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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My Blog List
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Broken Window Theory Behind Chicago's Gang Loitering Ordinance (Now Shattered Glass)
Editor's Note: Chicago, long known for its stockyards, the Haymarket Square Riot, political graft and corruption, and the police brutality at the 1969 Democratic National Convention, decided at the dawn of the new millennium, that it had had enough of its gangs. These anti-social groups were seen as the equivalent of walking dynamite wherever they chose to occupy themselves, as squatters, strollers, or loiters, throughout the Windy City. Operating on the "broken window" theory (broken windows, if not repaired, spawn a copy-cat contagion of more broken windows), Chicago enacted an ordinance prohibiting known gang members from loitering in public places. The following is an abstract published in "Oyez Project: Chicago v. Morales." It is noteworthy for the Kryptonite effect legal challenges had upon the ordinance. A barrage of arguments eventually torpedoed the onerous ordinance at the Supreme Court level. We, in the Defense Bar, need to periodically refresh our memories about these kinds of challenges to Constitutionally-defective laws and their eventual result.
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Facts of the Case
Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance prohibits "criminal street gang members" from loitering in public places. If a police officer observes a person whom he reasonably believes to be a gang member loitering in a public place with one or more persons, he shall order them to disperse. A violation of the ordinance arises when anyone does not promptly obey a dispersal order. An officer's discretion was purportedly limited by confining arrest authority to designated officers, establishing detailed criteria for defining street gangs and membership therein, and providing for designated, but publicly undisclosed, enforcement areas. In 1993, Jesus Morales was arrested and found guilty under the ordinance for loitering in a Chicago neighborhood after he ignored police orders to disperse. Ultimately, after Morales challenged his arrest, the Illinois Supreme Court held that the ordinance violated due process of law in that it is impermissibly vague on its face and an arbitrary restriction on personal liberties.
Question
Does Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance, which prohibits "criminal street gang members" from loitering in public places, violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
Conclusion
Yes. In a plurality ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens delivered an opinion for a marjority on several key points. The Court held that Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance was unconstitutionally vague and provided law enforcement officials too much discretion to decide what activities constitute loitering. Justice Stevens wrote for the majority that the ordinance's definition of loitering as "to remain in any one place with no apparent purpose" does not give people adequate notice of what is prohibited and what is permitted, even if a person does not violate the law until he refuses to disperse. "'[A] law fails to meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause if it is so vague and standardless that it leaves the public uncertain as to the conduct it prohibits,'" noted Justice Stevens, "[i]f the loitering is in fact harmless and innocent, the dispersal order itself is an unjustified impairment of liberty."
Supreme Court Justice Opinions and Votes (by Seniority)
Decision: 6 votes for Morales, 3 vote(s) against
Legal Provision: Due Process
Full Opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens
The Oyez Project, Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999),
available at:
# # #
Facts of the Case
Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance prohibits "criminal street gang members" from loitering in public places. If a police officer observes a person whom he reasonably believes to be a gang member loitering in a public place with one or more persons, he shall order them to disperse. A violation of the ordinance arises when anyone does not promptly obey a dispersal order. An officer's discretion was purportedly limited by confining arrest authority to designated officers, establishing detailed criteria for defining street gangs and membership therein, and providing for designated, but publicly undisclosed, enforcement areas. In 1993, Jesus Morales was arrested and found guilty under the ordinance for loitering in a Chicago neighborhood after he ignored police orders to disperse. Ultimately, after Morales challenged his arrest, the Illinois Supreme Court held that the ordinance violated due process of law in that it is impermissibly vague on its face and an arbitrary restriction on personal liberties.
Question
Does Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance, which prohibits "criminal street gang members" from loitering in public places, violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
Conclusion
Yes. In a plurality ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens delivered an opinion for a marjority on several key points. The Court held that Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance was unconstitutionally vague and provided law enforcement officials too much discretion to decide what activities constitute loitering. Justice Stevens wrote for the majority that the ordinance's definition of loitering as "to remain in any one place with no apparent purpose" does not give people adequate notice of what is prohibited and what is permitted, even if a person does not violate the law until he refuses to disperse. "'[A] law fails to meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause if it is so vague and standardless that it leaves the public uncertain as to the conduct it prohibits,'" noted Justice Stevens, "[i]f the loitering is in fact harmless and innocent, the dispersal order itself is an unjustified impairment of liberty."
Supreme Court Justice Opinions and Votes (by Seniority)
Decision: 6 votes for Morales, 3 vote(s) against
Legal Provision: Due Process
Full Opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens
The Oyez Project, Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999),
available at:
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.
