are countless isolated, alienated, confused, depressed and angry children throughout the country who, in the last year, have tried, in their own words, to “out-columbine Columbine.”
Although it is only the second quarter of the new millennium, it is awfully late in the day, to use a figure of speech. We must act with a sense of urgency that gives us a truer perspective of “national security” when seen from the point of view of children so viciously and abruptly denied it. For when our children are not safe, neither, then, are we. Guns killed 75,640 children between 1979 and 1996 and injured over 340,000 more. These statistics mean there were more children who suffered gun injuries than Vietnam war veterans injured in combat.
Currently, every 48 hours in America, 26 children—an entire classroom full—are killed by guns. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that since the Columbine High School tragedy last April 20, guns have killed 4,745 children. Death’s clock continues ticking and, at the rate of 0.54 deaths per hour—as we are comfortably ensconced here in the Hilton Hotel—I must inform you that 10 children will not be safely tucked into their beds tonight or any night hereafter. By midnight, tonight, three more will have joined them in death, too.
What kind of inspiration, motivation, or direction do we need to make us protect our children against violence at home, in school, and in their communities? For the past nine years, since 1991, I have been studying what I call “adolescentcide,” a word I coined and mentioned earlier, meaning the phenomenon of children killing children. I spent four of those nine years inside the prison cells of boys and girls incarcerated for murder and homicide. And during those four years, 103 children tracked the trail for me as they graphically described their odysseys from life at home to life in prison. Despite their wide diversity of ethnicity, economic status, and social standing, all of these children were “united” in one respect: They had shown a dominant preference for violent behavior. They had all chosen to “solve” their problem by pointing a gun at “it”—usually another kid.
I figured that by talking to these kids, over and over, they might tell me the ways parents and teachers could have made a difference in their lives. You see, in 1991, when I began my research, in the country’s 75 largest counties, 370,424 juvenile defendants were formally processed through the juvenile courts; 22% of them were murder defendants, and 1,638 of these were prosecuted as adults! As a former teacher who had been threatened, attacked, whose classroom exterior had been strafed by gunfire, and who had to command my elementary school charges, playing outside, to take duck-and-cover maneuvers whenever screeching tires and gunshots were heard, I saw, with my own eyes, school yards being turned into grave yards.
A number of the incarcerated children I interviewed had been cradled in a culture of violence. Resorting to it was as natural as watching their mother, sister, aunt, or grandmother getting smacked around and brutalized by some insecure, ignorant barbarian, otherwise known as husband, lover or boyfriend. Six of “my” kids—as I came to view the 103 children over the years—had killed an immediate blood-relative.
Other children who talked to me from their prison cells and from their hearts, claimed to have grown up in “good” homes where they neither witnessed nor personally experienced violence or brutality. Yet they told stories of verbal and emotional abuse, and lives so bleak, that they desperately wished they could have lived away from their families or, simply, not lived at all.
Still, other children had been physically beaten and tortured, on a regular basis, almost from the time they cut their first teeth. Years of such child abuse conditioned them to be chronically angry, depressed, and waiting for an opportunity to avenge themselves. One of these admitted that, even today, she feels relaxed only “when I see the sight of my own blood.” That had always been her personal signal that whoever was beating her, would finally stop. Today, she regularly injures herself to the point of bleeding.
Still, others of my incarcerated children population stated the coldness, isolation, and indifference that passed for “parenting” in their homes “freaked” them out, drove them “up the wall,” “filled me with hate,” and used other expressions to mean they had been going insane because of the lack of love, warmth, and caring from adults responsible for their care and maintenance: their own parents.
These 103 children told me they killed because they felt alienated, isolated, unloved, unlovable, depressed. They also had experienced verbal, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse by an adult, or some other form of adult betrayal. And they had ready access to alcohol, drugs, and…guns! In 1995 4,236,942 firearms were manufactured. These included pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and other miscellaneous firepower. Most of these weapons have nothing whatsoever to do with hunting animals. On the contrary, it is people, including children, whose lives have been snuffed out by this tonnage of firearms.
Gunfire killed 4,643 infants, children, and teens in 1996—134 murdered before their 10th birthday. More children under 10 years of age are killed each year by guns than police are killed in the line of duty or U.S. soldiers killed by hostile action. The Centers for Disease Control reports that American children under 15 are 12 times more likely to die from gun violence than their peers in 25 other industrialized nations combined.
As a nation, we have expended Herculean amounts of time, money and effort preparing to meet the twenty-first century by immunizing our ubiquitous computerized-technology systems against the notorious “Y2K Bug.” However necessary that crusade might have been, the larger issue is: How much time, money and effort are we prepared to continue to pour into the real “Y2K’s—Years 2000 Kids—who possess the power to change the course of American history forever? As the Honorable William Bennett, former White House Cabinet member stated, it is only young twenty-first century America that can legitimately be called “history’s most violent ‘civilized’ nation.”
How much longer are we going to put up with the constant magnification and glorification of violence and guns on our movie, television, Internet, and video game screens? Who was asleep at the switch when guns became the only unregulated consumer product in America? Why do we regulate toy guns, but not the real guns that kill a child every two hours? Why are real guns so easy for children to find…in many cases, as easy as toy guns? How much more child carnage and future “Day of Commemorations…” will occur before we decide enough is enough?
Will today be the day when parents across the nation demand changes in the public education format so that mental detectors become as important as metal detectors? If not now, when? Tests for depression, specialized counseling, and behavior monitoring might prove to be positive interventions for those students who are emotionally armed and dangerous.
Is this the day we realize and accept that security cameras take fine external pictures but fail to photograph what is in a student’s heart or what is lacking in his character? If not today, when?
A 1993 report published by the American Psychological Association stated: “There is absolutely no doubt that higher levels of viewing violence on television are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behavior. Children’s exposure to violence in the mass media, particularly at young ages, can have harmful lifelong consequences.”
Television, in many homes is the electronic fireplace. I would strongly advise parents whose television sets have grown up with, and are now members of, the family to analyze the hours spent in front of the tube versus the minutes spent in real, heart-to-heart conversation. Then, turn that around: Spend minutes in front of the tube but hours in each other’s faces involved in engaging talks, stimulating discussions, and resolutions to problems.
Since last year, how many of you parents, or other parents across America, have increased the amount of time you talk to your children about moral principles, right and wrong behavior, good and bad choices? If you leave it up to the schools to do it, you’re copping out…big time. Moral education, moral direction, and moral intelligence begin at home. It has always been that way, and it will always be that way. It seems that schools would rather teach the right and wrong of Driver Training, or the right and wrong about fouling in basketball or clipping in football, than teach children good, safe, sane behaviors based on the “M” word: Morality. Some schools think that teaching morality is teaching religion. Yet, few people are ever hear complaining about how “straight-laced” and moral the Driver Training rules of the road are, or how strangulating the character-and-moral-development regulations that govern school athletics and other team sports are.
Is there anybody complaining about the smear that 6-year old Elian Gonzalez’s father made about American schools on “60 Minutes” last Sunday? Mr. Gonzalez, a self-admitted communist who embraces the communist regime of Fidel Castro, in a country where bread lines are so long they have “Stop” and “Go” signs and modern medicine got lost in the Bay of Pigs, said American schools are where kids go to get shot. Now, wait a minute. We don’t like to use the words “moral” or “moral education” because they are too closely-aligned with religion, with God. Yet, all of the nation’s state constitutions—and that’s 50—unabashedly acknowledge and otherwise refer to God, in reverential, devout and gracious terms. Are we going to declare those state constitutions unconstitutional?
Mr. Gonzalez’s belief system prohibits that he acknowledge a Supreme Being. Our country was built on freedom of religion. Yet, somehow, that cherished concept has eroded into freedom from religion—or moral teachings, or spiritual guidance. The result is a moral vacuum that breeds immoral children whose god is a gun. And from a backward country where it takes people like Mr. Gonzalez an hour-and-a-half to watch “60 Minutes”, he, who professes no belief in a Supreme Being, calls it like he sees it: “American schools are where kids go to get shot.”
Somebody once asked me if America’s turning its back on—and not fearing—God has put us in the position of now having to fear our very own children, as punishment. That is a very important question. And while I am not suggesting that we turn our schools into seminaries and monasteries, I am suggesting that we begin immediately instituting right-and-wrong concepts, character development frameworks, and life-ethics training in our nation’s kindergarten through 12th-grade school curricula. And some states already have. Incidentally, let’s not throw our hands up and join with Elian Gonzalez’s father in championing Cuba’s educational system.
But what you can do right away is suggest to your school administrators that World History can wait and children ought to be taught how to stop the bloodshed flowing over their modern history today. Tell school leaders that dry Mathematics and arid Algebra might be brought to life if students were repeatedly asked to link raw numbers, equations and theorems to the national daily child homicide death toll.
Tell them also that the Language Arts program might produce more scholarly, articulate, and effective journalists if they were given field assignments in visiting the morgue where juvenile corpses lay; observing court proceedings on juvenile homicide; and interviewing homicide cops in the local precinct.
Don’t forget to tell them that Social Science might be more relevant if students created their own Teen Court, under the watchful eye of a local judge, and heard cases on a variety of campus behavioral infractions, and levied fines and discipline sanctions. If you don’t begin all of this today…when would you?
In the meantime, instill principles of honesty and integrity in your child. Children appreciate knowing what the standard is and reaching it. Knowing right from wrong clears up heir thinking and develops their moral intelligence. Children lacking in moral intelligence do not have the capacity to make moral decisions. If no moral teaching has been instilled in them, there exists a void that will be constantly filled with anti-social thoughts and actions. There is a direct link between a child’s ignorance of life-ethics, his disregard for right and wrong moral behavior, and his decision to kill another child or other human being.
Help your child set clear attainable objectives and thus have the satisfaction of controlling his own future. That’s what really produces genuine self-esteem. Children who lack the capacity for self-love and self-esteem can never realize their full possibilities. One of the most important gifts you can give your child is to teach him to be “response-able”—able to respond.
Teach your child to seek and become aligned with a spiritual purpose. You may find that a church or house of worship can help you to dot his in an organized, efficient, and consistent way. You are the ultimate model for your child, whether you know it or not. You were his first teacher. From you, it is important that he learns there are more good people than bad people and more reasons to be happy and optimistic than sad and sullen.
Teach your child nonviolent communication strategies and peace-building skills. Repeatedly emphasize that a gun or other weapon is never, ever an acceptable alternative to nonviolent interaction and positive communication.
Your child is exposed to you but a fraction of the time, in contrast with his exposure to ideas, people and events outside the family. Try to make each of your interactive moments with him joyful, meaningful, rewarding, and loving experiences. Parents who are in touch with themselves and their loving attitudes and inclinations are more effective parents.
All children who make the decision to kill somebody else are alienated and isolated from important adults in their lives. We must constantly give our children a sense that they are loved and valued and safe. A recent study of students in grades 7-12 showed that teenagers who feel “connected” to their schools and families are less likely to engage in risky or violent behavior. This is hardly a surprise. We cannot underestimate the importance of family, teachers, and faith communities, and we must nurture that feeling of “connectedness” very early. Parents’ voices are the ones children recognize first and fastest. And parents, especially fathers, need to express their love to their children verbally and often. Silence may be all right for strangers, but not for families. Bad kids can happen to good parents, and it is better to take time and lovingly persist in coaxing your son to “talk out” whatever’s on his chest, so he won’t put a bullet into your or somebody else’s chest.
Emotion often drives behavior. Always consult your child’s feelings; how he feels will tell you how he is coping. Children’s emotions are dynamic and their flare-ups illuminate their feelings. Addressing the emotional needs of your child should be a constant priority. Teenagers appreciate and admire parents who patiently stick it out with them, no matter what they throw at their parents, in terms of behavior. Parents who never give up, no matter the emotional “weathers” of their teens, are highly-praised (yes, teens often praise their folks to others), highly-valued and –loved parents.
Parents, you should be able to say to your children:
"I am your parent, you are my child, and I vow, as of this moment and until time is no more, to love you. You are the best part of me. I hold you, hug your, touch you, teach you, and shine my eyes upon you in love. With patience, I joyfully share my strength with you. With kindness and praise, I show you right from wrong, good from bad. When you fall, I gently pick you up and the feather of my kiss brushes your tears away. The rhythm of our hearts is the beat of our love. It is with pride that I am your model of gentleness, your mirror of sensitivity. I am the grownup you will become. You are my joy and it is with total love that I touch and teach you, guide and lead you.
I promise you a home in which your spirits will lift you to newer and greater heights and where you are free to dream and express the full palette of your talents on the canvas of your personality. I will show you how your desire gives you the energy of angels; you will learn to soar with your enthusiasm. I will show you how to live well—with hope and vision, the confidence to climb any mountain, the trust to reach out and touch. You will learn to help others with a heart that heals. For you I must, and will always be, the sum of patience, the temple of goodness, the soft winds and silent springs of compassion.
