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.
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Showing posts with label gangs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gangs. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
When Corrupt Cops and Gangbangers Get in Bed Together
Editor's Note: Jim Kouri, president of the International Association of Police Chiefs, penned the following article. For those of us who work in the Defense Bar, the article presents information that is current and useful. As we strive and endeavor to ensure the best defense possible for our clients, we might read carefully the information that is presented for points that might prove fruitful in their use.
A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted six gang members -- including three law enforcement officers -- on civil rights, narcotics and weapons charges for allegedly participating in an organized enterprise consisting of law enforcement officers and civilians who "invaded" private homes as though they were conducting legitimate law enforcement operations, but in reality were staging home-invasion robberies to steal drugs, money and weapons.
The case developed after feds arrested a suspended corrections officer with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Federal and local investigators discovered that the leader of the crime gang was actually a Los Angeles police officer named Ruben Palomares.
The more than 50 charges filed accuse the defendants of committing more than 20 robberies and burglaries from 1999 through 2001. The investigation into the gang began when Palomares and another member of his gang were arrested in San Diego on cocaine trafficking charges in June 2001.
The investigation, involving agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as officers with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Long Beach Police Department, found that the robberies were generally committed after Palomares received information that a particular location was involved in the narcotics trade.
After planning the operation and conducting surveillance, the robbery team -- which usually consisted of multiple sworn police officers in uniform or displaying a badge -- gained access to the residence by falsely telling any residents that they were conducting a legitimate search for drugs or drug dealers. Victims were often restrained, handcuffed, threatened or assaulted during the search, and on one occasion a man was hit with a stun gun.
Although many of the raids did not yield the anticipated narcotics, the crew allegedly stole any items of value found inside the residences. When the group did steal items, they divided profits from the sale of the stolen goods among themselves.
During the course of the conspiracy, Palomares provided associates with official LAPD badges, uniforms, radios, firearms and other equipment. Some of the robberies were committed after the thieves drove to the location in official LAPD vehicles. The robbers used the LAPD equipment to make victims believe they were the subject of legitimate law enforcement operations and to minimize the defendants' risk of being questioned if confronted by law enforcement officers.
"The depth of corruption and audacity among these law enforcement officers is nothing less than stunning," said United States Attorney Debra Wong Yang. "While having a badge imparts some degree of power to an officer of the law, it also imparts a great deal of responsibility. In addition to rejecting their responsibilities to the law, these officers rejected their sacred responsibilities to their communities and their departments."
Six defendants are named in a 54-count indictment returned by the grand jury. The three law enforcement defendants are:
- Rodrigo Duran, 35, of Tehachapi, a former deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who has been employed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since 1996 (he is currently on administrative leave;)
- William Ferguson, 33, of Huntington Beach, a former Los Angeles Police Officer who was terminated by the Department in 2003; and
- Joseph Ferguson, 31, of Garden Grove, who is William Ferguson's brother and a former officer with the Long Beach Police Department.
"The reality is, no police department is immune from bad cops," stated Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton. "I have no tolerance for intentional misconduct and will deal with it forcefully and aggressively. Supervision, safeguards and civilian oversight are used to monitor employees and ensure quality police service. No good cop wants to work with a bad cop. No good cop wants a bad cop in their Department. Today's announcement proves we are committed to getting rid of those who would tarnish the LAPD badge."
Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts stated: "When a police officer violates the laws that he has sworn to uphold, it erodes the public trust that we in law enforcement work so hard to build. The men and women of the Long Beach Police Department take great pride in their work and are fully committed to the safety of our community. Reckless actions by individuals that undermine the integrity of this department and damage the public trust will not be tolerated."
In one burglary, members of the gang allegedly stole 600 pounds of marijuana. In another incident, several co-conspirators allegedly stole television sets from an 18-wheel truck in Montebello.
And, in another robbery outside a Fontana market, Palomares and another man dressed as a police officer robbed a man of $45,000 worth of pseudoephedrine pills, which are a key precursor chemical in the manufacture of methamphetamine.
A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted six gang members -- including three law enforcement officers -- on civil rights, narcotics and weapons charges for allegedly participating in an organized enterprise consisting of law enforcement officers and civilians who "invaded" private homes as though they were conducting legitimate law enforcement operations, but in reality were staging home-invasion robberies to steal drugs, money and weapons.
The case developed after feds arrested a suspended corrections officer with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Federal and local investigators discovered that the leader of the crime gang was actually a Los Angeles police officer named Ruben Palomares.
The more than 50 charges filed accuse the defendants of committing more than 20 robberies and burglaries from 1999 through 2001. The investigation into the gang began when Palomares and another member of his gang were arrested in San Diego on cocaine trafficking charges in June 2001.
The investigation, involving agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as officers with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Long Beach Police Department, found that the robberies were generally committed after Palomares received information that a particular location was involved in the narcotics trade.
After planning the operation and conducting surveillance, the robbery team -- which usually consisted of multiple sworn police officers in uniform or displaying a badge -- gained access to the residence by falsely telling any residents that they were conducting a legitimate search for drugs or drug dealers. Victims were often restrained, handcuffed, threatened or assaulted during the search, and on one occasion a man was hit with a stun gun.
Although many of the raids did not yield the anticipated narcotics, the crew allegedly stole any items of value found inside the residences. When the group did steal items, they divided profits from the sale of the stolen goods among themselves.
During the course of the conspiracy, Palomares provided associates with official LAPD badges, uniforms, radios, firearms and other equipment. Some of the robberies were committed after the thieves drove to the location in official LAPD vehicles. The robbers used the LAPD equipment to make victims believe they were the subject of legitimate law enforcement operations and to minimize the defendants' risk of being questioned if confronted by law enforcement officers.
"The depth of corruption and audacity among these law enforcement officers is nothing less than stunning," said United States Attorney Debra Wong Yang. "While having a badge imparts some degree of power to an officer of the law, it also imparts a great deal of responsibility. In addition to rejecting their responsibilities to the law, these officers rejected their sacred responsibilities to their communities and their departments."
Six defendants are named in a 54-count indictment returned by the grand jury. The three law enforcement defendants are:
- Rodrigo Duran, 35, of Tehachapi, a former deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who has been employed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since 1996 (he is currently on administrative leave;)
- William Ferguson, 33, of Huntington Beach, a former Los Angeles Police Officer who was terminated by the Department in 2003; and
- Joseph Ferguson, 31, of Garden Grove, who is William Ferguson's brother and a former officer with the Long Beach Police Department.
"The reality is, no police department is immune from bad cops," stated Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton. "I have no tolerance for intentional misconduct and will deal with it forcefully and aggressively. Supervision, safeguards and civilian oversight are used to monitor employees and ensure quality police service. No good cop wants to work with a bad cop. No good cop wants a bad cop in their Department. Today's announcement proves we are committed to getting rid of those who would tarnish the LAPD badge."
Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts stated: "When a police officer violates the laws that he has sworn to uphold, it erodes the public trust that we in law enforcement work so hard to build. The men and women of the Long Beach Police Department take great pride in their work and are fully committed to the safety of our community. Reckless actions by individuals that undermine the integrity of this department and damage the public trust will not be tolerated."
In one burglary, members of the gang allegedly stole 600 pounds of marijuana. In another incident, several co-conspirators allegedly stole television sets from an 18-wheel truck in Montebello.
