Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Understanding Gangs. This podcast examined street and prison
gang structure and activity in the United States from the
perspective of law enforcement academics and former gang members.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Let's get started in expense F three tensions of defense.
If you want a past test, you could keep it too,
says I don't want to be another tonguet on a head.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome everyone. I'm doctor Carlos, professor of forensic Psychology and
your host of Inside the Badge, where we try to
bridge the gap between law enforcement and the community. With
me today as a special guest, Richard Valdemar. You know
anything about gangs? You know about Richard Valdemar. Sergeant Richard
Valdemar retired from the La County Sherifes Department after spending
most of his thirty three years on the job combatting gangs.
(00:51):
For the last twenty years, he was assigned a Major
Crimes Bureau. He was also cross and designated as an
FBI agent for ten years of his career when he
served on the Federal Metropolitan Gang Task Force. From nineteen
ninety five until his retirement in two thousand and four,
Richard was a member of the California Prison Prison Gang
Task Force helping prosecute members of the Mexican mafia. We
(01:11):
don't have a whole day for all the stuff that
he's done. Welcome down to the show without further ado,
mister Develtimore. Welcome, sergeant, Thank you, thank you for being here.
This is an honor and I truly appreciate. I'm looking
forward to it. If we're going to learn about something
that seems to be pretty prevalent in everybody's life, which
is gangs. But before we get to that, I want
(01:32):
to find out what motivated Sergeant Vaalimore have become a
police officer.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
That's kind of a funny story. I grew up in
the city of Compton, in the area called Willabrook, which
is the worst area in Compton, and I ran a
teen center when I was a young activist in the
Willowbrook community, the War on Poverty program and the Team
Center program in the Catholic teens in a program, So
(02:00):
I ran a thing for kids there and if anything,
I would be probably considered today activist anti gang sixty six.
I went into the military and gets what the army
maybe a military policeman, so in as serving as a
(02:21):
police officer. In the military police, I met a lot
of good police officers and kind of changed my mind.
So when I came out of the service, I joined
the La County Sheriff's Department in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, let me ask you this. We'll start getting into
the topic of gangs. Did you encounter gang members early
on in your career while working in the prison system,
and that something that happened to you.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I encountered gangs when I was growing up. My neighborhood
was infested with gangs, Black and Hispanic gangs. And when
I went into the military, of course, the gangs are
prevalent in the military as well. Army doesn't like to
admit it, but we have gang to the military. And
when I came out, I joined the Sheriff's Department, and
I really did want to work gangs. But when I
(03:07):
went to the jail, I found that prison gangs controlled
the jails and prisons. Those are the big four, the
Mexican Mafia, Ruster Familiar, Aaron Brotherhood, and the Black Girl Family.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Oh wow, so one from almost from each race. It
sounds like, wow, let me ask you this, and this
maybe will come along throughout our conversation. But you said
you grew up in an area with gangs involved, something
we always hear about in the media, maybe in some
academic circles. Oh, you know, they grew up in a
(03:39):
gang area. They grew up in a poor social economic area.
That's why they joined gangs. Why didn't you join the gang.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Well, I'm gonna have to say that ninety percent of
the people that grew up with me never joined a gang.
By very few of them actually joined a gang. And
the other part of that that a lot of researchers
don't see is that where you're getting your information is
from another gang member, right, and he doesn't necessarily tell
you the truth. So if you ask them when did
they join the gang, they'll tell you I was twelve
(04:06):
years old, you know, and I had to join the
gang because my whole family is That's not true. That's
not true at all. You know, we have families where
everyone was in the gang except one kid. That kid
is a little nerd. And then on the other side
of the fence, we see these very well to do
families who are the rest of the family is not
gang related at all, and one kid is gang related.