I will teach you to love life fully, give to others generously and let your light shine. Perfect love replaces fear, and you will learn how to greet each day with love, salute the Universe with joy and thanksgiving, and to let the quiet night comfort your soul. We are one with this gift called Life, and heirs to the blessings of our grand and glorious Universe. The Universe is filled with abundance and I will teach you to desire only good from the Universe and give only good back to the Universe.
You will learn the importance of sharing the blessings the Universe pours upon you. I will teach you to never look back upon yesterday, nor pine away for tomorrow. You will learn that virtue comes from being thankful for the nowness and newness that is today, for it is the gift we call The Present.
You will learn that the mind is a great source of strength, love is the root of your character, and that life is filled with goodness. I promise to let your talents guide, cheer and support you, for that which you love is where your heart is; and where your heart is, there you will thrive. Through peace, you will learn to negotiate; through love, to communicate; and through respect, to articulate. For by giving to others what they need, you thus build the bridge to what you need. Thinking of others is a virtue you will always value. You will learn that laughter is often the best medicine. I promise you days filled with laughter and learning so that your sleep will be filled with dreams of joy. Life is not a lullaby but you will know that your humor is a music that gives life flavor.
You are an important, vital member of this family, a very necessary member of the human race. You help to make family and community strong. From this moment on, until time is no more, I promise to love you.
Thank you for teaching me what the truest treasure in life really is."
While America is not currently at war with any foreign power, we must know—by our presence here—that our children have declared war on each other. There are millions of children who are depending on us—for protection, for guidance, for the basic necessities. Before one more child is lost, we must promise ourselves that we will do all that is necessary to make our homes safer, our children more secure. For home is where the hate is. Children who kill are homegrown. There is no such as unsafe schools, only unsafe homes. Schools are only as safe as the homes they must serve.
Children are throwing the family gun into their school backpacks along with their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and hauling this lot of problems to school to “share” their pain.
We need to mount an all-out campaign, which the Centers for Disease Control might appreciate: We must vaccinate our children against violence; immunize our children against intolerance; and humanize our children with love. That is the only way we will re-unite the United States in peace.
When a ship capsizes at sea and life boats are heaved overboard, the rule of rescue is “women and children first.” Our great ship of state is capsizing before our very eyes, and our children are drowning in their own bloodshed. When was the last time you heard anybody say, “Children first”? We need to become instantly and actively involved in the greatest rescue effort this country has ever known, saving our children from adolescentcide. Far too many children’s lives are being lost by the love of force, expressed through violence. The only way we can rescue them is with the force of love.
May God save the children. May the nation’s victims of adolescentcide rest in peace, for we, the living, must not. Our mission of saving our children has scarcely begun.
# # #
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Are Gangbangers Too Smart to Get Arrested?
Prosecutors are probably wondering who intelligent gangbangers really are. Criminal acts definitely enslave one to his own misdeeds. He becomes a prisoner of his own achievements and, through drug and alcohol use, gives up his brain to be sacrificed. The following story may prompt prosectors to ask, "How shrewd is this Drew Street crew?" (As an expert witness for the Defense Bar, I am primarily interested in whether the gang enhancement allegations made against my gangbanger-clients are grounded in credible evidence and true witness statements.)
On Tuesday, June 24, 2008, more than 500 federal agents participated in a raid that netted 70 defendants of the Drew Street clique of the Avenues gang on charges of racketeering. Apparently, like turkeys who welcome a downpour of rain by craning their necks, opening their mouths and drowning, these Drew Street non-wonders didn't see 100, 200, 300, 400, or even 500 dressed-for-battle agents coming to nab them. What were these leaky brains smoking?
Heavily armed police and federal agents stormed into a Glassell Park neighborhood Wednesday morning to wrest control away from a street gang -- and loyalists with deep family ties to its members -- that has in effect turned the sequestered swath of run-down apartments into rogue territory.
With a sweeping federal racketeering indictment, more than 500 agents, including 10 SWAT teams, arrested 28 people in an attempt to root out the Avenues gang members who have ruled the area with violence and near impunity.
The indictment, which grew out of a 10-month investigation, names 70 defendants -- mostly connected to the Drew Street clique of the larger Avenues gang. The gang dates to the zoot suit era in Northeast Los Angeles and is closely connected to the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Twenty-six defendants were already in custody and 16 are at large.
Prosecutors allege that the gang committed three murders, shot at police, extorted businesses, conducted home invasion robberies, taxed drug dealers for the Mexican Mafia and threatened potential witnesses -- all as part of an enterprise to distribute methamphetamine and rock cocaine in the area. Authorities say undercover agents conducted scores of drug purchases from the gang during the investigation.
U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien called the sweep "the largest gang take-down in recent L.A. history."
He said he was confident that by targeting so many defendants with heavy federal charges, the effort would accomplish what previous crackdowns, convictions, injunctions and evictions have so far been unable to do: break the gang's grip on the low-income neighborhood, which is heavily Latino.
Half of the defendants could face life in prison without parole if convicted, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.
Francisco "Pancho" Real, 26, who was identified as the leader of the Drew Street clique, brought in $1,200 a day in drug money alone, according to a wiretap recording described in the indictment. He was arrested at his home in Glendale.
The gang stirred a storm of media coverage and police attention after a wild, rolling shootout in February.
The indictment suggests that the shooting stemmed from a brewing turf battle between the Avenues, backed by the Mexican Mafia, and the Cypress Park gang.
On Feb. 21, in order to prevent Cypress Park from dealing drugs in their territory, the indictment alleges, Real's cohorts shot to death one of its members, Marcos Salas, as he held his 2-year-old granddaughter's hand in front of her elementary school. Minutes later police pulled over the three suspected gunmen, who then opened fire with an assault rifle. Police fatally shot one of them, Real's half brother Daniel Leon.
Authorities had wiretaps on Real's phones at the time. The day after the shooting, Real shrugged off Leon's death, using a profanity to say "[stuff] happens," according to the indictment.
The gang didn't skip a beat after the shootout, the summaries of the wiretaps suggest.
In March, Real ordered the owner of a local tire shop to pay him $30,000 within 24 hours, prosecutors allege, or he would kill him and burn down his shop. When the owner of an adjoining tire shop told Real that he did not understand why they had to pay him, Real said they were operating in his territory, the indictment alleges.
Real is one of 13 children of Maria Leon, the matriarch of the gang and a defendant in the case, according to law enforcement. She has a criminal record with three drug arrests and was in custody Wednesday morning for reentering the country after a deportation.
The family hails from a sweltering, lawless part of the Mexican state of Guerrero, as does much of the neighborhood. Based on their shared roots, many residents maintain a fierce solidarity and loathing for the police.
On Wednesday, an 81-year-old woman on Isabel Street, Olga Martinez, called the police "gestapos" after they broke down her door looking for her son. Numerous other residents declined to talk.
"We don't know anything, we didn't hear anything, we didn't see anything," said a woman who lives on Drew Street and declined to give her name.
The layout of the small neighborhood -- cut off by San Fernando Road, backed up against Forest Lawn Memorial-Park -- helps this separation from mainstream society persist just four miles from downtown Los Angeles. With few entrances, spotters easily monitor who comes and goes. Gang interventionists, common in other tough neighborhood, don't even go there.
"The Drew Street gang ordinarily is vigilant to the presence of 'outsiders,' " the indictment says. "Gang members are likely to identify and physically threaten to kill them."
The Avenues, which police estimate has about 400 members, had a bout of infamy in 1995 when members shot and killed 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen, whose family made a wrong turn into a dead-end street in Cypress Park.
The dense configuration of apartments on Drew Street allows gangbangers to disappear when police roll in.
"This is a claustrophobic neighborhood, and the gang members use it to their advantage," City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said.
Delgadillo's office shut down Maria Leon's house on Drew Street last year with a nuisance abatement lawsuit. More than 40 arrests had been made there in 2006. During a raid in 2002, police found cocaine, marijuana, a Tec-9 assault weapon, ammunition, a small explosive and a cellphone that was ringing with customers' drug orders, according to court records. Six children under 10 were inside, including Leon's youngest child, a 3-month-old boy.
Leon and her family moved to Victorville, where the Internal Revenue Service recently seized their home as part of this investigation.
Eighteen agencies were involved in the probe, including the LAPD; federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, IRS, Glendale police and the Los Angeles city attorney.
On Wednesday, Delgadillo announced 10 more nuisance abatement lawsuits to clean out properties in the area. The suits aim to force property owners to provide armed security guards, security cameras, strict tenant screening and the eviction of anyone involved in drug sales or use.
"The people who live in this neighborhood are prisoners in their own homes," he said.
Authorities said the gang routinely threatened witnesses to their crimes, creating a climate of fear that allowed members to operate freely.
In one allegation detailed in the indictment, three members robbed a residence on Marmion Way, using a 9-millimeter handgun and an M-11 assault rifle.
When Real got word that the victims were to appear at a police lineup, he directed a subordinate to "instruct the victims . . . that they were to 'keep their mouths shut' and not identify any of the Avenues or Drew Street gang members at the lineup that day or [he] would retaliate against them," the indictment said.
Two of the victims did what he said, but one did not, the indictment said. Real allegedly drove to that person's house that night and threatened to retaliate against them or their family if they went to court again.
U.S. Atty. O'Brien said his office was investigating allegations that an attorney for one of the gang members tipped Real off when witnesses showed up at police lineups.
Police and state prosecutors often complain that the gang cannot be brought to trial because witnesses are intimidated. Because much of the 157-page indictment is based on federal wiretap evidence and drug buys by undercover agents, prosecutors hope to circumvent that obstacle.
This story was written by Joe Mozingo, Sam Quinones and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers, June 26, 2008. (My comments are editorial only.)
joe.mozingo@latimes.com
sam.quinones@latimes.com
molly.hennessyfiske @latimes.com
On Tuesday, June 24, 2008, more than 500 federal agents participated in a raid that netted 70 defendants of the Drew Street clique of the Avenues gang on charges of racketeering. Apparently, like turkeys who welcome a downpour of rain by craning their necks, opening their mouths and drowning, these Drew Street non-wonders didn't see 100, 200, 300, 400, or even 500 dressed-for-battle agents coming to nab them. What were these leaky brains smoking?
Heavily armed police and federal agents stormed into a Glassell Park neighborhood Wednesday morning to wrest control away from a street gang -- and loyalists with deep family ties to its members -- that has in effect turned the sequestered swath of run-down apartments into rogue territory.
With a sweeping federal racketeering indictment, more than 500 agents, including 10 SWAT teams, arrested 28 people in an attempt to root out the Avenues gang members who have ruled the area with violence and near impunity.
The indictment, which grew out of a 10-month investigation, names 70 defendants -- mostly connected to the Drew Street clique of the larger Avenues gang. The gang dates to the zoot suit era in Northeast Los Angeles and is closely connected to the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Twenty-six defendants were already in custody and 16 are at large.
Prosecutors allege that the gang committed three murders, shot at police, extorted businesses, conducted home invasion robberies, taxed drug dealers for the Mexican Mafia and threatened potential witnesses -- all as part of an enterprise to distribute methamphetamine and rock cocaine in the area. Authorities say undercover agents conducted scores of drug purchases from the gang during the investigation.
U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien called the sweep "the largest gang take-down in recent L.A. history."
He said he was confident that by targeting so many defendants with heavy federal charges, the effort would accomplish what previous crackdowns, convictions, injunctions and evictions have so far been unable to do: break the gang's grip on the low-income neighborhood, which is heavily Latino.
Half of the defendants could face life in prison without parole if convicted, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.
Francisco "Pancho" Real, 26, who was identified as the leader of the Drew Street clique, brought in $1,200 a day in drug money alone, according to a wiretap recording described in the indictment. He was arrested at his home in Glendale.
The gang stirred a storm of media coverage and police attention after a wild, rolling shootout in February.
The indictment suggests that the shooting stemmed from a brewing turf battle between the Avenues, backed by the Mexican Mafia, and the Cypress Park gang.
On Feb. 21, in order to prevent Cypress Park from dealing drugs in their territory, the indictment alleges, Real's cohorts shot to death one of its members, Marcos Salas, as he held his 2-year-old granddaughter's hand in front of her elementary school. Minutes later police pulled over the three suspected gunmen, who then opened fire with an assault rifle. Police fatally shot one of them, Real's half brother Daniel Leon.
Authorities had wiretaps on Real's phones at the time. The day after the shooting, Real shrugged off Leon's death, using a profanity to say "[stuff] happens," according to the indictment.
The gang didn't skip a beat after the shootout, the summaries of the wiretaps suggest.