# # #
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
Monday, August 4, 2008
Defrauding the Nation's Lawyers
Editor's Note: The following essay was written on July 28, 2008 by internationally-renowned trial lawyer, Gerry Spence, and published at his own blog, "Gerry Spence's Blog." Please read it carefully, as his remarks and concerns are well-aimed and -timed. They are long overdue (no fault of his) and I hope that other lawyers nationwide will take up his cry. As a trial consultant and national expert witness who is frequently in Criminal Court, I think a core of the problem is a basic disrespect and unappreciation of jurors. Attorney Spence's theme that lawyers need training in relating and listening to people is, I think, secondary to that. If the jury system were regarded by lawyers as a chartered bus full of caring, attentive, sacrificing (some have jobs that are in jeopardy if a trial goes its full life cycle), and smart people, then lawyers would regard and listen to them as they regard and listen to their clients. Lawyers are trained to place their clients in high esteem and to bestow, if not lavish, utmost attention on them. It is PEOPLE who populate the best stories woven and spun by our court’s winning lawyers. When lawyers wake up and see and feel the jury box as being populated by some wonderful people, they will think of ways to loom, weave, spin and shape their stories with attention-getting beginnings, logical middles, and perfect and passionate endings every time. Lawyers, then, need to step outside the box and speak in court as if the jurors, whose ears everybody is betting on, are paying them--and the client is merely the messenger delivering the check.
# # #
Most trial lawyers have been defrauded of their education.
On the average it costs more than $100,000 to get through law school. And after four years in undergrad and three more years in law school, the law school graduate doesn’t know enough to pass the Multi-state Bar and has to spend another $5000 or more to prepare for that. Even then many will fail the bar, some more than once.
The bar exam itself is a fraud. The exam does not help the law profession to determine those who will fight for people, who are honest and who have courage—the most fundamental requirements of a lawyer for the people. The bar exam only tests the applicants ability to play their mostly silly word games.
So we have law schools claiming they are educating lawyers when most lawyers, as they drag themselves out of the misery and boredom of those three empty years, are tragically unprepared to do anything useful. I have often said that for an assistant to help me in a trial I would rather have a nurse than most lawyers fresh out of law school.
The nurse has been trained to listen to the patient. Lawyers know little about listening. The nurse chose her profession because she cares about people. Lawyers are not taught to care. They are engorged with the rare niceties of legal gymnastics often taught by ponderous-headed professors who have never looked into the painful eyes of a client and who have never tried a single jury trial for a human being. If a student complains that a case he or she is studying does not render justice, the professor is quick to retort, “We do not teach justice here, Mr. Jones. We teach the law.”
I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process.
“The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand. Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others.”
The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand. Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others. They are taught to deny their feelings and, at last, have so long shielded themselves against their feelings for that many find it nearly impossible to get in touch with them. Yet justice is a feeling and jurors (as do we all) make their decisions based on their feelings.
Most lawyers know little about classical literature and history, have never written a poem, have never painted a picture, have never stood before an audience and sung a song, have never been permitted to confess their pain or their love, and, in short, have been denied the stuff of personhood. One need not write poetry or paint pictures to be a successful human being. But some intimacy with the arts and the language and its use and with right brain functions of feeling and creativity are essential to the development of the whole person. Little wonder that lawyers, disabled by all of the stifling, mostly useless mental exercises they have suffered, have trouble relating to jurors much less to the rest of mankind.
Is it not a miracle that after having been defrauded of their education at the hands of the entrenched in our law schools that American lawyers haven taken on the fraudulent mindset of their educators who have defrauded them?
# # #
Most trial lawyers have been defrauded of their education.
On the average it costs more than $100,000 to get through law school. And after four years in undergrad and three more years in law school, the law school graduate doesn’t know enough to pass the Multi-state Bar and has to spend another $5000 or more to prepare for that. Even then many will fail the bar, some more than once.
The bar exam itself is a fraud. The exam does not help the law profession to determine those who will fight for people, who are honest and who have courage—the most fundamental requirements of a lawyer for the people. The bar exam only tests the applicants ability to play their mostly silly word games.
So we have law schools claiming they are educating lawyers when most lawyers, as they drag themselves out of the misery and boredom of those three empty years, are tragically unprepared to do anything useful. I have often said that for an assistant to help me in a trial I would rather have a nurse than most lawyers fresh out of law school.
The nurse has been trained to listen to the patient. Lawyers know little about listening. The nurse chose her profession because she cares about people. Lawyers are not taught to care. They are engorged with the rare niceties of legal gymnastics often taught by ponderous-headed professors who have never looked into the painful eyes of a client and who have never tried a single jury trial for a human being. If a student complains that a case he or she is studying does not render justice, the professor is quick to retort, “We do not teach justice here, Mr. Jones. We teach the law.”
I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process.
“The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand. Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others.”
The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand. Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others. They are taught to deny their feelings and, at last, have so long shielded themselves against their feelings for that many find it nearly impossible to get in touch with them. Yet justice is a feeling and jurors (as do we all) make their decisions based on their feelings.