And, in another robbery outside a Fontana market, Palomares and another man dressed as a police officer robbed a man of $45,000 worth of pseudoephedrine pills, which are a key precursor chemical in the manufacture of methamphetamine.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
America's Most Dangerous Gang
Editor's Note: Writer Shelly Feuer Domash, in the article below, has chronicled some of the activities of the notorious "Mara Salvatrucha" (or "MS-13") gang. The gang is ferocious, violent, and holds even law enforcement officers in deep disdain and performs hits (known as "green lights") on them. They seem to have re-defined the term "street terrorism". They operate covertly, when necessary, and chameleon-like. They readily and easily change their signature blue-and-white gang garb to become more uniform and blend in with the communities they are taking over in the United States. Operating on a perversion of the corporate business model, they pride themselves on their ability to branch out, from state to state, land on their feet and instantly set up operations. With gang higher-ups monitoring law enforcement nationally, they thus acquire the intel necessary for branching into U.S. cities that have no prohibitions against gangs or are in denial about gang activities under their very noses. Unlike gangs whose economies are restricted to trading in narrow channels of contraband, MS-13 will commit literally any crime that promises profit. Although they are tightly organized throughout the United States, they are adamant about being branded and profiled by what they wear--be it clothing colors, styles or tattoos. They will change or get rid of such giveaways once they feel the heat of law enforcement--yet continue to operate illegally and invisibly.
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Spreading from El Salvador to L.A. and across the United States, Mara Salvatrucha 13 is increasingly well organized and deadly.
Within one hour, two people were found murdered miles apart in suburban Nassau County, N.Y. After an intensive investigation, police officials learned the murders were the work of the violent street gang Mara Salvatrucha 13. It also soon became apparent the gang was sending a bold message to its members and associates. That message: “If you are not loyal, you are dead.”
But there was another message in the brutal slayings for the people of Long Island. And that message was that gang violence had moved into the upper middle class enclaves of the Island, into the kinds of communities where the locals assume that crime is somebody else’s problem.
Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) is unfortunately becoming everybody’s problem. This plague that came to Long Island from El Salvador by way of the streets of Los Angeles follows the same migratory patterns as the Salvadoran immigrant community that it preys upon, fanning out across the United States from ethnic enclaves in California.
Coming Together
Until recently, MS-13 wasn’t that big a player in East Coast gang culture. The reason for its weak position in the East Coast crime world was obvious: It wasn’t very well organized. MS-13 was comprised of a group of cliques that operated independently of each other.
No more. Law enforcement officials now report that gang members from across the country have come together to unite affiliated groups up and down the East Coast. The leadership for these cliques is now coming from as far away as California and even from El Salvador.
Robert Hart, senior agent in charge with the FBI, says that when individual groups of MS-13 unite, the results can be devastating. “The cliques, instead of operating independently of each other, are beginning to come together,” Hart explains. “The difference is by doing that, obviously you have a much tighter organization, much stronger structures and, instead of having various cliques doing whatever they want, wherever they want, there is one individual who is the leader and is able to control the payment of dues and the criminal acts they engage in. The result is very, very similar to what you would see in what we refer to as traditional organized criminal families.”
Finding Sanctuary
Los Angeles and New York law enforcement and even politicians are aware of the impact of MS-13 on their streets and on their crime statistics. So they’ve taken action. The results are usually not stellar, but at least these cities have recognized that MS-13 is a problem. Unfortunately, the leadership of MS-13 is not stupid. Once the heat comes down hard in L.A. and New York, they head for new turf, choosing Midwestern and Southern and suburban cities where gangs “are not an issue” and local officials and authorities are in denial.
And once MS-13 takes hold in a community, it grows fast. The gang reportedly has some 300 members in suburban Long Island. A few years back it didn’t have any.
Once MS-13 shows up on the radar, some local officials and authorities will take action. In Nassau County, for example, a joint gang task force headed by the FBI and comprised of local police departments, has arrested 16 leaders of MS-13. They were charged with two murders, assault, conspiracy, and firearms violations.
Such investigations aren’t easy because MS-13 has a pretty strident zero-tolerance policy toward anyone who informs the cops of their activities.
Court papers reveal that one of the Nassau County defendants was captured in a secretly recorded telephone conversation detailing how he killed a male victim because he had provided law enforcement officials with information and that he had “put one in his chest and three in the head.” In another recorded conversation, a second defendant said he killed a young female because, in part, she had also provided information to law enforcement.
Fighting Back
The senseless violence of MS-13 has shocked the local citizens of Nassau County, so the Nassau County Executive appointed a “gang czar” to deal with the increasing gang problem.
A seasoned, dedicated officer, the new “czar,” in reality, will find it difficult to accomplish what he has been mandated to do. His department, like many across the nation, is at its lowest staffing levels in recent history, and he has been given no additional personnel or resources to combat the problem. The public was placated by the appointment, but while politicians put Band-Aids on deep cuts, the problem continues to escalate on Long Island.
And Long Island is not alone. Nationally, police departments are dealing with the surge in violence emanating from MS-13 members.
In Charlotte, N.C., 53 gang members were arrested as part of Operation Fed Up, which targeted MS-13 members. Officials in the medium-sized Southern city say MS-13 has been involved in at least 11 murders in the Charlotte area since 2000. And with a membership estimated at 200, MS-13 is by far Charlotte’s largest gang.
Some 400 miles north of Charlotte, the northern Virginia and southern Maryland communities around Washington, D.C., have become MS-13 turf. Local authorities estimate that there are between 5,000 and 6,000 MS-13 members in the metropolitan area.
And where MS-13 goes, violence follows. In July 2003, an 18-year-old federal witness was stabbed to death; last May, a 16-year-old boy had his hands almost completely chopped off with a machete; and a week later a 17-year-old was shot and murdered. All three crimes were tied to MS-13 members.
The rapid increase in MS-13 activity along the corridor between Charlotte and D.C. is simply explained by Det. Tim Jolly, a gang specialist with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The area has the nation’s second highest population of Salvadoran immigrants.
Gang of Chameleons
One of the more unusual aspects of MS-13 when compared to other street gangs is that it is extremely flexible in its activity. While some gangs are only into drugs, MS-13 will do any crime at any time.
Sgt. George Norris, supervisor of the gang unit in the Prince George’s County (Md.) Police Department, says MS-13 doesn’t sling drugs in his jurisdiction. “We see mostly citizen robberies, auto theft, shootings and cuttings, and homicides,” he says, adding that drug sales by MS-13 may be just a matter of time.
Violent and Vicious
When MS-13 moves into a new community it tends to announce its presence with violence. The same can be true when a new leader takes over the local cliques.
Norris says gang members from other areas had once been able to join the new gang by simply being “jumped in.” But now that new leaders have moved into Prince George’s County and consolidated the cliques, the gang’s local culture has become more violent and vicious.
“According to one of our informers, things have changed,” says Norris. “Now in order to get your letters or clique [symbols] tattooed on you, you have to also put in some violent act to show your commitment.”
Cop Killers
And MS-13 violence is not restricted to civilians, rival gang members, and clique traitors; the gang will go after cops. Threats against police officers, known to gang members as “green light” notices, have increased so much in the past few years that the Virginia Gang Association has warned officers in Virginia and states to the north and south to be wary of MS-13 members.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Jolly says he is aware of the threats against police officers in his community and in Virginia. Prince George’s County’s Norris says he’s heard them, too. “If you do something to them, their natural response is, ‘OK, I’m going to kill you,’” he says. “Or at least they talk like they will.”