In March, Real ordered the owner of a local tire shop to pay him $30,000 within 24 hours, prosecutors allege, or he would kill him and burn down his shop. When the owner of an adjoining tire shop told Real that he did not understand why they had to pay him, Real said they were operating in his territory, the indictment alleges.
Real is one of 13 children of Maria Leon, the matriarch of the gang and a defendant in the case, according to law enforcement. She has a criminal record with three drug arrests and was in custody Wednesday morning for reentering the country after a deportation.
The family hails from a sweltering, lawless part of the Mexican state of Guerrero, as does much of the neighborhood. Based on their shared roots, many residents maintain a fierce solidarity and loathing for the police.
On Wednesday, an 81-year-old woman on Isabel Street, Olga Martinez, called the police "gestapos" after they broke down her door looking for her son. Numerous other residents declined to talk.
"We don't know anything, we didn't hear anything, we didn't see anything," said a woman who lives on Drew Street and declined to give her name.
The layout of the small neighborhood -- cut off by San Fernando Road, backed up against Forest Lawn Memorial-Park -- helps this separation from mainstream society persist just four miles from downtown Los Angeles. With few entrances, spotters easily monitor who comes and goes. Gang interventionists, common in other tough neighborhood, don't even go there.
"The Drew Street gang ordinarily is vigilant to the presence of 'outsiders,' " the indictment says. "Gang members are likely to identify and physically threaten to kill them."
The Avenues, which police estimate has about 400 members, had a bout of infamy in 1995 when members shot and killed 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen, whose family made a wrong turn into a dead-end street in Cypress Park.
The dense configuration of apartments on Drew Street allows gangbangers to disappear when police roll in.
"This is a claustrophobic neighborhood, and the gang members use it to their advantage," City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said.
Delgadillo's office shut down Maria Leon's house on Drew Street last year with a nuisance abatement lawsuit. More than 40 arrests had been made there in 2006. During a raid in 2002, police found cocaine, marijuana, a Tec-9 assault weapon, ammunition, a small explosive and a cellphone that was ringing with customers' drug orders, according to court records. Six children under 10 were inside, including Leon's youngest child, a 3-month-old boy.
Leon and her family moved to Victorville, where the Internal Revenue Service recently seized their home as part of this investigation.
Eighteen agencies were involved in the probe, including the LAPD; federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, IRS, Glendale police and the Los Angeles city attorney.
On Wednesday, Delgadillo announced 10 more nuisance abatement lawsuits to clean out properties in the area. The suits aim to force property owners to provide armed security guards, security cameras, strict tenant screening and the eviction of anyone involved in drug sales or use.
"The people who live in this neighborhood are prisoners in their own homes," he said.
Authorities said the gang routinely threatened witnesses to their crimes, creating a climate of fear that allowed members to operate freely.
In one allegation detailed in the indictment, three members robbed a residence on Marmion Way, using a 9-millimeter handgun and an M-11 assault rifle.
When Real got word that the victims were to appear at a police lineup, he directed a subordinate to "instruct the victims . . . that they were to 'keep their mouths shut' and not identify any of the Avenues or Drew Street gang members at the lineup that day or [he] would retaliate against them," the indictment said.
Two of the victims did what he said, but one did not, the indictment said. Real allegedly drove to that person's house that night and threatened to retaliate against them or their family if they went to court again.
U.S. Atty. O'Brien said his office was investigating allegations that an attorney for one of the gang members tipped Real off when witnesses showed up at police lineups.
Police and state prosecutors often complain that the gang cannot be brought to trial because witnesses are intimidated. Because much of the 157-page indictment is based on federal wiretap evidence and drug buys by undercover agents, prosecutors hope to circumvent that obstacle.
This story was written by Joe Mozingo, Sam Quinones and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers, June 26, 2008. (My comments are editorial only.)
joe.mozingo@latimes.com
sam.quinones@latimes.com
molly.hennessyfiske @latimes.com
Being Smart About Life Better Than Being Street Smart
Society's view is that gangbangers perceive themselves to be icons of intelligence, current models of brilliance as they move at their speed of life.
In response to their endless testosterone-saturated braying and bragging, I occasionally told the hard-core gangbangers in my classroom at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Court School (Downey, CA): "All I hear you guys talk about is how smart, strong, fast, and sexy you are. But tell me, why did you get caught? Yeah, I heard laughter at somebody bragging about how the cop fell on the street, skinned his knee, and tried to run, half-crippled, before he quit and gave up the chase. But, somehow, despite that overweight, out-of-shape cop, you still got caught and now you're here." Needless to say, they had no answer. So, I continued with: "In poker, they say if, in the first 30 seconds of playing, you can't tell who the sucker is, then the sucker is you." More than a few squirmed uncomfortably and some even gave out with a hard, bitter, knowing and humorless laugh.
Truth, although there all along, is often "discovered" by gangbangers too late. Like when they're locked up, as was the situation with my hard-bitten, cynical, street-wise-but-life-stupid gangsters.
I am no longer at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Court School teaching hard-core gangbangers. I work full time for defense lawyers as an expert witness in gang cases being tried in court. Usually, the clause "in the company with" is what gets several of my gangbanger clients busted. Why? Being "in the company with" other known gangbangers is a proven threat to the community: Like savaging wolf packs, this "company" of gangbangers often marauds through neighborhoods, robbing, fighting, shooting, intimidating, and threatening ordinary, law-abiding persons. "In the company with" is a major plank in the platform of the City Attorney's Gang Injunction. Most of my clients argue that they were not doing anything with that other person, they were merely just being with him. Well, obviously, they are so stupid they don't realize that's exactly what they are specifically NOT supposed to be doing. D-u-u-u-h! The Gang Injunction does not say that it's okay to be with another known gangbanger so long as you are not engaged in a criminal act. Hello! The criminal act is being "in the company with" that other gangbanger. These gangbangers apparently are too stupid to obey the law, and yet they try to "re-write" (rationalize) the law by explaining they weren't doing a crime (yet).
Occasionally, I am told by clients that they didn't understand their Miranda Rights, even though the arresting officer advised them of these fundamental rights and read the Miranda script to them. Perhaps, in the excitement of getting arrested, they simply forgot the caveat: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law," and so forth. My suggestion to law enforcement would be to say the following, after reading an arrestee his/her Miranda Rights: "Did you understand what I just read to you? Now, tell me, in your own words, what the rights, that I have just read to you, mean." Listen to his own wording of and utterance about his Miranda Rights. Then, make the following minor change to the official form on which the arrestee is supposed to attest that he has had his Miranda Rights read to him: Add this language: "I acknowledge by my signature that I have repeated, in my own words, the rights that I have and therefore communicated my understanding about those rights." Thus, the gangbanger arrestee has killed two birds with one stone--or rather, fed two birds with one hand (we don't want to suggest violence, do we?): He has confirmed that the Miranda Rights were read to him by the arresting officer and, equally important, that he understood them. If and when he is arrested again (often the case), he will probably be read his Miranda Rights.
My advice to him would be to stop doing the crazy, illegal and barbaric acts that result in his getting arrested. Losing his Miranda Rights is a lot more tolerable, if he's free, legal and law-abiding, than if he's arrested and incarcerated. Miranda Rights do not hold a candle to being free. (Do you hear that, my classroomful of young gangbangers who argue over whether or not the arresting officer "read me my Miranda Rights"?) You ought to be debating over a multi-dimensional strategy you can execute to get a job, keep yourself gainfully employed, go to school and finish your G.E.D. requirements, help your family, and give back to the community. Decide to stop being a prisoner of your own achievements.
In response to their endless testosterone-saturated braying and bragging, I occasionally told the hard-core gangbangers in my classroom at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Court School (Downey, CA): "All I hear you guys talk about is how smart, strong, fast, and sexy you are. But tell me, why did you get caught? Yeah, I heard laughter at somebody bragging about how the cop fell on the street, skinned his knee, and tried to run, half-crippled, before he quit and gave up the chase. But, somehow, despite that overweight, out-of-shape cop, you still got caught and now you're here." Needless to say, they had no answer. So, I continued with: "In poker, they say if, in the first 30 seconds of playing, you can't tell who the sucker is, then the sucker is you." More than a few squirmed uncomfortably and some even gave out with a hard, bitter, knowing and humorless laugh.
Truth, although there all along, is often "discovered" by gangbangers too late. Like when they're locked up, as was the situation with my hard-bitten, cynical, street-wise-but-life-stupid gangsters.
I am no longer at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Court School teaching hard-core gangbangers. I work full time for defense lawyers as an expert witness in gang cases being tried in court. Usually, the clause "in the company with" is what gets several of my gangbanger clients busted. Why? Being "in the company with" other known gangbangers is a proven threat to the community: Like savaging wolf packs, this "company" of gangbangers often marauds through neighborhoods, robbing, fighting, shooting, intimidating, and threatening ordinary, law-abiding persons. "In the company with" is a major plank in the platform of the City Attorney's Gang Injunction. Most of my clients argue that they were not doing anything with that other person, they were merely just being with him. Well, obviously, they are so stupid they don't realize that's exactly what they are specifically NOT supposed to be doing. D-u-u-u-h! The Gang Injunction does not say that it's okay to be with another known gangbanger so long as you are not engaged in a criminal act. Hello! The criminal act is being "in the company with" that other gangbanger. These gangbangers apparently are too stupid to obey the law, and yet they try to "re-write" (rationalize) the law by explaining they weren't doing a crime (yet).
Occasionally, I am told by clients that they didn't understand their Miranda Rights, even though the arresting officer advised them of these fundamental rights and read the Miranda script to them. Perhaps, in the excitement of getting arrested, they simply forgot the caveat: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law," and so forth. My suggestion to law enforcement would be to say the following, after reading an arrestee his/her Miranda Rights: "Did you understand what I just read to you? Now, tell me, in your own words, what the rights, that I have just read to you, mean." Listen to his own wording of and utterance about his Miranda Rights. Then, make the following minor change to the official form on which the arrestee is supposed to attest that he has had his Miranda Rights read to him: Add this language: "I acknowledge by my signature that I have repeated, in my own words, the rights that I have and therefore communicated my understanding about those rights." Thus, the gangbanger arrestee has killed two birds with one stone--or rather, fed two birds with one hand (we don't want to suggest violence, do we?): He has confirmed that the Miranda Rights were read to him by the arresting officer and, equally important, that he understood them. If and when he is arrested again (often the case), he will probably be read his Miranda Rights.
My advice to him would be to stop doing the crazy, illegal and barbaric acts that result in his getting arrested. Losing his Miranda Rights is a lot more tolerable, if he's free, legal and law-abiding, than if he's arrested and incarcerated. Miranda Rights do not hold a candle to being free. (Do you hear that, my classroomful of young gangbangers who argue over whether or not the arresting officer "read me my Miranda Rights"?) You ought to be debating over a multi-dimensional strategy you can execute to get a job, keep yourself gainfully employed, go to school and finish your G.E.D. requirements, help your family, and give back to the community. Decide to stop being a prisoner of your own achievements.
Manhood...or Madness?
Perhaps the dominant view among prosecutors is that gangbangers seem to run on 100-proof Testosterone. Prosecutors appear to think that they are literally intoxicated by their towering arrogance and ignorance. Shackled by their dinosaur-like brains, empty of both imagination and intelligence, they think anything unwanted, out of order, or just wrong can be addressed and resolved by yelling at it, cursing it, physically resisting it, fighting and battering it, or simply shooting it dead. Some of my gangbanger clients had thrown their Gang Injunction Violation citations on the sidewalk in anger and defiance when the police officer who had stopped them requested their signature on the citation as acknowledgment that he had cited and arrested them for violating one or more of the many prohibitions of the City of Los Angeles's criminal group suppression order named the "Gang Injunction."
My untimely advice to them was that they should have signed the police form and, more important, filled out its "Investigative Action/Statement" page that provided space to write their side of the story. Yes, I know. This advice is better given as a preventative to being arrested, not after the arrest has occurred. Some of my clients get arrested repeatedly; so the next time that happens, perhaps they will fill out the portion of the form that gives them almost three paragraphs-worth of space in which to tell their side of the story. Should they walk around with a pen or pencil just in case they are arrested? Well, that's better than walking around with a gun...right? "I didn't have a pencil to write with" is a poor excuse for not writing--versus telling and yelling--your innocent side of the story. You can ask the arresting officer for his pen and write your version of events to your Tupac Shakur's heart's content. Officers probably have a pen extended at the ready, in case the person detained needs it.