Most lawyers know little about classical literature and history, have never written a poem, have never painted a picture, have never stood before an audience and sung a song, have never been permitted to confess their pain or their love, and, in short, have been denied the stuff of personhood. One need not write poetry or paint pictures to be a successful human being. But some intimacy with the arts and the language and its use and with right brain functions of feeling and creativity are essential to the development of the whole person. Little wonder that lawyers, disabled by all of the stifling, mostly useless mental exercises they have suffered, have trouble relating to jurors much less to the rest of mankind.
Is it not a miracle that after having been defrauded of their education at the hands of the entrenched in our law schools that American lawyers haven taken on the fraudulent mindset of their educators who have defrauded them?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Gang's Acts Paralyze Hood, But Residents Fear Police More
Editor's Note: The following story by Los Angeles Times writers Joe Mozingo, Sam Quinones and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, illustrates how gangs dominate and suck the very life-blood out of a community. Residents who live among the notorious Drew Street clique of the Avenues gang, admit to the terror, fear and criminal acts by which the gang controls them. A key shot-caller for this population of thugs is a gang-mother whose own children are loyal soldiers. One was fatally gunned down, earlier this spring, in a battle with Los Angeles Police officers after he shot and killed, in cold blood, a man who was out walking his two-year old granddaughter. So deadly is this gang, and such was the avalanche of wire-tapped racketeering evidence against them, that 500 federal agents participated in the assault on the gang, netting 28 arrests.
The 10-month investigation leading to these arrests was conducted by a Los Angeles task force of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Questions that might spring to mind as you read this article are: Is a virtual declaration of war and military-like assault by law enforcement a neighborhood's only protection from the growth and paralyzing power of its gangs? Why did some of the residents feel more terrified by the police raid rather than by the permanent threat the gang posed to them? What protections and other tangible benefits do residents need to help rout out the gangs living among them? What kinds of inducements can law enforcement provide residents to motivate them to come forward and testify against gang members in court? How can the encrusted psychology of fear and submission be broken so that residents can realize the collective power they themselves have to determine the welfare, safety and future of their neighborhoods? What kinds of law enforcement messages (e.g., billboard public service announcements, radio bulletins, television flash releases) need to be devised and delivered consistently to break through and overcome the gang criminal mindset of deliberate, nonstop, premeditated and spontaneous law-breaking?
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 lead by a Los Angeles task force of the Drug Enforcement Administration, 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 10-month investigation leading to these arrests was conducted by a Los Angeles task force of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Questions that might spring to mind as you read this article are: Is a virtual declaration of war and military-like assault by law enforcement a neighborhood's only protection from the growth and paralyzing power of its gangs? Why did some of the residents feel more terrified by the police raid rather than by the permanent threat the gang posed to them? What protections and other tangible benefits do residents need to help rout out the gangs living among them? What kinds of inducements can law enforcement provide residents to motivate them to come forward and testify against gang members in court? How can the encrusted psychology of fear and submission be broken so that residents can realize the collective power they themselves have to determine the welfare, safety and future of their neighborhoods? What kinds of law enforcement messages (e.g., billboard public service announcements, radio bulletins, television flash releases) need to be devised and delivered consistently to break through and overcome the gang criminal mindset of deliberate, nonstop, premeditated and spontaneous law-breaking?
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 lead by a Los Angeles task force of the Drug Enforcement Administration, 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.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Evaluating Your Expert Witnesses and Witnessing Their Value
Three friends of mine, all working expert witnesses, called me to recount their experiences with private investigators who interviewed them for prospective cases. One complained that the private investigator “asked me if I could stand up to a Daubert Hearing”; another seemed insulted that she was asked what her answer would be if the prosecutor “questioned my high expert fees”; and the third groused about being asked by the interviewing P.I. “why I prostituted myself in ‘criminal defense alley’ ”—the throng of law offices that occupied a corridor in and around the county courthouse. They accounted for more than 50% of his revenues the preceding year.
All of these colleagues demanded to know (from me) what was up! Why were they being grilled like this? Were they viewed as expert witnesses or as suspects? Could P.I.’s even ask such questions? They all claimed this was a “first”; but they suspected it wouldn’t be the last time they’d be so queried. I told them that they had the right to remain silent, if they chose, though by taking that tact their value in the P.I.’s eyes might cascade like Niagara Falls. What shocked them, however, was my telling them that P.I.’s could ask such questions—and that more P.I.’s should ask those kinds of questions and many more like them!
Questioning Prospective Witnesses…a Necessity
Questioning your prospective expert witness is vital. If you’re running defense for your hiring attorney by only scanning a pile of expert witness resumes, you should probably add a vital component to your examination efforts: Call the experts into your office or at least interview them over the telephone. You and the attorney for whom you work cannot afford to have them “drilled and killed” on the witness stand by a salivating prosecutor or other opposing counsel. Expert witnesses should expect questions about Daubert whether or not they are doctors, scientists, engineers, or economists. Daubert is the “gatekeeper” standard for testing in court not whether there is evidence, but whether that evidence was gathered properly.