(04:29):
So it's a choice. It might be pushed by economics
or social conditions and abuse and that type of thing,
but it's actually a choice.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Interesting, it seems like it falls along the lines of
the eighty twenty year old twenty percent. Probably less than
that commit eighty percent of the crimes or gang activity.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yeah, I would say eighty percent in these kind of communities,
eighty percent of the crimes are gang related. Are they're
victims of gang crime?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, let's do an analysis a little bit now regards
to gangs, and then we'll talk more specifically about current events.
But evolution in regards to gangs when you knew them,
were living in the community, as you grew up, throughout
going into the police to the sheriff's department. Have the
gangs changed over the last few decades.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yes, certainly, they don't dress the same. The dynamics of
how the gangs are formed remains the same. You know,
they may wear football jerseys now instead of penaltons, but
there's still the same hierarchy and expected behavior code of
(05:37):
conducts that we saw in the old days. In fact,
the old gang members say that the new gang members
are out of order, they're wild, they're not as disciplined
as the old gang members were. They allow things that
old time gang members would never have allowed.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Do you think that's true? Seeing it from the side
of a sheriff's department, from everybody you work with the
thirty years, you think they are in less disciplined.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yes, we're getting influenced by society. Outside society the gang members,
you know, terrorism affects them, the cartels, the brutality of
the cartels. You know, gang members in Los Angeles normally
would not attack your grandmother, or attack you at a funeral,
or attack your mother or your little nephew. But cartels
(06:28):
don't have those restrictions. They'll attack anyone and they will
kill the whole family if they have to. Well, some
of that's leaking over to the to our street games.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So their moral code is sorry to dissipate.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yes, let me.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Ask you this. You talked about clothes. How about technology?
How's it changed gangs over the last three or four
decades A lot?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
That's probably that's probably the biggest change. You know, A
lowrider car was at the farthest technology that these guys
had when I first started. But now, uh, some of
them owned, you know, computer companies and uh, pager companies,
they have record labels. They you know, they they connect
(07:12):
on the internet internationally, right like Marisalvatrucha, you know, connecting
internationally with their their home boys back in El Salvador.
So so all this has led to more sophistication.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, how about income sources? Now you mentioned you own
uh pagers or the telephone or cell phone companies or
pager companies, I think you mentioned a minute ago. How
about income sources? Is that something that was new then
owning these kind of properties. Uh, drug trafficking is that
still one.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Of the right. Drug trafficking is number one, that's the
drug in Human trafficking is a number one money makers.
But more and more with seeing white collar crime, you know,
identity theft, those type of.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Things interesting, so they're still they have increased there are
levels of income sources.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Then, yeah, now let.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Me ask you this. I'm going to try to spill
some myths and trying to hear some of the rumors
that I've been hearing around the wire over the course
of the last year. Some people say that the gang
members a lot of times are kind of the footmen
for the cartel. They do all the dirty work or
there may be hired as the people to go on
the streets to sell drugs. Is that accurate.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yes, They've always been in charge of distribution of the narcotics.
You know, the source is going to be cartels Columbia
and Mexico primarily, and then the drugs are smuggled, and
that involves the Mexican cartels bringing the smuggling products through
and then the street gang members distributing and collecting the
(08:48):
fees and then kicking back the money to these groups.
But more recently it's become much more sophisticated. I talk
about what I call the Unholy Trinity, the alliance of
American street gangs, Mexican drug cartels, and international terrorists. And
the international terrorists get into it by the finances. You know,
(09:11):
all the terrorist groups are financed by the sales of
drugs and humans. Okay, so in order to conduct their
terrorist activities, they are involved in the drug industry. They
also are involved in the banking industry, and so they
fund a lot of this. At one time, almost all
the funding came through Panama and Noriega, but now it's
(09:33):
spread out a little bit and you have different countries
in Africa and Central America that are the banking centers,
but they're primarily set up by Middle Eastern interests.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Wow. So that's a pretty intricate wab we got going on.