Why is it so important to fill out the portion of the Gang Injunction form wherein you can dispute the officer's version and declaim your own account of the goings-on that precipitated your arrest? First, because the opportunity to do so is given to you, by the arresting officer, as your legal right. Second, it is the written, not verbal, accounts that get heard and dealt with in a court of law. So, get your statement in writing; that way, the jury must hear it. The prosecutor (district attorney) arguing against you cannot suppress it. He or she has to bring up your side of the story in court. And you only have a "side" if you write it down. It does not exist otherwise. Arguing your non-involvement, yelling your innocence, braying like a mad bull, and cursing the police are not the behaviors of an innocent temporarily lost or a savior desperately seeking a phone booth in which to don his flying cape but merely the crazed antics of a human-meteor headed directly for the state pen.
In the end, where the drama is really played out (in court), the jury will merely see that act of anger and defiance as evidence of guilt. "If he is so innocent of the charges, why didn't he write out his version of events? They gave him almost half a page to tell his side," will be the driving opinion that supports a verdict of guilt. Certainly, an argument can be made (as it often is) that the arresting officer wasn't polite or courteous, or exhibited other behaviors that baited the anger of the arrested gangbanger and set him "off". Before we go there, though, let's go back to square one: The arrested gangbanger had already previously been served with a Gang Injunction; it is a court order set in motion by the City Attorney that prohibits the commission of certain illegal acts. These acts have been well-known and well-defined as imperiling the lives and limbs of individuals and shooting fear through and paralyzing entire communities. The arresting officer is not on the staff of Publisher's Clearinghouse; he or she is only required to cite and arrest the gangbanger, after ascertaining that he has broken one of the prohibitions of the Gang Injunction. The arresting officer's behavior is not required to be that of a person excitedly brandishing your winning million-dollar ticket or thrusting a congratulatory spray of robust roses in your face.
Because most gangbangers are desperately holding onto their idea of manhood and, in their distorted imaginings, think that force, violence and rudeness are the tools for surviving life, their refusal to sign the citation places them in a position of having the last word, whatever the Sam Hill that means. However, by not filling out the generous space for telling their side of the story is their way of not being "punked" or giving in to a system that they feel constantly torments and brutalizes them, and denies them fair trials in its courts. Said another way, they view their Neanderthal-like stance as being far preferable than explaining anything. Or, as they might say: "I ain't gonna ask nobody for nuthin'!" Telling their side of the story, in writing, is the equivalent of a weak person asking somebody in a dominant position for something. Oh, yes. They will complain, but they won't explain (in writing). Go figure. Again, it is important to note that the jury will see this omission as defiance and evidence of guilt. Totally lost on the jury will be counterpoints or hypotheticals about the police officer's demeanor at the time of the arrest, the manner in which he served the citation, and whether or not he proclaimed it a good day for baseball or fishing.
In this same vein, a good many of my clients are waiving their McLaughlin Rights. Very important. Very fundamental. Why? It is the "McLaughlin Probable Cause Hearing Rights" that afford an arrestee/detainee the right to have the circumstances of his arrest reviewed by a Judge or Magistrate of the Court to determine if there was probable cause for his arrest. It is this "Probable Cause Hearing" that may or may not benefit his case. But it is worth a try, especially for persons who harp about their innocence and enlist their families and friends to besiege the police department, district attorney, and city hall with torrents of claims about their innocence and the false grounds upon which they were arrested. If the gangbanger does not waive his McLaughlin Rights, but instead, takes advantage of them and states his desire for a Probable Cause Hearing, what can happen? Well, if the Magistrate determines that there was not probable cause for the arrest, the gangbanger will be released from custody immediately, as long as there are no other "holds" (legal restraints to detain) or warrants on the person. It must be noted that waiving one's rights to a "McLaughlin Probable Cause" hearing is not seen as evidence of guilt, nor does it affact the gangbanger's right to arraignment on the charges. Again, however, I would emphasize that if the gangbanger doubts there was probable cause for his arrest, he ought to go forward with the "Probable Cause Hearing." He should not let his arrogance, any feelings about weakness, or thoughts that he'd be asking the system for something barricade him against taking advantage of his legal rights.
My untimely advice to them was that they should have signed the police form and, more important, filled out its "Investigative Action/Statement" page that provided space to write their side of the story. Yes, I know. This advice is better given as a preventative to being arrested, not after the arrest has occurred. Some of my clients get arrested repeatedly; so the next time that happens, perhaps they will fill out the portion of the form that gives them almost three paragraphs-worth of space in which to tell their side of the story. Should they walk around with a pen or pencil just in case they are arrested? Well, that's better than walking around with a gun...right? "I didn't have a pencil to write with" is a poor excuse for not writing--versus telling and yelling--your innocent side of the story. You can ask the arresting officer for his pen and write your version of events to your Tupac Shakur's heart's content. Officers probably have a pen extended at the ready, in case the person detained needs it.
Why is it so important to fill out the portion of the Gang Injunction form wherein you can dispute the officer's version and declaim your own account of the goings-on that precipitated your arrest? First, because the opportunity to do so is given to you, by the arresting officer, as your legal right. Second, it is the written, not verbal, accounts that get heard and dealt with in a court of law. So, get your statement in writing; that way, the jury must hear it. The prosecutor (district attorney) arguing against you cannot suppress it. He or she has to bring up your side of the story in court. And you only have a "side" if you write it down. It does not exist otherwise. Arguing your non-involvement, yelling your innocence, braying like a mad bull, and cursing the police are not the behaviors of an innocent temporarily lost or a savior desperately seeking a phone booth in which to don his flying cape but merely the crazed antics of a human-meteor headed directly for the state pen.
In the end, where the drama is really played out (in court), the jury will merely see that act of anger and defiance as evidence of guilt. "If he is so innocent of the charges, why didn't he write out his version of events? They gave him almost half a page to tell his side," will be the driving opinion that supports a verdict of guilt. Certainly, an argument can be made (as it often is) that the arresting officer wasn't polite or courteous, or exhibited other behaviors that baited the anger of the arrested gangbanger and set him "off". Before we go there, though, let's go back to square one: The arrested gangbanger had already previously been served with a Gang Injunction; it is a court order set in motion by the City Attorney that prohibits the commission of certain illegal acts. These acts have been well-known and well-defined as imperiling the lives and limbs of individuals and shooting fear through and paralyzing entire communities. The arresting officer is not on the staff of Publisher's Clearinghouse; he or she is only required to cite and arrest the gangbanger, after ascertaining that he has broken one of the prohibitions of the Gang Injunction. The arresting officer's behavior is not required to be that of a person excitedly brandishing your winning million-dollar ticket or thrusting a congratulatory spray of robust roses in your face.
Because most gangbangers are desperately holding onto their idea of manhood and, in their distorted imaginings, think that force, violence and rudeness are the tools for surviving life, their refusal to sign the citation places them in a position of having the last word, whatever the Sam Hill that means. However, by not filling out the generous space for telling their side of the story is their way of not being "punked" or giving in to a system that they feel constantly torments and brutalizes them, and denies them fair trials in its courts. Said another way, they view their Neanderthal-like stance as being far preferable than explaining anything. Or, as they might say: "I ain't gonna ask nobody for nuthin'!" Telling their side of the story, in writing, is the equivalent of a weak person asking somebody in a dominant position for something. Oh, yes. They will complain, but they won't explain (in writing). Go figure. Again, it is important to note that the jury will see this omission as defiance and evidence of guilt. Totally lost on the jury will be counterpoints or hypotheticals about the police officer's demeanor at the time of the arrest, the manner in which he served the citation, and whether or not he proclaimed it a good day for baseball or fishing.
In this same vein, a good many of my clients are waiving their McLaughlin Rights. Very important. Very fundamental. Why? It is the "McLaughlin Probable Cause Hearing Rights" that afford an arrestee/detainee the right to have the circumstances of his arrest reviewed by a Judge or Magistrate of the Court to determine if there was probable cause for his arrest. It is this "Probable Cause Hearing" that may or may not benefit his case. But it is worth a try, especially for persons who harp about their innocence and enlist their families and friends to besiege the police department, district attorney, and city hall with torrents of claims about their innocence and the false grounds upon which they were arrested. If the gangbanger does not waive his McLaughlin Rights, but instead, takes advantage of them and states his desire for a Probable Cause Hearing, what can happen? Well, if the Magistrate determines that there was not probable cause for the arrest, the gangbanger will be released from custody immediately, as long as there are no other "holds" (legal restraints to detain) or warrants on the person. It must be noted that waiving one's rights to a "McLaughlin Probable Cause" hearing is not seen as evidence of guilt, nor does it affact the gangbanger's right to arraignment on the charges. Again, however, I would emphasize that if the gangbanger doubts there was probable cause for his arrest, he ought to go forward with the "Probable Cause Hearing." He should not let his arrogance, any feelings about weakness, or thoughts that he'd be asking the system for something barricade him against taking advantage of his legal rights.
What Incarcerated Juveniles Really Need to Know
The following is an impromptu lesson I devised after receiving repeated signs of intense and toxic boredom with the usual lesson plan for teaching the "Cornell Method of Note-Taking." Most of these young thugs could scarcely read--anything: their own names, street signs, instructions for assembling something. Why, then, would it follow that these dummies could learn to take notes? As a result of a class action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Probation Department, brought by parents claiming their kids were locked up and deprived of equal educational access, some high-minded (or simply high) administrator ordered the "Cornell Method of Note-Taking" be part of a progressive-sounding curriculum called "Accelerate My Future." After working in a locked room in the Special Handling Unit (SHU) with boys whose mental states were so dangerous and risky that they were labelled Level One, Level Two, and so forth, I was given a classroom and told to teach the "Accelerate My Future" curriculum. This program was university-level stuff.
In addition to my becoming infuriated with the boorish behavior of my young charges, I was equally angry with the administration. The education director should have known that when you try to teach kids something for which they have no background, no prior exposure, no skill sets, and no interest to learn, they immediately become the teachers, showing off their bad behaviors and foul mouths in excess, until times get better. They let me know I would never get their attention with the institutional detritus I was serving them. As I began to write the words you see below, the classroom became quieter and quieter. When their whispered arguments became animated murmurs about the meanings of the words, I felt relief and elation. Not only did I have their attention; they were also ready to learn. And these words, part and parcel of their everyday lives, challenged and fascinated them more than any dry university-level material ever could. In spite of their street experience, gang lives, and police encounters, most did not know what ninety-percent of the words meant. I had found an equalizer, and I was determined to use it to my and their advantage.
Juvenile Crime Words to Know
Define the following Words and write two sentences for each word, showing its correct use.
Crime
Allegation
Sentence
Juvenile
Probation
Gang
District Attorney
Gang Enhancement Charge
Counts
Felony
Battery
Status Offense
Curfew
Incorrigible
Public Defender
Violation
Gang Injunction
Thug
Hoodlum
Unfit
Controlled Substance
S.T.E.P. Act
Three Strikes
Assault
Gang Injunction
Stalk
Lying in Wait
Commit
Special Handling Unit (SHU)
District Attorney Reject
McLaughlin Probable Cause Hearing Rights
Re-violate
Status Offense
Contraband
Hearing
Verdict
Conspiracy
Misdemeanor
In addition to my becoming infuriated with the boorish behavior of my young charges, I was equally angry with the administration. The education director should have known that when you try to teach kids something for which they have no background, no prior exposure, no skill sets, and no interest to learn, they immediately become the teachers, showing off their bad behaviors and foul mouths in excess, until times get better. They let me know I would never get their attention with the institutional detritus I was serving them. As I began to write the words you see below, the classroom became quieter and quieter. When their whispered arguments became animated murmurs about the meanings of the words, I felt relief and elation. Not only did I have their attention; they were also ready to learn. And these words, part and parcel of their everyday lives, challenged and fascinated them more than any dry university-level material ever could. In spite of their street experience, gang lives, and police encounters, most did not know what ninety-percent of the words meant. I had found an equalizer, and I was determined to use it to my and their advantage.
Juvenile Crime Words to Know
Define the following Words and write two sentences for each word, showing its correct use.
Crime
Allegation
Sentence
Juvenile
Probation
Gang
District Attorney
Gang Enhancement Charge
Counts
Felony
Battery
Status Offense
Curfew
Incorrigible
Public Defender
Violation
Gang Injunction
Thug
Hoodlum
Unfit
Controlled Substance
S.T.E.P. Act
Three Strikes
Assault
Gang Injunction
Stalk
Lying in Wait
Commit
Special Handling Unit (SHU)
District Attorney Reject
McLaughlin Probable Cause Hearing Rights
Re-violate
Status Offense
Contraband
Hearing
Verdict
Conspiracy
Misdemeanor
Parents: Are Your Young Destroying You?
In the aftermath of the LAPD shootout with the AK47-armed gunman in Glassell Park who shot an unarmed man twelve times, as he was out strolling hand-in-hand with a two-year old toddler, and killed him, Tuesday (February 26) morning's television news showed a small parade of angry parents berating the Los Angeles Police Department for "not letting our kids use the bathroom," "telling our children to move along, this is an emergency," and "nobody gave our kids anything to drink."