Norris dismisses some of MS-13’s threats, but that doesn’t mean that officers should take all MS-13 threats lightly. The gang is extremely violent and it has attacked and will continue to attack anyone who gets in its way. That includes law enforcement officers.
Roots of Evil
Named for La Mara, a street in San Salvador, and the Salvatrucha guerillas who fought in El Salvador’s bloody civil war, Mara Salvatrucha 13 was organized in Los Angeles in the late ’80s. At first, the gang’s primary purpose was to defend Salvadoran immigrants from being preyed upon by other L.A. street gangs.
But like any other street gang that was created to defend a particular ethnic group, MS-13 was quickly perverted until its primary purpose was preying upon the Salvadoran community. It also violently defends its turf against any other gang that might seek to slice away a piece of its action.
Gang members sometimes wear blue and white, colors taken from the national flag of El Salvador. They can also sport numerous body and even face tattoos. However, some members are much less visible and therefore much more dangerous.
Recent reports indicate that MS-13 has expanded from California to Alaska, Oregon, Utah, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Florida. The gang has also been exported back to Central America.
Back Home
It’s estimated that there are 36,000 MS-13 members in Honduras alone. In Honduras, according to a March 2004 report prepared by the Washington, D.C.-based, right-wing think tank the Maldon Institute, MS-13 has, with increasing frequency, resorted to leaving a dismembered corpse, complete with a decapitated head, as a calling card. Recently, according to the report, such a grisly message was left with a note for the Honduran president.
The note is supposed to have stated the gang’s displeasure with an August 2003 law that made it illegal to be a part of a gang. Under Honduran law gang leaders can be sentenced to prison for up to 12 years and rank-and-file members from six to nine years, just for being in the gang. A gang member can be arrested for simply having a tattoo.
El Salvador has also launched a crackdown on MS-13. A police offensive called “Operation Strong-arm” has resulted in the arrest of more than 4,000 gang members.
For MS-13, these are small losses. The gang is nothing if not mobile. When it feels heat in the U.S., it moves to another state. When it feels heat in El Salvador and Honduras, it sets up operations in Mexico.
The Maldon Institute report indicates that MS-13 “appears to be in control of much of the Mexican border and, in addition to its smuggling and contraband rackets, the gang collects money from illegal immigrants that it helps [move] across the border into the United States.”
The ultra-conservative Maldon Institute is known for doomsday predictions when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border. But there can be no denial that MS-13 is very active in smuggling people, drugs, and guns across the border. And independent reports indicate that many illegal immigrants have been assaulted, robbed, and even raped by MS-13 members.
Mexico is now taking steps to fight back against MS-13. In December, Mexican authorities arrested 224 gang members in response to what they called a threat to national security. Among the arrests were members of MS-13 who were charged with trafficking in drugs and firearms across Mexico and Central America.
Illusion of Cooperation
While some of the Central American countries appear to be cracking down on MS-13, serious problems still exist. And they are being missed by politically correct reporters who want to tout U.S.-Latin American cooperation.
For example, on Long Island, the media was quick to cover an agreement between El Salvador and Suffolk County to share information on MS-13. What the local reporters didn’t cover was a much more serious issue. If these gang members commit serious offenses, they can return home, and there is no extradition agreement. And, of course, they are doing so in increasing numbers.
“I would say that between Honduras and El Salvador, there are seven or eight people we are seeking to take into custody,” says Lt. Dennis Farrell, head homicide investigator for the Nassau County Police Department. “Proportionally, if you take that across the country, the numbers are astronomical, the number of people who have probably fled to these two countries.”
Farrell says that two gang members who his detectives are looking to arrest for two separate murders are now living in the same town in El Salvador. He calls the situation extremely frustrating. “You undertake a very in-depth and comprehensive investigation, pursue all possible leads, build a case, essentially conduct a successful investigation, only to have it thwarted by the fact that after having identified the killer or killers, you are unable, under the present international agreements, to return them to Nassau County to face murder charges.
“Even more than that frustration, how about the injustice and sense of desperation on the part of families who have lost loved ones? Where is the measure of justice? There is really no justice for those families, and absent some reworked or new initiative between our state department and those sovereign states, I don’t see any change in this condition in the foreseeable future,” Farrell adds.
In addition to extradition treaties, many gang investigators believe stricter and more uniform laws are needed here in this country. According to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Jolly, one of the reasons MS-13 has migrated to the East Coast is the strict anti-gang laws on the West Coast. He also believes that, with the stricter gang laws in Central America, many MS-13 members may be coming back to the United States illegally.
Long Arms
With the number of MS-13 members growing nationwide (some cliques now even accept non-Hispanic members), and the violence escalating, the future for law enforcement appears grim.
“They adapt to what the police do,” says Prince George’s County’s Norris. “They will change the way they operate, depending on the way things are enforced by the police. If there is no enforcement, they will wear their colors and bandanas because in the communities they are in it is common knowledge and the people fear them, so it is a form of intimidation.
“Once the police recognize and confront them, they will change and wear different colors from the blue and white, no bandana on their head, maybe now in their pocket, and instead of the number 13 they will wear 67 or 76 because it equals 13. They adapt so it is a continually evolving thing.”
While the nation focuses on terrorism, the issue of gang violence has taken a lower priority. But to many, the violent acts of MS-13 members are more of an everyday threat that is being overlooked.
Shelly Feuer Domash is a Long Island-based freelance writer and a frequent contributor to POLICE magazine
# # #
Spreading from El Salvador to L.A. and across the United States, Mara Salvatrucha 13 is increasingly well organized and deadly.
Within one hour, two people were found murdered miles apart in suburban Nassau County, N.Y. After an intensive investigation, police officials learned the murders were the work of the violent street gang Mara Salvatrucha 13. It also soon became apparent the gang was sending a bold message to its members and associates. That message: “If you are not loyal, you are dead.”
But there was another message in the brutal slayings for the people of Long Island. And that message was that gang violence had moved into the upper middle class enclaves of the Island, into the kinds of communities where the locals assume that crime is somebody else’s problem.
Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) is unfortunately becoming everybody’s problem. This plague that came to Long Island from El Salvador by way of the streets of Los Angeles follows the same migratory patterns as the Salvadoran immigrant community that it preys upon, fanning out across the United States from ethnic enclaves in California.
Coming Together
Until recently, MS-13 wasn’t that big a player in East Coast gang culture. The reason for its weak position in the East Coast crime world was obvious: It wasn’t very well organized. MS-13 was comprised of a group of cliques that operated independently of each other.
No more. Law enforcement officials now report that gang members from across the country have come together to unite affiliated groups up and down the East Coast. The leadership for these cliques is now coming from as far away as California and even from El Salvador.
Robert Hart, senior agent in charge with the FBI, says that when individual groups of MS-13 unite, the results can be devastating. “The cliques, instead of operating independently of each other, are beginning to come together,” Hart explains. “The difference is by doing that, obviously you have a much tighter organization, much stronger structures and, instead of having various cliques doing whatever they want, wherever they want, there is one individual who is the leader and is able to control the payment of dues and the criminal acts they engage in. The result is very, very similar to what you would see in what we refer to as traditional organized criminal families.”