So, your expert witnesses can bet their next breaths that their testimony about the method for gathering evidence will now and forever be deemed light-years more important than whether there is evidence. This “method-over-matter” point of view held by courts must be understood by all expert witnesses—regardless of their discipline and expertise—as a signal to include the intellectual method they utilize to arrive at their expert opinion. And it is their responsibility to be ready to address that. Daubert, inside courts, has evolved away from being merely THE Supreme Court threshold decision about the scientifics of fingerprinting (Daubert v. Merrell Dow) to its present-day “gatekeeper” evidence-controlling purpose: A Daubert Hearing alerts the expert witness that his or her thinking and reasoning about the evidence is critical to analyzing the method used for bringing that evidence into court and the light of day in the first place.
What, Who…Daubert and Me?
Don’t let your prospective expert witnesses cop out by telling you, “Daubert doesn’t apply to me. I’m not a medical doctor/engineer/scientist/economist.” Daubert, if nothing else, scrutinizes for due diligence in the evidentiary thinking processes of non-scientific pre-testimony expert witnesses. Daubert can either seat expert witnesses or strike them and send them packing. You can even advise prospective experts on some of the Daubert-type questions opposing counsel might ask them, to try to disqualify them: The theory or technique you’ve described, has it been tested and validated? This kind of question goes to the issue of how established, experienced, and even respected your expert witness is. Your attorney is paying him or her for their expert opinion; opposing counsel is not paying them a dime. Therefore, the big, imaginary “zero” opposing counsel sees on the expert’s forehead represents a target at which to aim and fire the toughest questions.
The responses your expert gives should be precise, non-argumentative, and without any arrogance or aggrandizement. He or she should sound as though they are well-experienced and, as appropriate, cite other sources in their profession who validate their opinion. What about peer review? Has your theory or technique been peer-reviewed and published? This question goes to whether and how your expert is perceived and regarded by his or her peers in their field of expertise: Is he or she known or unknown? Highly-regarded or an “also-ran”? Credible or discredited? Peer reviews are considered the litmus test.
Your expert should frankly—without boasting—define and describe those of his or her theories that have been peer-reviewed and published. What is the potential or previously documented rate of error of the method used? This question goes to the reliability of your expert’s theory. It is important to remember that a high error rate does not always mean the theory is unreliable; it merely means that the rate of error is something to factor in, not disregard. A significant error rate does not render invalid your expert’s theory. By the same token, if your expert’s theories or techniques are controversial, that is not necessarily a negative against your expert. Controversy is active and ongoing debate; it doesn’t mean your expert’s work and reputation are tarnished. Since opposing counsels often look for opportunities to do a verbal “Assault-and-Daubert,” you can tailor-make your own questions to acquaint your expert with and prepare him or her for Daubert issues.
Questions Are Critical—They Aren’t Criticism
Expert witnesses should not be put off or feel insulted about any questions the P.I. asks them. P.I.’s can make their interviewees feel more comfortable about answering their “twenty questions” by advising them that “I have to ask you several questions along the way. Better I do it before the prosecutor does; that way you and the attorney I work for can look good in court.” Or, “I hope you won’t be insulted, but the more questions you answer for me, the more qualified my attorney can make you look in court.” Or, “Prosecutors regularly dispute the qualifications of the expert witness. The Daubert Hearing gives them an additional tool to not only dispute but also to try to disqualify you. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?” With this in mind, expert witnesses should also expect to be asked questions about their “high” hourly fees.
A private investigator friend of mine recalls a prosecutor grandstanding before the jury by haranguing the expert witness about his fees. He ended by telling the expert that his boss, the district attorney, “pays me only a fraction of what you make per hour.” To which the expert witness replied: “Well, the district attorney certainly knows your worth far better than I do.” The courtroom, including the judge and jury, erupted in laughter; the prosecutor, though, seemed not to be amused.
Human nature is often unpredictable, and just because an expert’s good-natured humor may incite laughter from a judge and jury, does not mean that the expert is favorably regarded at all. An embarrassed and insulted opposing counsel can often very skillfully turn a moment of levity against the expert. Indeed, the judge, while laughing and seeking to mollify opposing counsel’s bruised ego, might even discredit and dismiss the expert as off-base and impolite. That well-aimed response might—in jury deliberations—even be regarded as impertinent and rude. The jury might be ashamed of its spontaneous outburst of laughter and, with stony faces, try to rectify their “sin” by regarding the expert with mistrust…as somebody given to self-aggrandizing and discourteous responses.