How does China play a role here? Is that the
federoyl role?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
First of all, just think about meth. Almost all the
meth comes from a Federan And who's the source of
a federal China? China is a federal. Where's our opiates
coming from? Right? They're coming from Afghanistan? Right? Uh So
these countries are are as as the cartels. And Columbia
(10:13):
once said these these are the poor man's atomic bomb.
These are the way they destroyed the United States is
by providing them with these drugs which destroyer society. And
in the Colombian cartel case, they actually said that.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
You know, it's interesting. I was watching a movie the
other day I've seen I've seen a different version. It
was about the Gary Webb, the journalist remember him from
the I think it was a San Jose or another
Mercury or something like that newspaper up north. Yeah, he
was the one that discovered, I supposedly discovered the CIA
funding drugs to be sent into l A and all that,
remember that, right. I guess my point was is it
(10:54):
as complicated as that or did we have these kind
of issues were floating around in that, not in regards
to the CIA, but do we have these issues of
of these intricate webs happening.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, yes, And I think this CIA is included in that.
Sometimes the best enemy of our enemy happens to be
a drug lord, and so we wind up supporting a
drug lord, uh, in order to fight communism. Well, I
don't know if that works. But then they also do
(11:26):
the same thing, right, they fark supported by the Communists,
and they're a drug group. Zetta. We trained as anti
drug guys in Mexico and they turned out to be
their own cartel. You know, it's hard to hard to
know the players.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
And the thin interesting thing about that movie too, it
sounds like cocaine when it hit the streets made a
huge change.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Well, there's always been cocaine since the twenties. But what
happened was rock cocaine. When they begin to rocket and
sell it, uh, an entrepreneur like sales of rock and
it went crazy. That's probably the most violent eighty four
through eighty six, by the most violent time in Los
(12:11):
Angeles history, and it was rock houses that were our problem,
and even they called people rockheads and pluckheads, derogatory terms
for people who used rock.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I remember I was watching The Corner. I don't know
if you ever saw The Corner from Baltimore. It was
a sixth as a little mini series on HBO, and
they attributed the same thing to when the introduction of
crack came in, it just really decimated their city, and
it seems to be a pattern on that.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Yes, I like that series that the characters were very realistic,
were they.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yes, there you go, folks, definitely catch the Corner. I
believe the Wire two is pretty deep.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Wire was very good, but I would say watch Cicatio.
The second Chicadio is even better than the first one. Cicadio, Yes,
showing the complicated backing of US government and the Mexican
government and the cartels all funding each Other's hit me.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
In interesting stuff. So we're gonna have to check that out, folks.
We've got a lot of stuff. You can see some
of those things down here below. We'll put the names
down here so everybody can catch that. So let me
ask you this a backped a little bit I didn't
want to, but I want to have typically just on
of it. Sergeant so a man of Solituca. You mentioned
earlier MS thirteen as they were commonly known for everybody
(13:26):
out there. They came in here in the eighties, but
they weren't. They didn't exist. If I'm correct, They came
in as a former militia form Mil Salvador, losing that
fight over there. If I remember my history, correct, If
I do, I don't know, you can correct me if
I'm wrong. Of course they came into La, but they
encountered some difficulties here in La. There was a rivalry
(13:47):
going on.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
And my accurate on this, well, that's that's the common
uh history that you hear in the sound bite, But
it's more complicated than that. The war now Salvador involved
children soldiers on both sides, and I mean twelve year
olds carrying AK forty seven killing one another, Okay, And
(14:10):
that's both the pro government and the anti government, and
the anti government won, right. So now almost everybody in
El Salvador is from the communist revolutionary group which was
backed by the PLO. Okay, But the ones who fled
the revolution came to the Los Angeles area. Many of
(14:30):
them took an oath to the devil when they were fighting,
you know, they became heroin addicts, and they took an
oath to the devil. They land in the United States
in the mid eighties, and what do we have going
on in our communities? Then we have the heavy metal
thing going on. So mars Alvatrucha originally becomes a heavy
(14:51):
metal rock group. Stoners are called stoners. There were stoners.