Finding Sanctuary
Los Angeles and New York law enforcement and even politicians are aware of the impact of MS-13 on their streets and on their crime statistics. So they’ve taken action. The results are usually not stellar, but at least these cities have recognized that MS-13 is a problem. Unfortunately, the leadership of MS-13 is not stupid. Once the heat comes down hard in L.A. and New York, they head for new turf, choosing Midwestern and Southern and suburban cities where gangs “are not an issue” and local officials and authorities are in denial.
And once MS-13 takes hold in a community, it grows fast. The gang reportedly has some 300 members in suburban Long Island. A few years back it didn’t have any.
Once MS-13 shows up on the radar, some local officials and authorities will take action. In Nassau County, for example, a joint gang task force headed by the FBI and comprised of local police departments, has arrested 16 leaders of MS-13. They were charged with two murders, assault, conspiracy, and firearms violations.
Such investigations aren’t easy because MS-13 has a pretty strident zero-tolerance policy toward anyone who informs the cops of their activities.
Court papers reveal that one of the Nassau County defendants was captured in a secretly recorded telephone conversation detailing how he killed a male victim because he had provided law enforcement officials with information and that he had “put one in his chest and three in the head.” In another recorded conversation, a second defendant said he killed a young female because, in part, she had also provided information to law enforcement.
Fighting Back
The senseless violence of MS-13 has shocked the local citizens of Nassau County, so the Nassau County Executive appointed a “gang czar” to deal with the increasing gang problem.
A seasoned, dedicated officer, the new “czar,” in reality, will find it difficult to accomplish what he has been mandated to do. His department, like many across the nation, is at its lowest staffing levels in recent history, and he has been given no additional personnel or resources to combat the problem. The public was placated by the appointment, but while politicians put Band-Aids on deep cuts, the problem continues to escalate on Long Island.
And Long Island is not alone. Nationally, police departments are dealing with the surge in violence emanating from MS-13 members.
In Charlotte, N.C., 53 gang members were arrested as part of Operation Fed Up, which targeted MS-13 members. Officials in the medium-sized Southern city say MS-13 has been involved in at least 11 murders in the Charlotte area since 2000. And with a membership estimated at 200, MS-13 is by far Charlotte’s largest gang.
Some 400 miles north of Charlotte, the northern Virginia and southern Maryland communities around Washington, D.C., have become MS-13 turf. Local authorities estimate that there are between 5,000 and 6,000 MS-13 members in the metropolitan area.
And where MS-13 goes, violence follows. In July 2003, an 18-year-old federal witness was stabbed to death; last May, a 16-year-old boy had his hands almost completely chopped off with a machete; and a week later a 17-year-old was shot and murdered. All three crimes were tied to MS-13 members.
The rapid increase in MS-13 activity along the corridor between Charlotte and D.C. is simply explained by Det. Tim Jolly, a gang specialist with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The area has the nation’s second highest population of Salvadoran immigrants.
Gang of Chameleons
One of the more unusual aspects of MS-13 when compared to other street gangs is that it is extremely flexible in its activity. While some gangs are only into drugs, MS-13 will do any crime at any time.
Sgt. George Norris, supervisor of the gang unit in the Prince George’s County (Md.) Police Department, says MS-13 doesn’t sling drugs in his jurisdiction. “We see mostly citizen robberies, auto theft, shootings and cuttings, and homicides,” he says, adding that drug sales by MS-13 may be just a matter of time.
Violent and Vicious
When MS-13 moves into a new community it tends to announce its presence with violence. The same can be true when a new leader takes over the local cliques.
Norris says gang members from other areas had once been able to join the new gang by simply being “jumped in.” But now that new leaders have moved into Prince George’s County and consolidated the cliques, the gang’s local culture has become more violent and vicious.
“According to one of our informers, things have changed,” says Norris. “Now in order to get your letters or clique [symbols] tattooed on you, you have to also put in some violent act to show your commitment.”
Cop Killers
And MS-13 violence is not restricted to civilians, rival gang members, and clique traitors; the gang will go after cops. Threats against police officers, known to gang members as “green light” notices, have increased so much in the past few years that the Virginia Gang Association has warned officers in Virginia and states to the north and south to be wary of MS-13 members.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Jolly says he is aware of the threats against police officers in his community and in Virginia. Prince George’s County’s Norris says he’s heard them, too. “If you do something to them, their natural response is, ‘OK, I’m going to kill you,’” he says. “Or at least they talk like they will.”
Norris dismisses some of MS-13’s threats, but that doesn’t mean that officers should take all MS-13 threats lightly. The gang is extremely violent and it has attacked and will continue to attack anyone who gets in its way. That includes law enforcement officers.
Roots of Evil
Named for La Mara, a street in San Salvador, and the Salvatrucha guerillas who fought in El Salvador’s bloody civil war, Mara Salvatrucha 13 was organized in Los Angeles in the late ’80s. At first, the gang’s primary purpose was to defend Salvadoran immigrants from being preyed upon by other L.A. street gangs.
But like any other street gang that was created to defend a particular ethnic group, MS-13 was quickly perverted until its primary purpose was preying upon the Salvadoran community. It also violently defends its turf against any other gang that might seek to slice away a piece of its action.
Gang members sometimes wear blue and white, colors taken from the national flag of El Salvador. They can also sport numerous body and even face tattoos. However, some members are much less visible and therefore much more dangerous.
Recent reports indicate that MS-13 has expanded from California to Alaska, Oregon, Utah, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Florida. The gang has also been exported back to Central America.
Back Home
It’s estimated that there are 36,000 MS-13 members in Honduras alone. In Honduras, according to a March 2004 report prepared by the Washington, D.C.-based, right-wing think tank the Maldon Institute, MS-13 has, with increasing frequency, resorted to leaving a dismembered corpse, complete with a decapitated head, as a calling card. Recently, according to the report, such a grisly message was left with a note for the Honduran president.
The note is supposed to have stated the gang’s displeasure with an August 2003 law that made it illegal to be a part of a gang. Under Honduran law gang leaders can be sentenced to prison for up to 12 years and rank-and-file members from six to nine years, just for being in the gang. A gang member can be arrested for simply having a tattoo.
El Salvador has also launched a crackdown on MS-13. A police offensive called “Operation Strong-arm” has resulted in the arrest of more than 4,000 gang members.
For MS-13, these are small losses. The gang is nothing if not mobile. When it feels heat in the U.S., it moves to another state. When it feels heat in El Salvador and Honduras, it sets up operations in Mexico.
The Maldon Institute report indicates that MS-13 “appears to be in control of much of the Mexican border and, in addition to its smuggling and contraband rackets, the gang collects money from illegal immigrants that it helps [move] across the border into the United States.”
The ultra-conservative Maldon Institute is known for doomsday predictions when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border. But there can be no denial that MS-13 is very active in smuggling people, drugs, and guns across the border. And independent reports indicate that many illegal immigrants have been assaulted, robbed, and even raped by MS-13 members.
Mexico is now taking steps to fight back against MS-13. In December, Mexican authorities arrested 224 gang members in response to what they called a threat to national security. Among the arrests were members of MS-13 who were charged with trafficking in drugs and firearms across Mexico and Central America.