It is better that opposing counsel expose his or her own feelings of annoyance about your expert’s so-called “high fees” and be the spectacle in their own circus of critical questions. Your expert need not be caught up in this game. You might wish to repeatedly and diplomatically advise the expert to tell the truth, to act naturally, not to exhibit arrogance or ridicule, not to joke, and certainly not to argue with opposing counsel. In this context, “Sharp tongues sometimes cut their own throats” is a maxim that describes what could happen to either an expert witness or the opposing counsel. A backlash could hurt the expert more than it hurts opposing counsel.
It’s Preparation…Not Ping-Ponging With the Prosecution
Rather than risk your expert’s trying to match wits, in the foregoing manner, with the prosecutor, I recommend that the expert be prepared to reveal to you why their hourly fees are the way they are. There are at least nine reasons your expert witnesses might find valuable support for questioned fees: (1) years of experience in the field; (2) court certification your expert has; (3) membership on any court’s Panel of Experts; (4) rank and tenure in your expert’s professional discipline, such as college and university teaching; (5) books, papers, or journal articles your expert has published; (6) the number of cases in which your expert has provided expert testimony; (7) your expert’s membership and rank (such as president) in professional associations; (8) your expert’s participation and presentation at professional conferences, particularly those where continuing education credits (e.g., CLE) are awarded to their audiences of licensed professionals; and (9) your expert’s media profile: how often he or she has appeared on television or radio providing their opinions on national topics. Juries can often follow a logical trail and understand why a judge allows expert witnesses into the court to opine about cases.
In other words, juries are not usually put off by carefully-explained and well-reasoned justifications the expert makes for his or her fees. The expert witness should never be gulled by the prosecutor’s comparison of his or her own salary with that of the expert. Tell your experts to treat their fees as a kind of evidence and to speak about them openly and frankly. Rather than be or feel vilified by the prosecutor, your experts can show themselves as vital to the case because of their fees.
Frank and Direct Answers Are Best
It is highly doubtful that a prosecutor would insinuate that an expert witness “prostitutes” himself or herself in certain financially-lucrative environs around the court. Most fish find their water in the ocean. Too, any number of expert witnesses might find prospective cases among a virtual “sea” of law offices around the courthouse. It’s only practical and makes good business sense to market themselves in and among such a constellation or cluster of law firms. What the P.I. means by the “prostitute” question (if he or she even chooses to use that word at all—however, one P.I. did when querying me!) is whether the expert witness shows a dominant bias—for either prosecution or defense—in the kinds of cases taken in, say, the past year. Again, it’s better that your prospective expert answer the question head-on and directly.
By stating the obvious—that most private law firms house only defense counsels—your expert can show he or she is merely answering legally-constituted calls for defense expert testimony support and not turning away prosecutors’ requests to provide expertise on cases. To be sure, prosecutors use expert witnesses. However, the number of cases for which they bring an expert into court is but a fraction of the frequency with which defense attorneys need and use experts. Even in those cases where the defendant has been pronounced by the court as “indigent” (impoverished and unable to pay) he or she is still the client of a defense attorney who thus may need an expert witness. There’s also the fact that prosecutors select their expert witnesses from the court’s approved Panel of Experts. If your expert witness is not on the panel, that may not be his or her fault. Thus, their answer to an inquiring prosecutor, regarding the percentage of prosecution and defense cases on which they’ve worked, can reasonably be: “I would probably work more prosecution cases if I were on the court’s Panel of Experts, but I am not; and thus far I’ve not been chosen by the district attorney to participate on a case.”
If your expert has completed the application process to be on the panel, he or she should certainly state that; that fact is good public relations. The prosecutor knows that an expert’s not being on the court’s Panel of Experts may have little or nothing to do with the expertise and qualifications of the expert. Often, the court’s panel is full and there simply is no room for another expert. Frequently, not all of the judges, or any single one of them, who comprise the team that chooses expert witnesses for the Panel of Experts, hears cases for which a given expert’s rare experience and expertise are needed. The court’s “problem” here is, of course, known by the prosecutor, and is not something to be held against the expert. Your expert is not responsible for any past or present circumstances inherent in the court. Again, if your expert witness has made application to the court, to be on its Panel of Experts, he or she should so state. That revelation can clear the air and deflect any “end run” the prosecutor might try to make in the effort to disqualify your expert.
Who Can Pre-qualify Your Experts Better Than You?
Both P.I.’s and expert witnesses provide a huge and valuable service to the attorneys who employ them. And every P.I. and attorney I’ve worked for has been highly appreciative. Expert witnesses should regard questions from P.I.’s as appropriate and necessary safeguards to protect the legal rights and interests of the client and fulfill the case objectives of the hiring attorney. As a Private Investigator, you know which way the winds inside the court blow (or are likely to) better than any roomful of expert witnesses. Take time to ask your prospective expert witness the hard questions, and to pose the tough issues. If possible, meet and confer with him or her personally. Go over their resume and interview them about the information it contains. Ask them to tell you about their four cases (“your top four”) that are unique and unlike any others on which they’ve worked; then ask them to define what makes these four cases stand apart from the rest. Show them a calendar, and ask them about their availability for trial as you highlight the anticipated trial dates. Determine whether they might have schedule conflicts.