The dead gunman was a member of the notorious Avenues gang. In his honor, his gang "homies" quickly erected a shrine, replete with colorful flowers and burning candles. They drank to his memory and mourned him as a "loyal, fallen soldier who represented the Avenues."
Angry parents, instead of repeatedly criticizing the Los Angeles Police Department for taking extraordinary measures to protect school children from a gang barbarian walking around shooting off a AK-47 semi-automatic military weapon, ought to storm the Avenues members' homes and gathering spots, in a moving blitz, and verbally denounce them for the fear, intimidation, and destruction they continuously cause the Glassell Park community. Then they ought to go to the Los Angeles Criminal Courts and testify on the witness stands against them to ensure their long "vacations" in state penitentiaries like San Quentin, Tehachapi, Corcoran, Folsom, Wasco, Tracy, and Pelican Bay.
Parents, it is NOT the honorable, courageous, and public-serving members of the Los Angeles Police Department at whom you should direct your anger. Can you not give the police any kind of credit for securing the elementary school, so horribly close to the gun battle, as a place of refuge and protection for your children? You should be forever angry at the primitive cowards and barbarians who, posing as "loyal soldiers," are the criminal street gang known as the Avenues. These death-wishing LOSERS control and dominate your neighborhoods, your lives and, worst of all, your MIND. And these unfit humans do all of this with YOUR permission.
The dead gunman was a member of the notorious Avenues gang. In his honor, his gang "homies" quickly erected a shrine, replete with colorful flowers and burning candles. They drank to his memory and mourned him as a "loyal, fallen soldier who represented the Avenues."
Angry parents, instead of repeatedly criticizing the Los Angeles Police Department for taking extraordinary measures to protect school children from a gang barbarian walking around shooting off a AK-47 semi-automatic military weapon, ought to storm the Avenues members' homes and gathering spots, in a moving blitz, and verbally denounce them for the fear, intimidation, and destruction they continuously cause the Glassell Park community. Then they ought to go to the Los Angeles Criminal Courts and testify on the witness stands against them to ensure their long "vacations" in state penitentiaries like San Quentin, Tehachapi, Corcoran, Folsom, Wasco, Tracy, and Pelican Bay.
Parents, it is NOT the honorable, courageous, and public-serving members of the Los Angeles Police Department at whom you should direct your anger. Can you not give the police any kind of credit for securing the elementary school, so horribly close to the gun battle, as a place of refuge and protection for your children? You should be forever angry at the primitive cowards and barbarians who, posing as "loyal soldiers," are the criminal street gang known as the Avenues. These death-wishing LOSERS control and dominate your neighborhoods, your lives and, worst of all, your MIND. And these unfit humans do all of this with YOUR permission.
My Resume
James E. Shaw, Ph.D.
Criminal and Civil Court-Certified Expert: Litigation Support and Trial Testimony
Gangs; School Safety; Youth Violence; Child Sexual Abuse Reporting Protocols
(310) 678-6950 (cell.); (310) 649-5118 (fax). Email: courtexpert@gmail.com. Website: http://expertincourt.blogspot.com. Commentator for NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC, and author of the nationally-acclaimed book, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill (peer-reviewed by RAND Corporation), and the forthcoming book, GANGrene: Lost Souls Poisoning Homeland Security
Federal Appointment: Dr. Shaw is on the Faculty of the United States Courts Office of Defender Services Training Branch.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the Oversight Committee of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD).
Dr. Shaw is a 2009 Graduate of the Los Angeles Police Department Community Policing Academy.
Dr. Shaw is a member on the Panel of Experts of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Criminal Division, Foltz Criminal Justice Center.
Dr. Shaw holds the State of California License No. 030129796: Pupil Counseling, Grades K through 12.
Under Williams v. State of California, Dr. Shaw, as one of the California State Legislature-appointed Professional Team Leaders, went into public schools to ensure school administrator-compliance with the stipulations and terms (re school safety, teacher certification, and sufficient textbooks/curricular materials) of the massive and historic class action litigation affecting the CA’s 58 counties.
Dr. Shaw served as Director of Child Welfare for the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, and as Prosecutor in the Norwalk Superior Court’s Truancy Court.
Dr. Shaw served on the Multi-Agency Task Consortium Against Gangs.
Dr. Shaw served as a member of the Child Death Review Committee of the Los Angeles County Interagency Council Against Abuse and Neglect (I.C.A.N.).
For many years Dr. Shaw, through the Los Angeles County Office of Education, was a Consultant-Trainer on “Child Abuse Mandated Reporting Requirements”, and trained the county’s 81 school districts on mandated reporting materials provided by the State Attorney.
Dr. Shaw, as an invited keynote speaker, addressed the audience and media at the Columbine High School memorial ceremony in honor of the slain victims.
Dr. Shaw was the keynote speaker at the annual, nationally-renowned St. Mary’s Medical Center’s Child Abuse Conference, in Walla Walla, Washington.
During his four-year in-person/in-prison research on children who killed, Dr. Shaw coined the term “adolescentcide” (the phenomenon of children killing children) used by the media following the Columbine High School and other campus tragedies.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the California State Sheriff’s Education Association.
Dr. Shaw, for a number of years, taught the law course, Administration of Justice: Juvenile Delinquency and Legal Procedures, at the El Camino Police Academy.
Dr. Shaw is the author of the copyrighted “Homicidally-at-Risk Adolescent Profile,” or H.A.R.A.P., instrument used, in People v. Marcus Adams, by the Law Office of the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the American Society of Trial Consultants.
Dr. Shaw is a member of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
Dr. Shaw is associate member, #00711062, of the American Bar Association.
As a Mandatory Certified Legal Education (MCLE) Trainer, Dr. Shaw conducts accredited continuing education seminars for lawyers.
A PARTIAL LIST OF CASES, INCLUDING THOSE INVOLVING JUVENILE AND ADULT GANGS, FOR WHICH DR. SHAW WAS DESIGNATED COURT EXPERT:
FEDERAL
• United States Immigration Court v. Carlos Ayala. (Gang activity and Street Terrorism: Injunction to deport) [For Attorney Dana Mendelson.]
• United States v. Arceneaux (Gang-Heist Bank Robbery) [Federal Court case; for Attorney T.E. Warriner.]
MILITARY
• In re United States Military Academy, West Point. (the “Del Rey Eleven” case: Assault and GBI/Gang Enhancement/FirearmsViolations) [For Captain Jessica Conn, Office of the Staff Judge Advocate.]
• In re United States Navy. (Court Martial: Gang-related Weapons incident) [For Judge Advocate General Ryan Torgrison.]
STATE
• People v. Grays, Reese, and Williams. (Shooting into Occupied Building/Gang Enhancement) [For Law Office of the Sacramento County Public Defender; Ryan Jay, Esq.]
• People v. Charlotte Woods. (Gang Allegation) [For Romina Aghai, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Yovany Pensado (Robbery & Assault With Deadly Weapon/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Fred Ricco McCurry, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Nicholas Real. (Gang Enhancement Allegation) [For Sef Krell, Esq., and Alex Kessel, Esq.] Bar Panel case.
• People v. Jerron Harris. (Felon Carrying Weapon/Gang Allegation) [For Lucia Gonzalez, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Gilberto Martinez (Attempted Murder/Spec Alleg Gang Enhancemt) [For County of Sacramento Office of the Pub Def; David Lynch, Esq.]
• People v. Johnnie Davis. (Home Invasion/Gang Terrorism) [For Kern County, Bakersfield Public Defender; Mark Raimondo, Esq.]
• People v. Antonio Webster. (Attempted Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For County of Los Angeles, Office of the Public Defender; Pamela L. Jones, Esq.]
• People v. Rodrigo Bernal. (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Munoz. (Weapons Violation/Gang Allegation) [For Jorge Guzman, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People. V. Gray, Williams & Reese (Gang & Street Terrorism Allegation) [For Ryan Jay, Esq., County of Sacramento Public Defender.]
• People v. Robert Gaylord (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Yajahira Martinez, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Christian Rodriguez (Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For Denise Bousley, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Stefan Taylor (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Kenneth Harris (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles county Public Defender.]
• People v. Rodney Morris (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Luis Pineda. (Armed robbery/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Val Rada, Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Durrell Davon Melchor. (ADW W/Firearm on Peace Officer) [For Attorney Frank Di Sabatino, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Phillip Masters. (Assault with deadly weapon/GBI/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Dane Cameron, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Jason Pezant. (Possession of Firearm by Felon/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Mark Williams, Bar Panel]
• People v. Delatorre. (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Ana Elmi, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender]
• People v. Charkhian. (Terrorist threat-to-kill/“Third Strike” Predicate Act for Gang Enhancement; [For Attorney Allison Margolin.]
• In re Alfredo M. (Street Terrorism/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Tracy Tully-Davis.]
DEATH PENALTY and/or LIFE W/O PAROLE CASES
• The People of the State of California v. Marcus Adams (Uzi Assault Triple Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Patrick Thomason, Law Offices of the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender.]
• The People of the State of California v. Santiago Martinez. (Double Murder) [For Defender Martinez, acting In Pro Per.]
• People of the State of California v. Cesario Vasquez. (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Seymour I. Amster. Bar Panel]
• People v. Roderick Milner (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Stanley Z. White, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Jimmy Hunter. (Double Murder) [County of Ventura Office of the Public Defender; Joe Villasana, Esq.]
• People v. Gabriel Arceo. (Triple Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Charles Patton, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Jamal Payne, Jerry Sorrels, Damon Garrett, & Roderick Jenkins. (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For John Blanchard, Esq., Bar Panel.]
• People v. Richard Tovalin. (Attempted Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Seymour Amster, Bar Panel]
• People of the State of California v. David Mariscal (Gang-related Murder) [For Attorney Craig Wormley.]
• People of the State of California v. Gonzalez (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Seymour Amster, Bar Panel]
• People v. Quincy Edward Giles. (Attempted Double Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Frederick Lacey, Law Offices of the Alternate Public Defender.]
• People v. William Joseph (Gang-related Shooting/Attempted Murder) [For County of Los Angeles Office of the Public Defender; Kendi Ravsten, Esq.]
• People of the State of California v.Robert Masiel III. (Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Karen Lockhart.]
• People v. Francisco Orozco. (Attempted Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Art Goldberg, Bar Panel.]
CIVIL
• Jane C.R. Doe v. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Orange, et al. (Sexual Assault and Battery; Negligent Hiring/Retention; Negligent Supervision/Failure to Warn) [For Manly, McGuire & Stewart Law.
• Murray & Cox v. Egremont Schools. (Sexual Assault and Battery; Negligent Hiring/Retention; Negligent Supervision/Failure to Warn) [For Kessel & Associates Law Group.]
• Catherine Porter-Luttrell v. Ojai Unified School District. (Teacher’s use, in her 5th-grade class, of obscene, lewd and lascivious adult-level book; Negligent Supervision) [For Jones & Briggs Law.]
• Del Cid v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Assault and Personal Injury/Gang-Related) [For Attorney Brian Vogel.]
• State of Nevada v. Paul Anthony Rice. (Gang homicide) [For Attorney Kyle Swanson.]
• Robert and Diane Roy for Travis Roy v. Murrietta Valley School District. (Wrongful death) [For Attorney Daral Mazzarrella.]
• Sismilich v. Academy of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Girls School. (Teacher’s unlawful sex with minor) [For Gordon & Rees Law Group; Linda Mullany, Esq.]
• Williams v. California Department of Education. (Civil Rights/Equality in Education) Professional Expert/Team Leader for: State of California, California Department of Education, and Los Angeles County Office of Education.
• Anise Arteaga v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Assault and Personal Injury). [For Attorney Joseph Avrahamy.]
• “Marie S.” v. Alameda Unified School District, et al. (Administrator Assault on Student and Personal Injury) [For Attorney Trudy L. Martin.]
• Corales v. Bennett. (Middle School Student Suicide) [For Attorney Jacqueline De Warr.]
• Jackson v. Conga Room (Gang-related Homicide) [For Attorney Gary Jacobs.]
• In Re a Minor v. Los Angeles Unified School District (Gang-related Homicide) [For McNicholas and McNicholas Law Group; Juan Victoria, Esq.]
• Campolini v. Ventura Unified School District (Assault and Personal Injury) [For Attorney James Prosser.]
• In re Assault and Personal Injury v. Hayward Unified School District (Gang-related Assault and Personal Injury) [For Attorney Robert Abel.]
• In re Bonfire Injuries v. Fault & Yeates; TX A & M, Et Al (Non-assault/Personal Injury) [For Attorney Marty Rogers.]
• Carpenter (for Pierce) v. Tumwater School District, et al. (Assault and Rape) [For then-Attorney General of Washington: Christine Gregoire, Tort Claims Div.]
• Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Bronx, Henderson v. Smith, et al (Student assault/Personal Injury) [For Attorney James Marino.]
• Rubideaux v. Los Angeles Unified School District (Student Non-Assault Personal Injury) [For Carlson, Messer, & Turner Law Group; Edgar De Vera, Esq.]
• Bryant v. Willard (Juvenile Homicide/Gang & Drug Event) [For Attorney James Lozinski.]
• Martinez v. Los Angeles Unified School District (Student Assault/Gang-related) [For Attorney Andrew Ellis.]
• Plumlee v. Fullerton Joint Union High School District (Student Assault/Personal Injury [For Attorney James Rainboldt.]
• Yvonne and Gregory Smith (for Isiah Smith) v. San Juan Unified School District. (Child Abuse; Negligent Supervision; Failure to Report as Mandated) [For Kahn, Brown & Poore Law.]
• Royce Volkmann v. Capistrano Unified School District (Assault and GBI) [For Attorney Mitchell Stein.]
• Lester v. Department of Health and Human Resources(State of V. Virginia) (Assault and personal injury) [For Attorney Keith Gamble.]
• Tapia v. City of San Rafael. (Assault and traumatic personal injury at high school) [For Attorney Liza de Vries.]
• Gibson v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Child Molestation) [For Carlson, Messer & Turner Law Group; Jeanne Zimmer, Esq.]
• Cindy Perez v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Sexual Assault and Battery) [For Attorney Thomas Edward Wall.]
• Molina v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Sexual Assault on campus) [For Carpenter and Zuckerman Law Group; Michael Stone-Molloy, Esq.]
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Nationwide Book and Media Tour, Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau, Boston, MA. As a result of the research for and publication of my book, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill, I appeared repeatedly as guest educator and school safety/youth crime/child abuse expert on NBC’s “The Today Show,” CBS’s “Eye Witness News,” “CBS Utah,” CNN’s “Talk Back With Bobbi Battista,” MSNBC’s “Live With Mitch Albom,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” FOX News, “The O’Reilly Factor,” and other television and radio media outlets. Delivered keynote addresses at national conferences comprising judges, attorneys, law enforcement personnel, educators, psychologists, sociologists, the clergy, and politicians. At the request of states’ elected representatives, I consulted on and assisted in the design of violence education-and-prevention and school safety programs. B.R.A.V.E. (“Be Resilient Avoid Violence Everywhere”), my violence education-and-prevention curriculum, was written during this time at the suggestion of a Wasatch County, Utah high school principal. B.R.A.V.E. has been reviewed and cited by the FBI/ATF Philadelphia Regional Office. At the invitation of Littleton, Colorado parents, I delivered one of the keynote addresses at the first annual commemoration ceremony, in Littleton, Colorado, in honor of the slain victims of the Columbine High School massacre. (A copy of my speech is available upon request.) July 2000 to October 2005.
Teacher, Los Padrinos Juvenile Court School, operated by the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Taught high school-level subjects, per State Department of Education curriculum frameworks. Counseled gang members and other incarcerated juveniles on court etiquette, legal language, probation behavioral standards, administration of justice and juvenile delinquency; goals/visions/values; and legal, personal and social responsibility. Served as Los Angeles County’s “Dollars for Scholars” board member and fundraiser for scholarship awards to juvenile wards desiring to improve their lives. Served as the Los Angeles County Office of Education and Los Angeles County Probation Department liaison for the LEAPS (Life Excellerator Assessment of Personal Skills) Facilities-Wide Behavior Management Program. Served as vice chairperson of the Los Padrinos Shared Decision Making Council. Served as academic coach in the annual “Academic Bowl” fete. October 2005 to present.
While studying for CLAD (Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development) certification, and in a nod toward linguist Jim Cummins’ “cognitive academic language proficiency” theory of academic success, I coined the phrase, “symptomatically-compromised academic language deficiency” (SCALD), and wrote a paper describing this linguistic phenomenon and cause of school failure among LEP (Limited English Proficient) street gang members. Symptomatically-compromised language deficiency results from everything that is dysfunctional, unhealthy, and legally-encroaching in their lives: e.g., family members incarcerated, witnessing or engaging in violent gang acts, illegal drug use.
Gang Consultant and Media Expert for the made-for-television documentary, “Homegirls,” produced by Luis Colina and Father Gregory Boyle (The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and founder of “Homeboy Ministries.” Ongoing/in-progress.
Instructor, Master’s Degree Program, the University of Phoenix. Courses: Child and Adolescent Development and Teacher-training courses. July 2003 to present.
Instructor, Police Sciences Curriculum, El Camino Police Academy (operated by El Camino Community College), Torrance, CA. Course: Administration of Justice: Juvenile Delinquency and Legal Procedures. February 2002 to present.
Director, Pupil Personnel Services, Norwalk La Mirada Unified School District
(24,000 students – 31 schools.) and Director, Student Attendance Review Board (S.A.R.B.) No. 21, at the Norwalk Superior Court. Prosecuted, for the L.A. County District Attorney, parents and children in violation of school attendance laws. Designed and co-conducted, with Sheriff Dept., “Stop-Crimes-on-Campus” programs: Drug-Dog Sniffing Program; Juvenile Citation-into-Court Program (for gang activity, graffiti-tagging, vandalism, fighting, alcohol possession, profanity, drug possession and use); and specialized gang diversion programs such as G.R.I.P., “Gang Reduction Intervention Program” and the “Gang Awareness Project” (G.A.P.), both of which were coordinated with local law enforcement. July 1999 – July 2000.
Consultant, Public School Law, L.A. County Office of Education. Advisor to 81 school districts on L. A. County, state laws pertaining to child welfare and school attendance, student violence, suspensions and expulsions, gang activity/violence and parents’ roles and responsibilities. At request of retired Supervisor Deane Dana, I helped to write the L.A. County” Anti-Truancy Ordinance, No 96-0009.” September 1996 – June 1999.
Consultant, GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence) Welfare-to-Work Program, L.A. County Office of Education. Supervised four Job Developers and 80 Job Search Specialists in the development of employer requirements, employment preparation, job market surveying, personal skills inventorying, job readiness, and personal responsibility courses; case follow-up and evaluation. September 1995 – September 1996.
Producer, Educational Television. Los Angeles County Office of Education. Produced focused programs: gang awareness and education; interviews with the State of CA Superintendent of Schools; curriculum series involving Institutes of Higher Education (IHE’s): USC, Claremont Graduate University, and UCLA; and a widely-acclaimed special program I conceived, produced and hosted following the 1992 Los Angeles riot: “Let’s Not Experience it Again.” January 1991 to September 1995.
EDUCATION
Dr. James E. Shaw earned his Ph.D. degree (focus: Curriculum) from the Claremont Graduate University and received the Phi Delta Kappa (Mt. Baldy Chapter) "Best Dissertation of the Year" award for his pioneering study of a spectrum of children—including gang members—incarcerated in state prisons for murder and homicide. His 4-year in-person/in-prison research of 103 girls and boys was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. (1993 – 1997.)
The University of Southern California, Teacher Corps Cycle VII. Two-year graduate studies program focused on Troubled Youth/Gangs. Studies included classes and programs at the Delinquency Prevention Institute. Los Angeles, CA. Master of Science in Education (MSEd) Degree: 1972-1974.
California State University at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. B.A. Degree: 1965 -1972.
PROPRIETARY PUBLICATIONS and INVOLVEMENT WITH OTHERS
Ph.D. Dissertation: Maturity and Choice in Adolescents Incarcerated for Murder and Homicide (Ann Arbor; University Microfilms; 1997)
Jack & Jill, Why They Kill (Seattle; Onjinjinkta Publishing Co., 2000)
Bully-Proofing Your Child (eBook, published in 2001).
B.R.A.V.E. (Be Resilient Avoid Violence Everywhere). Field-tested (2001-2002, CA) by Downey Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS). B.R.A.V.E. has been cited by the FBI/ATF Philadelphia Region as an example of “best community practices” for its violence education and prevention curriculum for grades 6 – 12.
Los Angeles County Anti-Truancy Ordinance (Public Law No. 96-0009, co-written in 1995, with other educators and lawyers, at request of then-County Supervisor Deane Dana).
Los Angeles County Master Plan for School Safety (1998; Co-Editor).
Advisor on the Los Angeles County Office of Education and California State Department of Education “Classroom Management Guide” (2000).
Advisor on the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors manual, “Helping Improve Police Practices” (H.I.P.P.). A guide on improving relationships between law enforcement and students, particularly student gang members.
“Prosecutors as Persecutors: Can an Expert Save Justice?” (first published by T.A.B., Technical Assistance Bureau for attorneys).
“Evaluating Your Witness and Witnessing Their Value.” Article for National Defender Investigator Association’s Eagle Eye magazine.
“In Loco Parentis: the Hot Stock Du Jour.” This article first appeared at www.Calif-Legal.com, and was the subject of my interview with editor Andrew Brownstein of TRIAL magazine (published by American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America).
“Expert Witnesses May Find Schools Hazardous to a Child’s Health.” Article for Consumer Attorneys of California Forum magazine.
“Drop the Fiction of Safe Schools,” published by the Los Angeles Times.
“The Cruel Arithmetic of Adolescentcide,” published by the Long Beach Press Telegram.
“Armed School Police Don’t Equal Safer Schools,” published by the Los Angeles
Times.
“Kids Killing Kids,” the Boca Raton (FL) Times.
HONORS, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND ACTIVITIES
“Certificate of Recognition” from the California State Legislature, for book: Jack and Jill, Why They Kill
Letter of gratitude and congratulations from President George W. Bush for book: Jack and Jill, Why They Kill.
The Neil Matsumora Scholarship, University of Southern California
The Phi Delta Kappa, Mt. Baldy Chapter, “Best (Doctoral) Dissertation of the Year” Award for four-year in-prison/in-person research on children who killed.
President-Elect of the California Association of Supervisors of Child Welfare and Attendance (CASCWA)
Association of California School Administrators (ACSA)
The California Teachers Association (CTA)
Member of the American Society of Trial Consultants
Member of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice
Associate Member of the American Bar Association
CIVIC ASSOCIATIONS
Board member of G.O.O.D. (“Gangs Out of Downey”) Organization. Other G.O.O.D. members with whom I worked include Judge Roy Paul, Judge David Perkins, Judge A. Lord, and Judge Manuel Rodriguez.
Member of the Multi-Agency Task Force on Gangs, Norwalk, CA.
Rotary International District No. 1774
AFFILIATIONS WITH EXPERT WITNESS REFERRAL ORGANIZATIONS
• Technical Advisory Service for Attorneys (T.A.S.A.)
• Technical Assistance Bureau (T.A.B.)
• ExpertWitness.com
• eWitness.com
• California Attorneys for Criminal Justice
• Experts.com
• Forensis Group
• Expert Resources, Inc.
• National Expert Witness Network
• Summit Professional Resources
• Forensic Expert Advisors
• Consolidated Consultants Company
• The Chatham Group
• DJS Associates, Inc.
OTHER INFORMATION
Dr. Shaw began studying the social phenomenon of troubled, bad-ass and criminal youth while a graduate student (1972-1974) in the nationally-acclaimed Urban Teacher Corps VII program at the University of Southern California. His training at USC’s Delinquency Prevention Institute led to further gang education training by (1) the Department of Justice (at the L.A. County Office of Education and Inglewood USD “Gang Summit”); (2) the Norwalk Sheriff Department’s Multi-Agency Task Force on Gangs; (3) the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Youth Leadership Academy; (4) the Gang Awareness Project (GAP); (5) the Gang Risk Intervention Program (GRIP); (6) Juvenile Delinquency Summits conducted by California State Senator Betty Karnette (Long Beach); and (7) professional conferences across the nation hosted by law enforcement agencies and educators.
Dr. James E. Shaw is considered one of the nation's foremost gang, troubled youth, school safety and youth violence experts, and is still a regular guest expert on television and radio (Good Morning, America; NBC Today Show; O’Reilly Factor; MSNBC Live; CBS EyeWitness News; ABC News; CNN; and Associated Press Radio). He is quoted by a range of publications, from TRIAL magazine to the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post Media Group to the Baca Raton Times to the Atlanta Journal Constitution to the Long Beach Press Telegram to the Sacramento Bee Newspaper to Seventeen Magazine. He spent 48 months inside California Youth Authority state youth prisons interviewing and studying 103 girls and boys, among them gang members, incarcerated for committing murder and homicide.