Illusion of Cooperation
While some of the Central American countries appear to be cracking down on MS-13, serious problems still exist. And they are being missed by politically correct reporters who want to tout U.S.-Latin American cooperation.
For example, on Long Island, the media was quick to cover an agreement between El Salvador and Suffolk County to share information on MS-13. What the local reporters didn’t cover was a much more serious issue. If these gang members commit serious offenses, they can return home, and there is no extradition agreement. And, of course, they are doing so in increasing numbers.
“I would say that between Honduras and El Salvador, there are seven or eight people we are seeking to take into custody,” says Lt. Dennis Farrell, head homicide investigator for the Nassau County Police Department. “Proportionally, if you take that across the country, the numbers are astronomical, the number of people who have probably fled to these two countries.”
Farrell says that two gang members who his detectives are looking to arrest for two separate murders are now living in the same town in El Salvador. He calls the situation extremely frustrating. “You undertake a very in-depth and comprehensive investigation, pursue all possible leads, build a case, essentially conduct a successful investigation, only to have it thwarted by the fact that after having identified the killer or killers, you are unable, under the present international agreements, to return them to Nassau County to face murder charges.
“Even more than that frustration, how about the injustice and sense of desperation on the part of families who have lost loved ones? Where is the measure of justice? There is really no justice for those families, and absent some reworked or new initiative between our state department and those sovereign states, I don’t see any change in this condition in the foreseeable future,” Farrell adds.
In addition to extradition treaties, many gang investigators believe stricter and more uniform laws are needed here in this country. According to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Jolly, one of the reasons MS-13 has migrated to the East Coast is the strict anti-gang laws on the West Coast. He also believes that, with the stricter gang laws in Central America, many MS-13 members may be coming back to the United States illegally.
Long Arms
With the number of MS-13 members growing nationwide (some cliques now even accept non-Hispanic members), and the violence escalating, the future for law enforcement appears grim.
“They adapt to what the police do,” says Prince George’s County’s Norris. “They will change the way they operate, depending on the way things are enforced by the police. If there is no enforcement, they will wear their colors and bandanas because in the communities they are in it is common knowledge and the people fear them, so it is a form of intimidation.
“Once the police recognize and confront them, they will change and wear different colors from the blue and white, no bandana on their head, maybe now in their pocket, and instead of the number 13 they will wear 67 or 76 because it equals 13. They adapt so it is a continually evolving thing.”
While the nation focuses on terrorism, the issue of gang violence has taken a lower priority. But to many, the violent acts of MS-13 members are more of an everyday threat that is being overlooked.
Shelly Feuer Domash is a Long Island-based freelance writer and a frequent contributor to POLICE magazine
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Putting in Work: A Gang Obsession That Includes Hate Crimes
Editor's Note: The gang obsessive-compulsion passion of "putting in work" is not restricted to crimes against persons who were either: (a) "slipping", that is, high, drunk, or otherwise vulnerable; (b) weak and easy prey; (c) rival gangsters; or (d) wrongdoers who had to be "DP'D" or "dee-peed"--disciplined. Putting in work is a non-negotiable requirement to commit criminal acts to maintain gang membership and strength, as well as maintain and increase respect, fear, prestige, and reputation. "Big Homies" who run gangs are rigidly conservative in their orientation toward life and generally untrusting in their suspicion-driven world view. They are "equal opportunity employers" who require all their underlings to put in work daily. They judge the quality and character of their "soldiers" (big homies favor military-type terms) by whether and how they put in work.
Putting in work includes the hate crime of assaulting, attacking, harassing or shooting somebody based on their race and ethnicity. Thus, the People's gang enhancement allegations might well be reinforced and argued in a clear and convincing manner if there is a hate crime component to the gangbanger's actions. Many gangbangers are totally unaware of the implications of gang activities, in general, and those gang acts fueled and driven by racial hatred. Big Homie simply does not take time to educate his underlings about how state prison sentencing is factored when one of his "little homies" is being tried in court on gang enhancement AND hate crime charges.
The barbaric and primal assaulting of persons who are of the same race and ethnicity as their attackers, is so customary among gangs as to be virtually a crime-cliche to the public at large. Whenever there were gang-against-gang conflicts, one could very nearly always presume the combatants to have been of the same race. That is why law enforcement and districts attorney are taking a hard look at gang assaults on persons whose race and ethnicity are markedly different than their attackers. Latino gang assaults on blacks figure prominently, in terms of frequency. Black gang assaults on latinos, although they do occur, do not happen with the same frequency.
A presiding question that may come to your mind is, since Big Homie is not tutoring his slave-flock of young gangbangers about the punitive and sentencing phases of court trials and the power of juries, who in the community is alerting these adolescents-wanting-to-be-men to the bigger-than-life danger of having their manhood aborted and abruptly curtailed by torturous terms spent in youth probation camps, state youth prison, and adult state prison (commonly called the "big house")? Who is really telling them what gang acts really mean, from a prosecutor's point of view? Who is telling them the truth about how the prosecutor, in the name of "The People," can argue convincingly and persuasively that a young defendant on trial is so hard-core that every act he does is in the name of the trinity known as My Gang, My Big Homie, My Hood. Once that argument is made, delivered, and buttressed with sundry pieces of evidence, a hate crime, in addition to being exploited and magnified by the prosecutor, for the jury, becomes the high-octane fuel that ignites, inflames, and confirms the gang-enhancement charge: acts done at the direction of, or for the benefit of, the gang, to enhance its reputation, inspire fear, and exercise control.
The defense never rests. And despite gangbangers' virtual nonstop activity, they deserve to have their right to a fair trial preserved, protected and honored by those of us who aid and abet said defense in a court of law.
The County Human Relations Commission reports a 28% increase last year, with assaults and vandalism the leading categories.
By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:32 PM PDT, July 24, 2008
Hate crimes in Los Angeles rose to their highest level in five years last year, led by attacks between Latinos and blacks, county officials reported today. The annual report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission showed hate crimes rose by 28% overall for a total of 763, with assault and vandalism leading the way.
The largest number involved Latino suspects against black victims; the second largest involved black suspects against Latino victims.
Despite the intense national debate over illegal immigration, hate crimes against immigrants decreased slightly. Incidents against Muslims, which increased after the 2001 terrorist attacks, also decreased slightly. The largest number of religion-based hate crimes were directed against Jews.
The rise in hate crimes contrasted with the decline in the general crime rate in Los Angeles.
teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
Putting in work includes the hate crime of assaulting, attacking, harassing or shooting somebody based on their race and ethnicity. Thus, the People's gang enhancement allegations might well be reinforced and argued in a clear and convincing manner if there is a hate crime component to the gangbanger's actions. Many gangbangers are totally unaware of the implications of gang activities, in general, and those gang acts fueled and driven by racial hatred. Big Homie simply does not take time to educate his underlings about how state prison sentencing is factored when one of his "little homies" is being tried in court on gang enhancement AND hate crime charges.
The barbaric and primal assaulting of persons who are of the same race and ethnicity as their attackers, is so customary among gangs as to be virtually a crime-cliche to the public at large. Whenever there were gang-against-gang conflicts, one could very nearly always presume the combatants to have been of the same race. That is why law enforcement and districts attorney are taking a hard look at gang assaults on persons whose race and ethnicity are markedly different than their attackers. Latino gang assaults on blacks figure prominently, in terms of frequency. Black gang assaults on latinos, although they do occur, do not happen with the same frequency.