Taking Time to Talk Now Increases Value Later
By taking the time to have at least a one-hour “sit down” discussion with any prospective expert, you can pre-qualify him or her for your attorney. Your prospective expert’s opinion is the purpose for which he or she might be hired, and it ought to be the rock-solid foundation upon which their role and reputation are established and respected by the court. Therefore, your reviewing and clarifying the opinions to which they will be testifying to, is key critical. It will do you both good to hear, in their own words, what opinions they hold about the case and what they will likely say in court. Equally important, their going over with you the facts and assumptions that frame the bases of their opinions is a practical step; it is the productive equivalent of a baseball player’s doing warm-up calisthenics and taking batting practice. One can never review one’s facts and assumptions too much or too often; such review prevents one from being caught off guard on in “the blind” by opposing counsel’s peppering questions.
You will need to hear and your prospective expert needs to say how, that is, in what way they derived their opinion: What methodology did they employ? This tracking the trail from beginning to end sets up a logical step-wise chronology that can be as impressive as it can be instructive. In my own experience, prosecutors have sometimes been left astonished and speechless before admitting, “No further questions, your honor,” to the judge, after I have carefully laid out the methodology that framed and informed my professional opinion. You will certainly want to ask your expert when his or her opinion was formed. You can stress the importance of their addressing the timing of the formulation of their opinion, as the opposing counsel will seek to find some kind of fault with the timing—holding it up to be premature or incomplete, and the resultant opinion as inaccurate.
Your thorough and intensive interviews and evaluations of expert witnesses can result in your attorney’s being able to witness their value in court.
All of these colleagues demanded to know (from me) what was up! Why were they being grilled like this? Were they viewed as expert witnesses or as suspects? Could P.I.’s even ask such questions? They all claimed this was a “first”; but they suspected it wouldn’t be the last time they’d be so queried. I told them that they had the right to remain silent, if they chose, though by taking that tact their value in the P.I.’s eyes might cascade like Niagara Falls. What shocked them, however, was my telling them that P.I.’s could ask such questions—and that more P.I.’s should ask those kinds of questions and many more like them!
Questioning Prospective Witnesses…a Necessity
Questioning your prospective expert witness is vital. If you’re running defense for your hiring attorney by only scanning a pile of expert witness resumes, you should probably add a vital component to your examination efforts: Call the experts into your office or at least interview them over the telephone. You and the attorney for whom you work cannot afford to have them “drilled and killed” on the witness stand by a salivating prosecutor or other opposing counsel. Expert witnesses should expect questions about Daubert whether or not they are doctors, scientists, engineers, or economists. Daubert is the “gatekeeper” standard for testing in court not whether there is evidence, but whether that evidence was gathered properly.
So, your expert witnesses can bet their next breaths that their testimony about the method for gathering evidence will now and forever be deemed light-years more important than whether there is evidence. This “method-over-matter” point of view held by courts must be understood by all expert witnesses—regardless of their discipline and expertise—as a signal to include the intellectual method they utilize to arrive at their expert opinion. And it is their responsibility to be ready to address that. Daubert, inside courts, has evolved away from being merely THE Supreme Court threshold decision about the scientifics of fingerprinting (Daubert v. Merrell Dow) to its present-day “gatekeeper” evidence-controlling purpose: A Daubert Hearing alerts the expert witness that his or her thinking and reasoning about the evidence is critical to analyzing the method used for bringing that evidence into court and the light of day in the first place.
What, Who…Daubert and Me?
Don’t let your prospective expert witnesses cop out by telling you, “Daubert doesn’t apply to me. I’m not a medical doctor/engineer/scientist/economist.” Daubert, if nothing else, scrutinizes for due diligence in the evidentiary thinking processes of non-scientific pre-testimony expert witnesses. Daubert can either seat expert witnesses or strike them and send them packing. You can even advise prospective experts on some of the Daubert-type questions opposing counsel might ask them, to try to disqualify them: The theory or technique you’ve described, has it been tested and validated? This kind of question goes to the issue of how established, experienced, and even respected your expert witness is. Your attorney is paying him or her for their expert opinion; opposing counsel is not paying them a dime. Therefore, the big, imaginary “zero” opposing counsel sees on the expert’s forehead represents a target at which to aim and fire the toughest questions.