The only researcher in the country allowed to go inside prisons and behind bars to get the life stories of a spectrum of children who killed, Dr. Shaw wrote the landmark, nationally-acclaimed book, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill, as a result of his four-year study. Referred to on CNN as the "the smart answer for today's troubled times," Jack and Jill, Why They Kill has a wide readership among school administrators, teachers, social workers, attorneys, law enforcement officers, districts attorney, probation officers, members of the clergy, psychologists, medical doctors, judges, colleges and universities, and students themselves. The book is used in colleges and universities nationwide. Dr. Shaw coined the word “adolescentcide,” meaning children who kill other children. He has presented gang awareness and school safety programs for the California Attorney General, elected officials, law enforcement associations, and school administrators nationwide.
SOME WRITTEN COMMENTS ABOUT Dr. Shaw’s Jack & Jill, Why They Kill
Reviewer: The Honorable Lee Baca, Sheriff, Los Angeles County
“No public safety policy maker can afford to overlook this common sense uncovering of the cause, terror, and nature of this human tragedy.”
Reviewer: The Honorable Nancy D. Daniels, Referee, Los Angeles Superior Court
“Jack & Jill, Why They Kill should be in the maternity packet of expectant and adoptive parents and on the desk of every school teacher, child welfare worker and juvenile court judge.”
Reviewer: The Honorable Pamela Davis, Judge, Santa Monica Superior Court
“Bravo, Dr. Shaw, for a finely-crafted book that will inspire parents and may yet save the lives of countless children!”
Criminal and Civil Court-Certified Expert: Litigation Support and Trial Testimony
Gangs; School Safety; Youth Violence; Child Sexual Abuse Reporting Protocols
(310) 678-6950 (cell.); (310) 649-5118 (fax). Email: courtexpert@gmail.com. Website: http://expertincourt.blogspot.com. Commentator for NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC, and author of the nationally-acclaimed book, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill (peer-reviewed by RAND Corporation), and the forthcoming book, GANGrene: Lost Souls Poisoning Homeland Security
Federal Appointment: Dr. Shaw is on the Faculty of the United States Courts Office of Defender Services Training Branch.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the Oversight Committee of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD).
Dr. Shaw is a 2009 Graduate of the Los Angeles Police Department Community Policing Academy.
Dr. Shaw is a member on the Panel of Experts of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Criminal Division, Foltz Criminal Justice Center.
Dr. Shaw holds the State of California License No. 030129796: Pupil Counseling, Grades K through 12.
Under Williams v. State of California, Dr. Shaw, as one of the California State Legislature-appointed Professional Team Leaders, went into public schools to ensure school administrator-compliance with the stipulations and terms (re school safety, teacher certification, and sufficient textbooks/curricular materials) of the massive and historic class action litigation affecting the CA’s 58 counties.
Dr. Shaw served as Director of Child Welfare for the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, and as Prosecutor in the Norwalk Superior Court’s Truancy Court.
Dr. Shaw served on the Multi-Agency Task Consortium Against Gangs.
Dr. Shaw served as a member of the Child Death Review Committee of the Los Angeles County Interagency Council Against Abuse and Neglect (I.C.A.N.).
For many years Dr. Shaw, through the Los Angeles County Office of Education, was a Consultant-Trainer on “Child Abuse Mandated Reporting Requirements”, and trained the county’s 81 school districts on mandated reporting materials provided by the State Attorney.
Dr. Shaw, as an invited keynote speaker, addressed the audience and media at the Columbine High School memorial ceremony in honor of the slain victims.
Dr. Shaw was the keynote speaker at the annual, nationally-renowned St. Mary’s Medical Center’s Child Abuse Conference, in Walla Walla, Washington.
During his four-year in-person/in-prison research on children who killed, Dr. Shaw coined the term “adolescentcide” (the phenomenon of children killing children) used by the media following the Columbine High School and other campus tragedies.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the California State Sheriff’s Education Association.
Dr. Shaw, for a number of years, taught the law course, Administration of Justice: Juvenile Delinquency and Legal Procedures, at the El Camino Police Academy.
Dr. Shaw is the author of the copyrighted “Homicidally-at-Risk Adolescent Profile,” or H.A.R.A.P., instrument used, in People v. Marcus Adams, by the Law Office of the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the American Society of Trial Consultants.
Dr. Shaw is a member of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.
Dr. Shaw is a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
Dr. Shaw is associate member, #00711062, of the American Bar Association.
As a Mandatory Certified Legal Education (MCLE) Trainer, Dr. Shaw conducts accredited continuing education seminars for lawyers.
A PARTIAL LIST OF CASES, INCLUDING THOSE INVOLVING JUVENILE AND ADULT GANGS, FOR WHICH DR. SHAW WAS DESIGNATED COURT EXPERT:
FEDERAL
• United States Immigration Court v. Carlos Ayala. (Gang activity and Street Terrorism: Injunction to deport) [For Attorney Dana Mendelson.]
• United States v. Arceneaux (Gang-Heist Bank Robbery) [Federal Court case; for Attorney T.E. Warriner.]
MILITARY
• In re United States Military Academy, West Point. (the “Del Rey Eleven” case: Assault and GBI/Gang Enhancement/FirearmsViolations) [For Captain Jessica Conn, Office of the Staff Judge Advocate.]
• In re United States Navy. (Court Martial: Gang-related Weapons incident) [For Judge Advocate General Ryan Torgrison.]
STATE
• People v. Grays, Reese, and Williams. (Shooting into Occupied Building/Gang Enhancement) [For Law Office of the Sacramento County Public Defender; Ryan Jay, Esq.]
• People v. Charlotte Woods. (Gang Allegation) [For Romina Aghai, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Yovany Pensado (Robbery & Assault With Deadly Weapon/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Fred Ricco McCurry, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Nicholas Real. (Gang Enhancement Allegation) [For Sef Krell, Esq., and Alex Kessel, Esq.] Bar Panel case.
• People v. Jerron Harris. (Felon Carrying Weapon/Gang Allegation) [For Lucia Gonzalez, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Gilberto Martinez (Attempted Murder/Spec Alleg Gang Enhancemt) [For County of Sacramento Office of the Pub Def; David Lynch, Esq.]
• People v. Johnnie Davis. (Home Invasion/Gang Terrorism) [For Kern County, Bakersfield Public Defender; Mark Raimondo, Esq.]
• People v. Antonio Webster. (Attempted Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For County of Los Angeles, Office of the Public Defender; Pamela L. Jones, Esq.]
• People v. Rodrigo Bernal. (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Munoz. (Weapons Violation/Gang Allegation) [For Jorge Guzman, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People. V. Gray, Williams & Reese (Gang & Street Terrorism Allegation) [For Ryan Jay, Esq., County of Sacramento Public Defender.]
• People v. Robert Gaylord (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Yajahira Martinez, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Christian Rodriguez (Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For Denise Bousley, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Stefan Taylor (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Kenneth Harris (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles county Public Defender.]
• People v. Rodney Morris (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Elizabeth Hodgen, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Luis Pineda. (Armed robbery/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Val Rada, Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender.]
• People v. Durrell Davon Melchor. (ADW W/Firearm on Peace Officer) [For Attorney Frank Di Sabatino, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Phillip Masters. (Assault with deadly weapon/GBI/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Dane Cameron, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Jason Pezant. (Possession of Firearm by Felon/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Mark Williams, Bar Panel]
• People v. Delatorre. (Gang Injunction Violation) [For Ana Elmi, Esq., Law Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender]
• People v. Charkhian. (Terrorist threat-to-kill/“Third Strike” Predicate Act for Gang Enhancement; [For Attorney Allison Margolin.]
• In re Alfredo M. (Street Terrorism/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Tracy Tully-Davis.]
DEATH PENALTY and/or LIFE W/O PAROLE CASES
• The People of the State of California v. Marcus Adams (Uzi Assault Triple Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Patrick Thomason, Law Offices of the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender.]
• The People of the State of California v. Santiago Martinez. (Double Murder) [For Defender Martinez, acting In Pro Per.]
• People of the State of California v. Cesario Vasquez. (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Seymour I. Amster. Bar Panel]
• People v. Roderick Milner (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Stanley Z. White, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Jimmy Hunter. (Double Murder) [County of Ventura Office of the Public Defender; Joe Villasana, Esq.]
• People v. Gabriel Arceo. (Triple Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Charles Patton, Bar Panel.]
• People v. Jamal Payne, Jerry Sorrels, Damon Garrett, & Roderick Jenkins. (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For John Blanchard, Esq., Bar Panel.]
• People v. Richard Tovalin. (Attempted Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Seymour Amster, Bar Panel]
• People of the State of California v. David Mariscal (Gang-related Murder) [For Attorney Craig Wormley.]
• People of the State of California v. Gonzalez (Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Seymour Amster, Bar Panel]
• People v. Quincy Edward Giles. (Attempted Double Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Frederick Lacey, Law Offices of the Alternate Public Defender.]
• People v. William Joseph (Gang-related Shooting/Attempted Murder) [For County of Los Angeles Office of the Public Defender; Kendi Ravsten, Esq.]
• People of the State of California v.Robert Masiel III. (Murder/Gang Enhancement) [For Attorney Karen Lockhart.]
• People v. Francisco Orozco. (Attempted Murder/Gang Allegation) [For Attorney Art Goldberg, Bar Panel.]
CIVIL
• Jane C.R. Doe v. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Orange, et al. (Sexual Assault and Battery; Negligent Hiring/Retention; Negligent Supervision/Failure to Warn) [For Manly, McGuire & Stewart Law.
• Murray & Cox v. Egremont Schools. (Sexual Assault and Battery; Negligent Hiring/Retention; Negligent Supervision/Failure to Warn) [For Kessel & Associates Law Group.]
• Catherine Porter-Luttrell v. Ojai Unified School District. (Teacher’s use, in her 5th-grade class, of obscene, lewd and lascivious adult-level book; Negligent Supervision) [For Jones & Briggs Law.]
• Del Cid v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Assault and Personal Injury/Gang-Related) [For Attorney Brian Vogel.]
• State of Nevada v. Paul Anthony Rice. (Gang homicide) [For Attorney Kyle Swanson.]
• Robert and Diane Roy for Travis Roy v. Murrietta Valley School District. (Wrongful death) [For Attorney Daral Mazzarrella.]
• Sismilich v. Academy of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Girls School. (Teacher’s unlawful sex with minor) [For Gordon & Rees Law Group; Linda Mullany, Esq.]
• Williams v. California Department of Education. (Civil Rights/Equality in Education) Professional Expert/Team Leader for: State of California, California Department of Education, and Los Angeles County Office of Education.
• Anise Arteaga v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Assault and Personal Injury). [For Attorney Joseph Avrahamy.]
• “Marie S.” v. Alameda Unified School District, et al. (Administrator Assault on Student and Personal Injury) [For Attorney Trudy L. Martin.]
• Corales v. Bennett. (Middle School Student Suicide) [For Attorney Jacqueline De Warr.]
• Jackson v. Conga Room (Gang-related Homicide) [For Attorney Gary Jacobs.]
• In Re a Minor v. Los Angeles Unified School District (Gang-related Homicide) [For McNicholas and McNicholas Law Group; Juan Victoria, Esq.]
• Campolini v. Ventura Unified School District (Assault and Personal Injury) [For Attorney James Prosser.]
• In re Assault and Personal Injury v. Hayward Unified School District (Gang-related Assault and Personal Injury) [For Attorney Robert Abel.]
• In re Bonfire Injuries v. Fault & Yeates; TX A & M, Et Al (Non-assault/Personal Injury) [For Attorney Marty Rogers.]
• Carpenter (for Pierce) v. Tumwater School District, et al. (Assault and Rape) [For then-Attorney General of Washington: Christine Gregoire, Tort Claims Div.]
• Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Bronx, Henderson v. Smith, et al (Student assault/Personal Injury) [For Attorney James Marino.]
• Rubideaux v. Los Angeles Unified School District (Student Non-Assault Personal Injury) [For Carlson, Messer, & Turner Law Group; Edgar De Vera, Esq.]
• Bryant v. Willard (Juvenile Homicide/Gang & Drug Event) [For Attorney James Lozinski.]
• Martinez v. Los Angeles Unified School District (Student Assault/Gang-related) [For Attorney Andrew Ellis.]
• Plumlee v. Fullerton Joint Union High School District (Student Assault/Personal Injury [For Attorney James Rainboldt.]
• Yvonne and Gregory Smith (for Isiah Smith) v. San Juan Unified School District. (Child Abuse; Negligent Supervision; Failure to Report as Mandated) [For Kahn, Brown & Poore Law.]
• Royce Volkmann v. Capistrano Unified School District (Assault and GBI) [For Attorney Mitchell Stein.]
• Lester v. Department of Health and Human Resources(State of V. Virginia) (Assault and personal injury) [For Attorney Keith Gamble.]
• Tapia v. City of San Rafael. (Assault and traumatic personal injury at high school) [For Attorney Liza de Vries.]