A presiding question that may come to your mind is, since Big Homie is not tutoring his slave-flock of young gangbangers about the punitive and sentencing phases of court trials and the power of juries, who in the community is alerting these adolescents-wanting-to-be-men to the bigger-than-life danger of having their manhood aborted and abruptly curtailed by torturous terms spent in youth probation camps, state youth prison, and adult state prison (commonly called the "big house")? Who is really telling them what gang acts really mean, from a prosecutor's point of view? Who is telling them the truth about how the prosecutor, in the name of "The People," can argue convincingly and persuasively that a young defendant on trial is so hard-core that every act he does is in the name of the trinity known as My Gang, My Big Homie, My Hood. Once that argument is made, delivered, and buttressed with sundry pieces of evidence, a hate crime, in addition to being exploited and magnified by the prosecutor, for the jury, becomes the high-octane fuel that ignites, inflames, and confirms the gang-enhancement charge: acts done at the direction of, or for the benefit of, the gang, to enhance its reputation, inspire fear, and exercise control.
The defense never rests. And despite gangbangers' virtual nonstop activity, they deserve to have their right to a fair trial preserved, protected and honored by those of us who aid and abet said defense in a court of law.
The County Human Relations Commission reports a 28% increase last year, with assaults and vandalism the leading categories.
By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:32 PM PDT, July 24, 2008
Hate crimes in Los Angeles rose to their highest level in five years last year, led by attacks between Latinos and blacks, county officials reported today. The annual report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission showed hate crimes rose by 28% overall for a total of 763, with assault and vandalism leading the way.
The largest number involved Latino suspects against black victims; the second largest involved black suspects against Latino victims.
Despite the intense national debate over illegal immigration, hate crimes against immigrants decreased slightly. Incidents against Muslims, which increased after the 2001 terrorist attacks, also decreased slightly. The largest number of religion-based hate crimes were directed against Jews.
The rise in hate crimes contrasted with the decline in the general crime rate in Los Angeles.
teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Compton Gang Does the Humpty Dumpty Under Attorney General Attack
Editor's Note: The following press release describes an unprecedented (in terms of prime, concentrated attention from the Attorney General) heavy-duty broadside on a Compton gang whose prominence among the press corps coincided with the rise of gangster rap, in the 1990's. Questions that might spring to mind as you read this are: Despite some of the arrestees having good jobs requiring some intelligence and training, is it possible they were so possessed by the gangster criminal mindset, that they were simply "gone" and beyond rehabilitation? Is there a direct link between criminal street gangs and gangster rap music? Does this major crackdown, approved by the Attorney General, suggest millions of dollars allocated for this, and unprecedented time and labor (person-hours) expended? Was this gang crackdown a priority for the entire state, that is, was the target representative of the most heinous and dangerous activity and community threat above and beyond other concurrent gang acts in the state? Will its unarguable success inspire more such crackdowns in Oakland, San Francisco, Long Beach, Riverside, San Diego, Pasadena, San Bernardino, East Los Angeles, Highland Park, Glassell Park, Ventura and Contra Costa counties, and elsewhere?
But before you read the Attorney General's press release, below, please read and reflect on some thoughts I have. And here they are:
For Expert Witnesses who work primarily for the Defense Bar, a State Attorney's public and pre-arraignment comments describing the social or employment status of arrested suspects may create a prejudicial profile in the minds of jurors against alleged gangbangers facing imminent trial. Heretofore, experts like myself have included in our defense arguments and opinions, "exceptional status" facts to show the Court that the defendant is atypical of and differentiated from the "jobless-marauder/criminal public menace" (my emphasis) profile traditionally framed in the District Attorney's arguments and allegations against members of gangs. Indeed, many districts attorney argue, often not so subtly, that a gangbanger-defendant's proper job should be as an inmate inside the state penitentiary. Jury verdicts, often driven by feelings buried within their unconscious mind, may show their pre-decision concurrence with this argument; because of that, such pre-trial comments that a State Attorney might make about a suspect's employment status ought to be deemed unconstitutional.
Expert Witnesses will need to look inside their quivers and use any arrows that, combined and compounded, may show the defendant in a contrastingly favorable light, and a far remove from any prejudice-toward-guilt/jury tampering public comments any elected official might make, while reeling under spontaneity and surprise about the social and employment status of arrested suspects. The California Attorney General's comments were, in effect, a self-admission that he subscribed to the mindset that having a "good job" automatically confers upon one a good-and-wholesome character profile, the social ideal. Said another way, the meta-talk by the California Attorney General seems to have really meant: "Jurors, beware of gangbanger defendants holding good jobs--they're as good as guilty."
Brown Announces Major Compton Gang Crackdown, Arrest of Killer Mail Carrier
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday July 8, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Contact: Gareth Lacy, California Department of Justice, (916) 324-5500 or Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Bill Braudberger, (323) 267-4813
Further escalating the state’s crackdown on violent gang activity, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department today announced that 24 Mob Piru gang members were arrested this morning in the City of Compton. The arrests mark the conclusion of a major gang investigation, Operation Killen Court, launched by the California Attorney General and the Los Angeles County Sheriff after Kyutza Herrera, an innocent bystander, was shot and killed during a drive-by shooting involving rival gang members. Kyutza’s suspected killers and associates, Maruice Bennett, 19, Alex Graves, 23, Robert Maxwell, 19, and a fourth suspect who is a juvenile, were arrested during the course of the investigation into the Bloods-affiliated Mob Piru gang.
“The California Department of Justice launched an investigation into the Mob Pirus after four gang members gunned down an innocent woman,” Attorney General Brown told a news conference at the Compton Youth Athletic League. “State agents joined with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to crack down on this dangerous street gang that has terrorized Compton with constant violence and gang rivalry. We are proud to announce that sheriff’s deputies apprehended the killers and the state’s investigation led to dozens of additional gang arrests.” The attorney general’s office launched its investigation after suspected Mob Piru gang members shot and killed Kyutza Herrera who was a parked in front of Ace Liquor at 12211 Long Beach Boulevard in Lynwood. Herrera, who was not affiliated in any way with either gang, was shot in her car when the suspects opened fire on rival gang members.
The attorney general’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement special agents joined the case to investigate Mob Piru gang members suspected to be connected to this shooting and other violent activity. During the investigation, state agents stopped an attempted murder outside of a nightclub and derailed a plan to rob a local post office by a gang member who was also a mail carrier. The gang was recently preparing to import at least 20 firearms from Georgia to sell to other gang members. One of the gang members, Alex Graves, 23, a United States Post Office mail carrier, was arrested in connection with the drive-by shooting of Kyutza Herrera. Warren Phillipus, 28, also a mail carrier, was wanted in connection with the robbery of the Rancho Park Post Office and was caught by state agents as he was preparing to rob the Rimpau Post Office, both located in South Los Angeles. Phillipus has been charged with robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon, and conspiracy to traffic marijuana.