They still maintained the hand sign of the heavy metal
people horn hands. Okay, since they worshiped the devil or
they had allegiances to the devil there. They had the
allegiances here with the heavy metal groups. Eventually they become
(15:11):
more and more like Hispanic gang members and they leave
that stoner persona and become more like Hispanic gang members,
if we traditionally know. Originally when they land, some of
them joined the Eighteenth Street Gang because they settled in
the Peico Union District. So because they joined the Eighteenth
(15:33):
Street Gang, and later on there becomes a mars A
Vatruci gang, which is Salvadorian. There's this rivalry between those
two groups which persists to this day. And wherever you
find MS thirteen. You'll find eighteenth Street. They'll call it
Mara eighteen in Central America, but it's the same gang.
(15:54):
And so that that happened, and they became more and
more violent against one another. These are soldiers who who
saw murder and you know, killings in the streets all
day long. And now they're not twelve anymore. Now they're sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen years old, and they still have that same attitude.
So they were looked on as being so terrible, but
(16:18):
they were no more terrible than many of the gangs
we already had. We had the Jamaicans operating and their
favorite weaponism machete, and they were terrible as well. And
you know, people said they were the worst gang that
was ever going to come.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
The Posse I think it was called.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yes, they were political, by the way, right and left,
the same thing the Posse's were. What happened I'm hearing
is that some senator or congressmen got assaulted in Washington,
DC during this period by members of the mars Alvatrucha.
So suddenly the federal government said the most dangerous gang
(16:58):
in the whole world was mars Selvia through job you know,
until you're the victim of their crimes. You know, you
don't even know who they are. But when you become
the victim of their crimes, then all of a sudden
they become the most important thing in the world. So
you see this national geographic cover that says the most
dangerous gang in the world, you know, and it shows
picture of a Marsovatucci guy. Well, in truth in Los Angeles,
(17:20):
Mars Latrucci was paying tribute to the Mexican mafia and
they were falling under all the dictates of the prison
gang while they were in prison. In fact, they were
assigned to kill Damien Football Williams, the guy who beat
up the people that were passing by in the truck
during the Rodney King thing where he hit with the
(17:43):
brick and stuff. Well, they were assigned to kill that
guy as proof that they were now royal serenos. So
we picked up those kites coming out of the jail
system kites or prisoner's notes, and we picked those coming
out of the jail system right after the riots, and
we had to protect Damian Williams from from the Marcela
(18:04):
Truca and Hispanic gangers because they were going to kill him.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Oh, Wow.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
So then they became MS thirteen. Thirteen is the thirteenth
letter of the alphabet, and that stands for MME Mexican Mafia.
So they were paying tribute to the Mexican Mafia, and
they have somewhere along the line all the time. But
what happens is they move further east, there's less influence
of the Mexican Mafia. So if you talk to a
(18:30):
fifteen year old in Washington and ask him if he's
paying taxes to the Mexican mafia, he's going to tell
you Noah. But if he went to prison, guess what
he's gonna pay taxes. It was more dangerous Mexican Mafia
or the MS thirteen. It's the Mexican Mafia that's more
(18:52):
dangerous because they're consolidating these groups and making alliances with
the cartels and terrace and they may that makes them
very danger.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And I appreciate that, Sergeant. That's one of the things
about the show we try to do is dispel mints
and trying to get accurate stories, and that's something you
hit the nail on the head a lot of times
with the media or politicians will only focus on what
managed to them at the moment, right, I think it's
throwing aside. I remember listening to Isis and beheadings, and
I'm thinking, well, wait a minute, how about the cartels
in Mexico. It's about three hours away doing the same thing.