The responses your expert gives should be precise, non-argumentative, and without any arrogance or aggrandizement. He or she should sound as though they are well-experienced and, as appropriate, cite other sources in their profession who validate their opinion. What about peer review? Has your theory or technique been peer-reviewed and published? This question goes to whether and how your expert is perceived and regarded by his or her peers in their field of expertise: Is he or she known or unknown? Highly-regarded or an “also-ran”? Credible or discredited? Peer reviews are considered the litmus test.
Your expert should frankly—without boasting—define and describe those of his or her theories that have been peer-reviewed and published. What is the potential or previously documented rate of error of the method used? This question goes to the reliability of your expert’s theory. It is important to remember that a high error rate does not always mean the theory is unreliable; it merely means that the rate of error is something to factor in, not disregard. A significant error rate does not render invalid your expert’s theory. By the same token, if your expert’s theories or techniques are controversial, that is not necessarily a negative against your expert. Controversy is active and ongoing debate; it doesn’t mean your expert’s work and reputation are tarnished. Since opposing counsels often look for opportunities to do a verbal “Assault-and-Daubert,” you can tailor-make your own questions to acquaint your expert with and prepare him or her for Daubert issues.
Questions Are Critical—They Aren’t Criticism
Expert witnesses should not be put off or feel insulted about any questions the P.I. asks them. P.I.’s can make their interviewees feel more comfortable about answering their “twenty questions” by advising them that “I have to ask you several questions along the way. Better I do it before the prosecutor does; that way you and the attorney I work for can look good in court.” Or, “I hope you won’t be insulted, but the more questions you answer for me, the more qualified my attorney can make you look in court.” Or, “Prosecutors regularly dispute the qualifications of the expert witness. The Daubert Hearing gives them an additional tool to not only dispute but also to try to disqualify you. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?” With this in mind, expert witnesses should also expect to be asked questions about their “high” hourly fees.
A private investigator friend of mine recalls a prosecutor grandstanding before the jury by haranguing the expert witness about his fees. He ended by telling the expert that his boss, the district attorney, “pays me only a fraction of what you make per hour.” To which the expert witness replied: “Well, the district attorney certainly knows your worth far better than I do.” The courtroom, including the judge and jury, erupted in laughter; the prosecutor, though, seemed not to be amused.
Human nature is often unpredictable, and just because an expert’s good-natured humor may incite laughter from a judge and jury, does not mean that the expert is favorably regarded at all. An embarrassed and insulted opposing counsel can often very skillfully turn a moment of levity against the expert. Indeed, the judge, while laughing and seeking to mollify opposing counsel’s bruised ego, might even discredit and dismiss the expert as off-base and impolite. That well-aimed response might—in jury deliberations—even be regarded as impertinent and rude. The jury might be ashamed of its spontaneous outburst of laughter and, with stony faces, try to rectify their “sin” by regarding the expert with mistrust…as somebody given to self-aggrandizing and discourteous responses.
It is better that opposing counsel expose his or her own feelings of annoyance about your expert’s so-called “high fees” and be the spectacle in their own circus of critical questions. Your expert need not be caught up in this game. You might wish to repeatedly and diplomatically advise the expert to tell the truth, to act naturally, not to exhibit arrogance or ridicule, not to joke, and certainly not to argue with opposing counsel. In this context, “Sharp tongues sometimes cut their own throats” is a maxim that describes what could happen to either an expert witness or the opposing counsel. A backlash could hurt the expert more than it hurts opposing counsel.
It’s Preparation…Not Ping-Ponging With the Prosecution
Rather than risk your expert’s trying to match wits, in the foregoing manner, with the prosecutor, I recommend that the expert be prepared to reveal to you why their hourly fees are the way they are. There are at least nine reasons your expert witnesses might find valuable support for questioned fees: (1) years of experience in the field; (2) court certification your expert has; (3) membership on any court’s Panel of Experts; (4) rank and tenure in your expert’s professional discipline, such as college and university teaching; (5) books, papers, or journal articles your expert has published; (6) the number of cases in which your expert has provided expert testimony; (7) your expert’s membership and rank (such as president) in professional associations; (8) your expert’s participation and presentation at professional conferences, particularly those where continuing education credits (e.g., CLE) are awarded to their audiences of licensed professionals; and (9) your expert’s media profile: how often he or she has appeared on television or radio providing their opinions on national topics. Juries can often follow a logical trail and understand why a judge allows expert witnesses into the court to opine about cases.
In other words, juries are not usually put off by carefully-explained and well-reasoned justifications the expert makes for his or her fees. The expert witness should never be gulled by the prosecutor’s comparison of his or her own salary with that of the expert. Tell your experts to treat their fees as a kind of evidence and to speak about them openly and frankly. Rather than be or feel vilified by the prosecutor, your experts can show themselves as vital to the case because of their fees.