“These gang members had regular day jobs but their gang affiliation was so strong that they continued to roam the streets, terrorizing the community,” Attorney General Brown said. “It is shocking that gang identity is so powerful that even good paying jobs are not enough to turn these suspects from their criminal activity,” Brown added. Today’s gang crackdown, Operation Killen Court, is the culmination of a six-month investigation into the Mob Piru gang, an organization that killed, robbed and assaulted people in the City of Compton. Piru gangs first established themselves in Compton in the early 1970s to fight rival Crip gangs. The gang members named themselves after Piru Street, in Compton and called themselves “Bloods.” The Mob Piru gang, which gained national recognition in the 1990s along with the rise of gangster rap, has approximately 200 members and has connections to Oregon and New York.
During today’s crackdown, special agents identified 49 targets and made 24 arrests for offenses including murder, conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, marijuana trafficking, parole violations, and weapons violations. The Multi-Agency Response Team for Drug Endangered Children participated in today’s operation and were responsible for rescuing three children from felony child endangerment at two residences, one of which had a shotgun accessible to a child. Two of the children are 4-years-old, one is 10-months-old, and one is 1 and ½ years-old. At approximately 6 a.m. today nearly 450 state, local and federal law enforcement personnel executed 33 search and arrest warrants and conducted 20 probation and parole searches in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. Although agents seized small quantities of marijuana and “rock” cocaine, the gang’s foothold involved rival gang violence and subsequently, law enforcement seized 7 handguns, 4 rifles, and 1 sawed-off shotgun.
The California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement led today’s operation in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force, known as LAIMPACT, which includes Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Los Angeles County Probation, California Highway Patrol, DEA, US Customs, Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and Police Departments in Alhambra, Baldwin Park, Culver City, Downey, El Segundo, Gardena, Glendora, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, La Verne, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Monrovia, Monterey Park, Pasadena, Pomona, Redondo Beach, San Gabriel, Santa Monica, Torrance, Vernon, West Covina and Whitter, also participated in today’s operation. According to the most recent statistics, there are more than 1,000 gangs operating in Los Angeles County.
Between 2003 and 2007, there were 7,482 gang-related crimes in Compton including murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, arson and motor vehicles thefts. In 2007, the city had 37 homicides of which 18, nearly 49 percent, were gang-related. Approximately 20 percent of all homicides in California are gang-related. Between January and April of this year, Compton has had a total of 13 homicides, 14 forcible rapes, 175 robberies and 326 assaults. The California Department of Justice assists local law enforcement when gang problems have become so severe that the crime is bleeding into neighboring jurisdictions. State agents recently shut down a Norteño street gang and a violent Cambodian street gang in Stockton, a Sureño gang in Atwater and the Varrio Central Poros, a brutal criminal street gang that had terrorized the City of Porterville. State special agents have also participated in recent crime crackdowns in Oakland and East Palo Alto. For an information wanted bulletin detailing the facts of the Kyutza Herrera shooting and photos of guns seized during the operation, please contact the Attorney General’s Press Office at (916) 324-5500 or the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department at (323) 267-4813.
# # #
But before you read the Attorney General's press release, below, please read and reflect on some thoughts I have. And here they are:
For Expert Witnesses who work primarily for the Defense Bar, a State Attorney's public and pre-arraignment comments describing the social or employment status of arrested suspects may create a prejudicial profile in the minds of jurors against alleged gangbangers facing imminent trial. Heretofore, experts like myself have included in our defense arguments and opinions, "exceptional status" facts to show the Court that the defendant is atypical of and differentiated from the "jobless-marauder/criminal public menace" (my emphasis) profile traditionally framed in the District Attorney's arguments and allegations against members of gangs. Indeed, many districts attorney argue, often not so subtly, that a gangbanger-defendant's proper job should be as an inmate inside the state penitentiary. Jury verdicts, often driven by feelings buried within their unconscious mind, may show their pre-decision concurrence with this argument; because of that, such pre-trial comments that a State Attorney might make about a suspect's employment status ought to be deemed unconstitutional.
Expert Witnesses will need to look inside their quivers and use any arrows that, combined and compounded, may show the defendant in a contrastingly favorable light, and a far remove from any prejudice-toward-guilt/jury tampering public comments any elected official might make, while reeling under spontaneity and surprise about the social and employment status of arrested suspects. The California Attorney General's comments were, in effect, a self-admission that he subscribed to the mindset that having a "good job" automatically confers upon one a good-and-wholesome character profile, the social ideal. Said another way, the meta-talk by the California Attorney General seems to have really meant: "Jurors, beware of gangbanger defendants holding good jobs--they're as good as guilty."
Brown Announces Major Compton Gang Crackdown, Arrest of Killer Mail Carrier
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday July 8, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Contact: Gareth Lacy, California Department of Justice, (916) 324-5500 or Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Bill Braudberger, (323) 267-4813
Further escalating the state’s crackdown on violent gang activity, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department today announced that 24 Mob Piru gang members were arrested this morning in the City of Compton. The arrests mark the conclusion of a major gang investigation, Operation Killen Court, launched by the California Attorney General and the Los Angeles County Sheriff after Kyutza Herrera, an innocent bystander, was shot and killed during a drive-by shooting involving rival gang members. Kyutza’s suspected killers and associates, Maruice Bennett, 19, Alex Graves, 23, Robert Maxwell, 19, and a fourth suspect who is a juvenile, were arrested during the course of the investigation into the Bloods-affiliated Mob Piru gang.
“The California Department of Justice launched an investigation into the Mob Pirus after four gang members gunned down an innocent woman,” Attorney General Brown told a news conference at the Compton Youth Athletic League. “State agents joined with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to crack down on this dangerous street gang that has terrorized Compton with constant violence and gang rivalry. We are proud to announce that sheriff’s deputies apprehended the killers and the state’s investigation led to dozens of additional gang arrests.” The attorney general’s office launched its investigation after suspected Mob Piru gang members shot and killed Kyutza Herrera who was a parked in front of Ace Liquor at 12211 Long Beach Boulevard in Lynwood. Herrera, who was not affiliated in any way with either gang, was shot in her car when the suspects opened fire on rival gang members.
The attorney general’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement special agents joined the case to investigate Mob Piru gang members suspected to be connected to this shooting and other violent activity. During the investigation, state agents stopped an attempted murder outside of a nightclub and derailed a plan to rob a local post office by a gang member who was also a mail carrier. The gang was recently preparing to import at least 20 firearms from Georgia to sell to other gang members. One of the gang members, Alex Graves, 23, a United States Post Office mail carrier, was arrested in connection with the drive-by shooting of Kyutza Herrera. Warren Phillipus, 28, also a mail carrier, was wanted in connection with the robbery of the Rancho Park Post Office and was caught by state agents as he was preparing to rob the Rimpau Post Office, both located in South Los Angeles. Phillipus has been charged with robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon, and conspiracy to traffic marijuana.
“These gang members had regular day jobs but their gang affiliation was so strong that they continued to roam the streets, terrorizing the community,” Attorney General Brown said. “It is shocking that gang identity is so powerful that even good paying jobs are not enough to turn these suspects from their criminal activity,” Brown added. Today’s gang crackdown, Operation Killen Court, is the culmination of a six-month investigation into the Mob Piru gang, an organization that killed, robbed and assaulted people in the City of Compton. Piru gangs first established themselves in Compton in the early 1970s to fight rival Crip gangs. The gang members named themselves after Piru Street, in Compton and called themselves “Bloods.” The Mob Piru gang, which gained national recognition in the 1990s along with the rise of gangster rap, has approximately 200 members and has connections to Oregon and New York.