(19:23):
I mean, yeah, they're not videotaping it, mind you, but
still throwing it off there. Well, that's true they did,
that's sure. You're right. Actually they did to take the
heads off the freeways. I think, right, yeah, yeah, it's
funny stuff. We're pretty struss. Let me ask you this.
I also heard a lot of times a little bit
(19:43):
of history again, but some of these Hispanic gangs, when
they started growing, there was a huge conflict between the
Hispanic games and the African American gangs because obviously the
population was exploding the Hispanic side. Is that pretty accurate too,
were being they were pushing out the African Americans from
a lot of territories.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Having grown up in Compton, I can tell you that
there's always been this rivalry between these minority groups. When
when we, as Hispanics, were the minority in a black neighborhood,
guess who got picked on, right? Uh So these gangs
have always had this rivalry. But there's been this tense
troops that, you know, since there's more of you and
(20:21):
we don't want to start this war. And never and
never blew up to a full bown riot until the
Rodney King incident. During the Rodney King incident, when this guy,
Damian Williams was pulling people out of the car, he
pulled a Mexican man out of a car. He beat him.
He uh, he spray painted him with spray paint and
(20:43):
did terrible things to him. I'm not sure even survived it.
But that videotape was shown in the jail system. The
Hispanics saw that, and the war was on. They declared
war instantly on all blacks. That's why we had to
protect Amian Williams and they began to riot. Now, the
(21:03):
rioting in the jail went to the state system pretty
in the writing in the state system. Then the writing
came all the way to Arizona and all the way
to Las Vegas, Hispanics attacking blacks. Then it became open
warfare against blacks. But I think it's fun. It's primarily
about the control of the drug trafficking in south central
(21:24):
Los Angeles, which the Blacks controlled. And now the Hispanics want.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Well, they still control it now, the Blacks. So it
always stops with the buck stops, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yes, it's money, and that's how they finance everything they do.
Every gang has two arms. They have a militant war
making arm. That's the left arm. Right that's the arm
that we concentrate all our attention on. But they need
finances to run the military arm. That's their money making arm.
The right hand is the real problem. We need to
work on that right hand, follow the money back to it,
(21:58):
and dry up with sources so they can't build this
left hand to be so powerful and violent and effective.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Let's do it if we can. We can do a
little bit of a breakdown in regards to the gang
structure to spell a couple of minutes too that we'll
get to a little bit. But the gangs, they're actually
hierarchical in a sense, there's a hierarchy.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
There's two two major differences. East Coast gangs are nothing
like West Coast gangs. Okay, so we're talking about the
you know an almighty Latin Kings are we're talking about
you know Black Rilla, I mean Chicago Disciples. Okay, those
(22:41):
are hierarchical because they actually have a corporate structure. They
have a president or a king, and then they have
a ruling council and then they have not at the
bottom a foot soldier. On the West coast, that doesn't exist.
On the West Coast, we have more like a communist
or a terrorist structure. It's unified by its but it's
made up of groups of clicks subclicks within the group,
(23:06):
and there they act independently except when there's something that
threatens the whole gang, and then they act in unison.
But each one is responsible for making their own money,
you know, protecting their own group and that type of thing.
So if you see graffiti from the Hispanic gangs in
the West Coast, you're going to see the primary name
eighteenth Street, okay, and then down below it you'll see
(23:29):
the subgroup. What group are they? The tiny Whinos?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Uh yeah, the crypts of bloods are follow the Hispanic example.
So it's very difficult to fight against this cell like structure.
Very easy to prosecute the you know, the corporate structure,
because you just attack the top right and you take
out the leadership and they're gone. But if you attack
(23:54):
the subgroups within the West Coast gangs, you're only breaking
up a little cell. Then the gang continues to function.