Frank and Direct Answers Are Best
It is highly doubtful that a prosecutor would insinuate that an expert witness “prostitutes” himself or herself in certain financially-lucrative environs around the court. Most fish find their water in the ocean. Too, any number of expert witnesses might find prospective cases among a virtual “sea” of law offices around the courthouse. It’s only practical and makes good business sense to market themselves in and among such a constellation or cluster of law firms. What the P.I. means by the “prostitute” question (if he or she even chooses to use that word at all—however, one P.I. did when querying me!) is whether the expert witness shows a dominant bias—for either prosecution or defense—in the kinds of cases taken in, say, the past year. Again, it’s better that your prospective expert answer the question head-on and directly.
By stating the obvious—that most private law firms house only defense counsels—your expert can show he or she is merely answering legally-constituted calls for defense expert testimony support and not turning away prosecutors’ requests to provide expertise on cases. To be sure, prosecutors use expert witnesses. However, the number of cases for which they bring an expert into court is but a fraction of the frequency with which defense attorneys need and use experts. Even in those cases where the defendant has been pronounced by the court as “indigent” (impoverished and unable to pay) he or she is still the client of a defense attorney who thus may need an expert witness. There’s also the fact that prosecutors select their expert witnesses from the court’s approved Panel of Experts. If your expert witness is not on the panel, that may not be his or her fault. Thus, their answer to an inquiring prosecutor, regarding the percentage of prosecution and defense cases on which they’ve worked, can reasonably be: “I would probably work more prosecution cases if I were on the court’s Panel of Experts, but I am not; and thus far I’ve not been chosen by the district attorney to participate on a case.”
If your expert has completed the application process to be on the panel, he or she should certainly state that; that fact is good public relations. The prosecutor knows that an expert’s not being on the court’s Panel of Experts may have little or nothing to do with the expertise and qualifications of the expert. Often, the court’s panel is full and there simply is no room for another expert. Frequently, not all of the judges, or any single one of them, who comprise the team that chooses expert witnesses for the Panel of Experts, hears cases for which a given expert’s rare experience and expertise are needed. The court’s “problem” here is, of course, known by the prosecutor, and is not something to be held against the expert. Your expert is not responsible for any past or present circumstances inherent in the court. Again, if your expert witness has made application to the court, to be on its Panel of Experts, he or she should so state. That revelation can clear the air and deflect any “end run” the prosecutor might try to make in the effort to disqualify your expert.
Who Can Pre-qualify Your Experts Better Than You?
Both P.I.’s and expert witnesses provide a huge and valuable service to the attorneys who employ them. And every P.I. and attorney I’ve worked for has been highly appreciative. Expert witnesses should regard questions from P.I.’s as appropriate and necessary safeguards to protect the legal rights and interests of the client and fulfill the case objectives of the hiring attorney. As a Private Investigator, you know which way the winds inside the court blow (or are likely to) better than any roomful of expert witnesses. Take time to ask your prospective expert witness the hard questions, and to pose the tough issues. If possible, meet and confer with him or her personally. Go over their resume and interview them about the information it contains. Ask them to tell you about their four cases (“your top four”) that are unique and unlike any others on which they’ve worked; then ask them to define what makes these four cases stand apart from the rest. Show them a calendar, and ask them about their availability for trial as you highlight the anticipated trial dates. Determine whether they might have schedule conflicts.
Taking Time to Talk Now Increases Value Later
By taking the time to have at least a one-hour “sit down” discussion with any prospective expert, you can pre-qualify him or her for your attorney. Your prospective expert’s opinion is the purpose for which he or she might be hired, and it ought to be the rock-solid foundation upon which their role and reputation are established and respected by the court. Therefore, your reviewing and clarifying the opinions to which they will be testifying to, is key critical. It will do you both good to hear, in their own words, what opinions they hold about the case and what they will likely say in court. Equally important, their going over with you the facts and assumptions that frame the bases of their opinions is a practical step; it is the productive equivalent of a baseball player’s doing warm-up calisthenics and taking batting practice. One can never review one’s facts and assumptions too much or too often; such review prevents one from being caught off guard on in “the blind” by opposing counsel’s peppering questions.
You will need to hear and your prospective expert needs to say how, that is, in what way they derived their opinion: What methodology did they employ? This tracking the trail from beginning to end sets up a logical step-wise chronology that can be as impressive as it can be instructive. In my own experience, prosecutors have sometimes been left astonished and speechless before admitting, “No further questions, your honor,” to the judge, after I have carefully laid out the methodology that framed and informed my professional opinion. You will certainly want to ask your expert when his or her opinion was formed. You can stress the importance of their addressing the timing of the formulation of their opinion, as the opposing counsel will seek to find some kind of fault with the timing—holding it up to be premature or incomplete, and the resultant opinion as inaccurate.
Your thorough and intensive interviews and evaluations of expert witnesses can result in your attorney’s being able to witness their value in court.
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