During today’s crackdown, special agents identified 49 targets and made 24 arrests for offenses including murder, conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, marijuana trafficking, parole violations, and weapons violations. The Multi-Agency Response Team for Drug Endangered Children participated in today’s operation and were responsible for rescuing three children from felony child endangerment at two residences, one of which had a shotgun accessible to a child. Two of the children are 4-years-old, one is 10-months-old, and one is 1 and ½ years-old. At approximately 6 a.m. today nearly 450 state, local and federal law enforcement personnel executed 33 search and arrest warrants and conducted 20 probation and parole searches in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. Although agents seized small quantities of marijuana and “rock” cocaine, the gang’s foothold involved rival gang violence and subsequently, law enforcement seized 7 handguns, 4 rifles, and 1 sawed-off shotgun.
The California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement led today’s operation in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force, known as LAIMPACT, which includes Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Los Angeles County Probation, California Highway Patrol, DEA, US Customs, Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and Police Departments in Alhambra, Baldwin Park, Culver City, Downey, El Segundo, Gardena, Glendora, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, La Verne, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Monrovia, Monterey Park, Pasadena, Pomona, Redondo Beach, San Gabriel, Santa Monica, Torrance, Vernon, West Covina and Whitter, also participated in today’s operation. According to the most recent statistics, there are more than 1,000 gangs operating in Los Angeles County.
Between 2003 and 2007, there were 7,482 gang-related crimes in Compton including murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, arson and motor vehicles thefts. In 2007, the city had 37 homicides of which 18, nearly 49 percent, were gang-related. Approximately 20 percent of all homicides in California are gang-related. Between January and April of this year, Compton has had a total of 13 homicides, 14 forcible rapes, 175 robberies and 326 assaults. The California Department of Justice assists local law enforcement when gang problems have become so severe that the crime is bleeding into neighboring jurisdictions. State agents recently shut down a Norteño street gang and a violent Cambodian street gang in Stockton, a Sureño gang in Atwater and the Varrio Central Poros, a brutal criminal street gang that had terrorized the City of Porterville. State special agents have also participated in recent crime crackdowns in Oakland and East Palo Alto. For an information wanted bulletin detailing the facts of the Kyutza Herrera shooting and photos of guns seized during the operation, please contact the Attorney General’s Press Office at (916) 324-5500 or the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department at (323) 267-4813.
# # #
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
NFL Steps Up Monitoring of Players for Gang Signs
Editor's Note: The following article reports that the National Football League (NFL), concerned about the flashing of gang signs among angry players, is ratcheting up its monitoring of such signs. Questions that might leap to mind as you read this are: Why has it taken so long for the NFL to recognize that a significant number of its players consider themselves gangsters? What does "stepping up its monitoring of...flashing...hand signals" mean, that the NFL will take disciplinary measures against players who are witnessed by others and caught on video flashing? What kinds of disciplinary measures will the NFL take? Will the NFL have enough courage to take a firm stand against gang hand-sign flashing or will it elect to tip-toe a waltz around the player's representative and draft vague, muddled language that nobody can understand and, as a result, confuse folks about what it is that's supposed to be against NFL rules and deserving of sanctions?
Is the NFL prepared to ask player-aspirants or draftees, before showering them with contracts, if they are now, or ever have been, affiliated with any criminal street gang? Is the NFL itself prepared to undergo thorough and complete training on gangs, gang culture, and telltale signs of gang membership, including the wearing of certain kinds of tattoos? Is the NFL prepared to usher in a new wave of acceptable-looking players--clean-cut and minus tattoos and gang hand signs--publicize this and then practice what it preaches (this could lead to some NFL hopefuls NOT getting signed, despite families' and agents' expectations)? Does the NFL ever run criminal background checks on players before signing them? If you think about the numbers of NFL players who have been arrested, or have been victims of homicide, you would have to agree that such backgrounds checks might have revealed past gang activity, histories of abuse of spouses or significant others, cruelty to animals, and other crimes, including weapons violations.
NEW YORK (AP)—The NFL is stepping up its monitoring of on-field player activities to ensure that no one is flashing the hand signals of street gangs.
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the league had hired experts to look at game tapes and identify players or team officials who might be using suspected gang signals. Violators would be warned and disciplined if the episodes recurred.
League officials said Tuesday that avoiding gang-related activities has long been stressed.
They said the scrutiny was intensified after the shooting death of Denver cornerback Darrent Williams in 2007 after Williams was involved in a dispute with known gang members. Anti-gang information is included in orientation literature and stressed in the annual mandatory league meeting for rookies.
The NFL took further notice after Paul Pierce of the NBA’s Boston Celtics was fined $25,000 in April for what the league said was a “menacing gesture” toward the Atlanta Hawks’ bench. “I 100 percent do not in any way promote gang violence or anything close to it.” Pierce said in a statement. “I am sorry if it was misinterpreted that way at Saturday’s game.”
The Times said that was the precipitating incident for the NFL.
“We were always suspicious that might be happening,” it quoted Mike Pereira, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, as saying of gang-related signals. “But the Paul Pierce thing is what brought it to light. When he was fined … that’s when we said we need to take a look at it and see if we need to be aware of it.”
Most senior NFL officials were at a league outing Tuesday and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Is the NFL prepared to ask player-aspirants or draftees, before showering them with contracts, if they are now, or ever have been, affiliated with any criminal street gang? Is the NFL itself prepared to undergo thorough and complete training on gangs, gang culture, and telltale signs of gang membership, including the wearing of certain kinds of tattoos? Is the NFL prepared to usher in a new wave of acceptable-looking players--clean-cut and minus tattoos and gang hand signs--publicize this and then practice what it preaches (this could lead to some NFL hopefuls NOT getting signed, despite families' and agents' expectations)? Does the NFL ever run criminal background checks on players before signing them? If you think about the numbers of NFL players who have been arrested, or have been victims of homicide, you would have to agree that such backgrounds checks might have revealed past gang activity, histories of abuse of spouses or significant others, cruelty to animals, and other crimes, including weapons violations.
NEW YORK (AP)—The NFL is stepping up its monitoring of on-field player activities to ensure that no one is flashing the hand signals of street gangs.
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the league had hired experts to look at game tapes and identify players or team officials who might be using suspected gang signals. Violators would be warned and disciplined if the episodes recurred.
League officials said Tuesday that avoiding gang-related activities has long been stressed.
They said the scrutiny was intensified after the shooting death of Denver cornerback Darrent Williams in 2007 after Williams was involved in a dispute with known gang members. Anti-gang information is included in orientation literature and stressed in the annual mandatory league meeting for rookies.
The NFL took further notice after Paul Pierce of the NBA’s Boston Celtics was fined $25,000 in April for what the league said was a “menacing gesture” toward the Atlanta Hawks’ bench. “I 100 percent do not in any way promote gang violence or anything close to it.” Pierce said in a statement. “I am sorry if it was misinterpreted that way at Saturday’s game.”
The Times said that was the precipitating incident for the NFL.
“We were always suspicious that might be happening,” it quoted Mike Pereira, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, as saying of gang-related signals. “But the Paul Pierce thing is what brought it to light. When he was fined … that’s when we said we need to take a look at it and see if we need to be aware of it.”
Most senior NFL officials were at a league outing Tuesday and could not immediately be reached for comment.
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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