And and so when you prosecute uh singly you know,
like you like many of the things that you see
that are reused against the various gangs. Uh, you know
(24:15):
where they do the sweeps or they prosecute this guy
and they say he's the leader of the gang. Not
the leader of the gang. He is one of the
leaders of the gang, Okay, But you take him off,
he doesn't. The gang doesn't slow down. It fills that
void with you know, somebody who's charismatical will take that
that job on himself. He doesn't get appointed. Uh. The
(24:37):
nearest thing to any kind of leadership in the Hispanic
gang most most gangs is a OG. In the Black gang,
and call it o g and in the Hispanic gang,
you call it a veteran vetterano Is is a guy
he's not. He can't tell them what to do, but
because of his experience, they defer to his opinion. So
they'll say, hey, man, we're gonna go right on so
(24:59):
and so, and he tell them, hey, stupid, don't write
on them. You know it comes will be looking for
you today, man, give them a week. They're right on him. Okay,
Now he didn't order them not to do it. He
appealed to their senses, and because of his experience, he
inflicts his opinion into the to the situation and delays it.
(25:21):
So those vetnandos are are like the wise men of
the gang, and they go to them for advice, but
they don't control anything. None of them can say let's
go to war. It has to be consensus to go
to war. On the other hand, on the East coast,
you know, King so and So from the from the
Latin kings can say let's go to war, and everybody
(25:42):
has to go to war. So we have a more
democratic structure in the Hispanic gangs of the West coast.
And this is why the Mexican mafia is so effective.
There's no one leader of the Mexican mafia. They're each
considered a leader and each controlled very street gangs below them.
So you have this coalition, and that's the very dangerous part.
(26:05):
Gangs are, by their nature coalitions. The only successful prosecution
of gangs is the conspiracy laws, especially rical that's the
only way we can really affect them. The only way
we're going to do it against all these international gangs
is through international cooperation. You know, we have to solicit
(26:27):
help from you know, international police organizations because it's no
longer just our problem. We've infected everybody else.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Let me ask you that that's great, thank you very
much for that. Is there a power sweedgle to be
able to get these individual leaders that we see those
subgroups that are floating around? I mean, how do they
become a leader if their leader gets taken out? For instance?
Is it kind of like, okay, well he's he's been
around the longest, he's got the most guns. I mean,
how do they pretty much? That way?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
Pretty much that way is the facto leadership. You know,
there's fifteen guys and somebody will step out of the
crowd and say, hey, I've been here the longest, this
is what I've done time for. This is who's my backup?
And so and so in the Mexican mafia is my uncle,
and then they pass pass him to the leadership. But
he's only the leader as long as he's working. Well.
(27:17):
If he becomes a problem to them, they will take
him out. They'll kill him. Whenever you see murder within
the gang, So you have a homeboy killing homeboy. That's
the influence of the Mexican mafia or prison gang over
the street gang, because their alliance to the prison gang
is greater than their alliance to their homeboy. Wow, that's scary.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It is very scary. Let me. Actually, we're going to
try a couple of myths here and I don't know
if they're miss and you're going to tell us as
they are. Once you join a gang, can you leave?
You've heard a lot of times people say you can't
leave you Is it true or not? And you'll leave?
Speaker 4 (27:53):
This is now we're talking traditionally, Okay, there's always going
to be an exception. Okay. Traditionally, when you in a gang,
you're in for life. Okay. When they jump you in,
there's no formal there's one formal way to get out.
That's you appeal to your home boys and you tell
them you need to get out of a gang, and
then they jump you out. When they jump you in,
(28:14):
they love you. When they jump you out, they hate you.
So guess what happened when they jump you out? Okay,
Usually it's some physical They you wear a scar if
you had, you know, a third street gang tattooed on
your arm. They're good, that's gotta go, okay, And they
don't take you to the you know, doctor and have
(28:34):
a laser laser it off, right, They cut it off.
They burn it off. You see this in the Hell's
Angels that they fall out of favor, they lose their
patch and they have a tattoo of the Hell's Angels
on them. They burn the patch off. Okay, okay, So
you don't want to You don't want to formally ask
permission to leave the gang because that's very painful and
could result in your death. So very often we have
(28:57):
what they call the geographic They desert. Okay, when you
desert from the military, you're wanted man, And the same
thing happens to the gang. You desert, you're wanted man.