• Gibson v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Child Molestation) [For Carlson, Messer & Turner Law Group; Jeanne Zimmer, Esq.]
• Cindy Perez v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Sexual Assault and Battery) [For Attorney Thomas Edward Wall.]
• Molina v. Los Angeles Unified School District. (Sexual Assault on campus) [For Carpenter and Zuckerman Law Group; Michael Stone-Molloy, Esq.]
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Nationwide Book and Media Tour, Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau, Boston, MA. As a result of the research for and publication of my book, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill, I appeared repeatedly as guest educator and school safety/youth crime/child abuse expert on NBC’s “The Today Show,” CBS’s “Eye Witness News,” “CBS Utah,” CNN’s “Talk Back With Bobbi Battista,” MSNBC’s “Live With Mitch Albom,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” FOX News, “The O’Reilly Factor,” and other television and radio media outlets. Delivered keynote addresses at national conferences comprising judges, attorneys, law enforcement personnel, educators, psychologists, sociologists, the clergy, and politicians. At the request of states’ elected representatives, I consulted on and assisted in the design of violence education-and-prevention and school safety programs. B.R.A.V.E. (“Be Resilient Avoid Violence Everywhere”), my violence education-and-prevention curriculum, was written during this time at the suggestion of a Wasatch County, Utah high school principal. B.R.A.V.E. has been reviewed and cited by the FBI/ATF Philadelphia Regional Office. At the invitation of Littleton, Colorado parents, I delivered one of the keynote addresses at the first annual commemoration ceremony, in Littleton, Colorado, in honor of the slain victims of the Columbine High School massacre. (A copy of my speech is available upon request.) July 2000 to October 2005.
Teacher, Los Padrinos Juvenile Court School, operated by the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Taught high school-level subjects, per State Department of Education curriculum frameworks. Counseled gang members and other incarcerated juveniles on court etiquette, legal language, probation behavioral standards, administration of justice and juvenile delinquency; goals/visions/values; and legal, personal and social responsibility. Served as Los Angeles County’s “Dollars for Scholars” board member and fundraiser for scholarship awards to juvenile wards desiring to improve their lives. Served as the Los Angeles County Office of Education and Los Angeles County Probation Department liaison for the LEAPS (Life Excellerator Assessment of Personal Skills) Facilities-Wide Behavior Management Program. Served as vice chairperson of the Los Padrinos Shared Decision Making Council. Served as academic coach in the annual “Academic Bowl” fete. October 2005 to present.
While studying for CLAD (Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development) certification, and in a nod toward linguist Jim Cummins’ “cognitive academic language proficiency” theory of academic success, I coined the phrase, “symptomatically-compromised academic language deficiency” (SCALD), and wrote a paper describing this linguistic phenomenon and cause of school failure among LEP (Limited English Proficient) street gang members. Symptomatically-compromised language deficiency results from everything that is dysfunctional, unhealthy, and legally-encroaching in their lives: e.g., family members incarcerated, witnessing or engaging in violent gang acts, illegal drug use.
Gang Consultant and Media Expert for the made-for-television documentary, “Homegirls,” produced by Luis Colina and Father Gregory Boyle (The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and founder of “Homeboy Ministries.” Ongoing/in-progress.
Instructor, Master’s Degree Program, the University of Phoenix. Courses: Child and Adolescent Development and Teacher-training courses. July 2003 to present.
Instructor, Police Sciences Curriculum, El Camino Police Academy (operated by El Camino Community College), Torrance, CA. Course: Administration of Justice: Juvenile Delinquency and Legal Procedures. February 2002 to present.
Director, Pupil Personnel Services, Norwalk La Mirada Unified School District
(24,000 students – 31 schools.) and Director, Student Attendance Review Board (S.A.R.B.) No. 21, at the Norwalk Superior Court. Prosecuted, for the L.A. County District Attorney, parents and children in violation of school attendance laws. Designed and co-conducted, with Sheriff Dept., “Stop-Crimes-on-Campus” programs: Drug-Dog Sniffing Program; Juvenile Citation-into-Court Program (for gang activity, graffiti-tagging, vandalism, fighting, alcohol possession, profanity, drug possession and use); and specialized gang diversion programs such as G.R.I.P., “Gang Reduction Intervention Program” and the “Gang Awareness Project” (G.A.P.), both of which were coordinated with local law enforcement. July 1999 – July 2000.
Consultant, Public School Law, L.A. County Office of Education. Advisor to 81 school districts on L. A. County, state laws pertaining to child welfare and school attendance, student violence, suspensions and expulsions, gang activity/violence and parents’ roles and responsibilities. At request of retired Supervisor Deane Dana, I helped to write the L.A. County” Anti-Truancy Ordinance, No 96-0009.” September 1996 – June 1999.
Consultant, GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence) Welfare-to-Work Program, L.A. County Office of Education. Supervised four Job Developers and 80 Job Search Specialists in the development of employer requirements, employment preparation, job market surveying, personal skills inventorying, job readiness, and personal responsibility courses; case follow-up and evaluation. September 1995 – September 1996.
Producer, Educational Television. Los Angeles County Office of Education. Produced focused programs: gang awareness and education; interviews with the State of CA Superintendent of Schools; curriculum series involving Institutes of Higher Education (IHE’s): USC, Claremont Graduate University, and UCLA; and a widely-acclaimed special program I conceived, produced and hosted following the 1992 Los Angeles riot: “Let’s Not Experience it Again.” January 1991 to September 1995.
EDUCATION
Dr. James E. Shaw earned his Ph.D. degree (focus: Curriculum) from the Claremont Graduate University and received the Phi Delta Kappa (Mt. Baldy Chapter) "Best Dissertation of the Year" award for his pioneering study of a spectrum of children—including gang members—incarcerated in state prisons for murder and homicide. His 4-year in-person/in-prison research of 103 girls and boys was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. (1993 – 1997.)
The University of Southern California, Teacher Corps Cycle VII. Two-year graduate studies program focused on Troubled Youth/Gangs. Studies included classes and programs at the Delinquency Prevention Institute. Los Angeles, CA. Master of Science in Education (MSEd) Degree: 1972-1974.
California State University at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. B.A. Degree: 1965 -1972.
PROPRIETARY PUBLICATIONS and INVOLVEMENT WITH OTHERS
Ph.D. Dissertation: Maturity and Choice in Adolescents Incarcerated for Murder and Homicide (Ann Arbor; University Microfilms; 1997)
Jack & Jill, Why They Kill (Seattle; Onjinjinkta Publishing Co., 2000)
Bully-Proofing Your Child (eBook, published in 2001).
B.R.A.V.E. (Be Resilient Avoid Violence Everywhere). Field-tested (2001-2002, CA) by Downey Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS). B.R.A.V.E. has been cited by the FBI/ATF Philadelphia Region as an example of “best community practices” for its violence education and prevention curriculum for grades 6 – 12.
Los Angeles County Anti-Truancy Ordinance (Public Law No. 96-0009, co-written in 1995, with other educators and lawyers, at request of then-County Supervisor Deane Dana).
Los Angeles County Master Plan for School Safety (1998; Co-Editor).
Advisor on the Los Angeles County Office of Education and California State Department of Education “Classroom Management Guide” (2000).
Advisor on the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors manual, “Helping Improve Police Practices” (H.I.P.P.). A guide on improving relationships between law enforcement and students, particularly student gang members.
“Prosecutors as Persecutors: Can an Expert Save Justice?” (first published by T.A.B., Technical Assistance Bureau for attorneys).
“Evaluating Your Witness and Witnessing Their Value.” Article for National Defender Investigator Association’s Eagle Eye magazine.
“In Loco Parentis: the Hot Stock Du Jour.” This article first appeared at www.Calif-Legal.com, and was the subject of my interview with editor Andrew Brownstein of TRIAL magazine (published by American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America).
“Expert Witnesses May Find Schools Hazardous to a Child’s Health.” Article for Consumer Attorneys of California Forum magazine.
“Drop the Fiction of Safe Schools,” published by the Los Angeles Times.
“The Cruel Arithmetic of Adolescentcide,” published by the Long Beach Press Telegram.
“Armed School Police Don’t Equal Safer Schools,” published by the Los Angeles
Times.
“Kids Killing Kids,” the Boca Raton (FL) Times.
HONORS, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND ACTIVITIES
“Certificate of Recognition” from the California State Legislature, for book: Jack and Jill, Why They Kill
Letter of gratitude and congratulations from President George W. Bush for book: Jack and Jill, Why They Kill.
The Neil Matsumora Scholarship, University of Southern California
The Phi Delta Kappa, Mt. Baldy Chapter, “Best (Doctoral) Dissertation of the Year” Award for four-year in-prison/in-person research on children who killed.
President-Elect of the California Association of Supervisors of Child Welfare and Attendance (CASCWA)
Association of California School Administrators (ACSA)
The California Teachers Association (CTA)
Member of the American Society of Trial Consultants
Member of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice
Associate Member of the American Bar Association
CIVIC ASSOCIATIONS
Board member of G.O.O.D. (“Gangs Out of Downey”) Organization. Other G.O.O.D. members with whom I worked include Judge Roy Paul, Judge David Perkins, Judge A. Lord, and Judge Manuel Rodriguez.
Member of the Multi-Agency Task Force on Gangs, Norwalk, CA.
Rotary International District No. 1774
AFFILIATIONS WITH EXPERT WITNESS REFERRAL ORGANIZATIONS
• Technical Advisory Service for Attorneys (T.A.S.A.)
• Technical Assistance Bureau (T.A.B.)
• ExpertWitness.com
• eWitness.com
• California Attorneys for Criminal Justice
• Experts.com
• Forensis Group
• Expert Resources, Inc.
• National Expert Witness Network
• Summit Professional Resources
• Forensic Expert Advisors
• Consolidated Consultants Company
• The Chatham Group
• DJS Associates, Inc.
OTHER INFORMATION
Dr. Shaw began studying the social phenomenon of troubled, bad-ass and criminal youth while a graduate student (1972-1974) in the nationally-acclaimed Urban Teacher Corps VII program at the University of Southern California. His training at USC’s Delinquency Prevention Institute led to further gang education training by (1) the Department of Justice (at the L.A. County Office of Education and Inglewood USD “Gang Summit”); (2) the Norwalk Sheriff Department’s Multi-Agency Task Force on Gangs; (3) the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Youth Leadership Academy; (4) the Gang Awareness Project (GAP); (5) the Gang Risk Intervention Program (GRIP); (6) Juvenile Delinquency Summits conducted by California State Senator Betty Karnette (Long Beach); and (7) professional conferences across the nation hosted by law enforcement agencies and educators.
Dr. James E. Shaw is considered one of the nation's foremost gang, troubled youth, school safety and youth violence experts, and is still a regular guest expert on television and radio (Good Morning, America; NBC Today Show; O’Reilly Factor; MSNBC Live; CBS EyeWitness News; ABC News; CNN; and Associated Press Radio). He is quoted by a range of publications, from TRIAL magazine to the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post Media Group to the Baca Raton Times to the Atlanta Journal Constitution to the Long Beach Press Telegram to the Sacramento Bee Newspaper to Seventeen Magazine. He spent 48 months inside California Youth Authority state youth prisons interviewing and studying 103 girls and boys, among them gang members, incarcerated for committing murder and homicide.
The only researcher in the country allowed to go inside prisons and behind bars to get the life stories of a spectrum of children who killed, Dr. Shaw wrote the landmark, nationally-acclaimed book, Jack and Jill, Why They Kill, as a result of his four-year study. Referred to on CNN as the "the smart answer for today's troubled times," Jack and Jill, Why They Kill has a wide readership among school administrators, teachers, social workers, attorneys, law enforcement officers, districts attorney, probation officers, members of the clergy, psychologists, medical doctors, judges, colleges and universities, and students themselves. The book is used in colleges and universities nationwide. Dr. Shaw coined the word “adolescentcide,” meaning children who kill other children. He has presented gang awareness and school safety programs for the California Attorney General, elected officials, law enforcement associations, and school administrators nationwide.
SOME WRITTEN COMMENTS ABOUT Dr. Shaw’s Jack & Jill, Why They Kill
Reviewer: The Honorable Lee Baca, Sheriff, Los Angeles County
“No public safety policy maker can afford to overlook this common sense uncovering of the cause, terror, and nature of this human tragedy.”
Reviewer: The Honorable Nancy D. Daniels, Referee, Los Angeles Superior Court
“Jack & Jill, Why They Kill should be in the maternity packet of expectant and adoptive parents and on the desk of every school teacher, child welfare worker and juvenile court judge.”
Reviewer: The Honorable Pamela Davis, Judge, Santa Monica Superior Court
“Bravo, Dr. Shaw, for a finely-crafted book that will inspire parents and may yet save the lives of countless children!”
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