If anybody sees you and knows you're a deserter, they'll
kill you. Okay, so you have to be afraid of that.
But what I say is, well, the problem is that
(29:19):
when they geographically desert, they go to another place just
like the place they just left. They buy their dope
at the same kind of place, and eventually somebody's going
to say, hey, aren't you so and so from such
and such, and then you're in trouble. But if they
change culturally, they get a job, you go to junior college,
(29:40):
they never get challenged. Why because there's no gang members there.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So if they leave maybe the city, go to another city,
join a junior college. It's very unlikely the lover of
openers or.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Just get out of that lifestyle, right, the drug crime lifestyle.
But if you stand a drug and crime lifestyle and
you go back into that underworld, you're going to get
found out.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
What happens if you change gangs.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
You can't change. That's that's like you going over to
the Russians.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
No triple agents allowed. Huh No, let me ask you this.
We've got a few minutes left here. We were talking
about them leaving the gangs. Sometimes I've heard they have
a high attrition rate. It kind of goes along the
same line. We're just talking about a lot of people
join gangs, or say they join gangs, but really don't
last very long.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Is that true, right? I would say that within the
first five or six years most of them defect, drop
out or killed, okay, or go they go to prison
with life sentences, you know, which effectively takes them off
the street. Of course, not in California. We release all
those people. But but it's supposed to take them off
(30:50):
the street. So as they get older, those veteranatos at
the top are very few, very few. They also, I'm
a disillusion with their own gang. You know, when they
first joined, they're fifteen, sixteen years old, they believe all
that hype. But after they've lived in the gang for
a while, I mean, the gang's made up of liars, cheaters, thugs, murderers,
(31:14):
and they're that way to their own friends, just like
they're that way to the general public. So I always
ask the narcists how many how many grams in an ounce?
Twenty eight right, how many of you ever bought an
ounce of dope? That's twenty eight grams? And they all
laugh because nobody's ever bought an ounce of dope. It's
(31:35):
twenty eight grams. How much are they they're called? They say,
usually about twenty five grams, right, And that's called the
Mexican ounce. Why is it called Mexican ounce? Because you
already know you're gonna get ripped off for that amount
of dope, because you're dealing with underground dope dealers, right,
And then plus they jack each other, they cut their dope,
(31:57):
they do all kinds of things with one another that
results and internal friction as well.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
This is a question I've asked you for another gang expert,
I wanted your take on this. As we're wrapping up,
we see a lot of people who dress up like
gang members who are not gang members. We see teenagers
that are going around with the baggy clothes and they
look like it. Well, we didn't count. So let's say
doctor Carlos walks out looking like a gang member, he's
(32:24):
got the certain colors that had whatever it may be,
and I run into a real gang member, or what
happens to me.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
You're gonna get challenged, you know by the way that,
hey man, where are you from? When they ask you
that question, there's no correct answer. You can't say Bisbee, Arizona,
and then you get a pass. You know, by the
time they ask you that question, they've already determined that
you must be in a gang. So you're what they're
(32:54):
looking for. Is either you confirming that by saying, yeah, man,
I'm from Third Street and then they attack you, or
you say no, man, I'm not from nowhere. Then you're
ranking on your gang and then they attack you for that,
for being a coward. So we had an incident in
Los Angeles where they asked this guy and he was
on his bunch bench bus bench, and asked him where's
(33:17):
he from? And he said Arizona. Well, Arizona's a street
in Los Angeles that has a very strong gang. They
killed him when he turned out to be from Phoenix, Arizona. Okay,
but you dress like that, and what they'll do they'll
watch rappers or or these music groups and then imitate
the way they look and then get challenged. A lot
of them. I see a lot of them with tattoo.
(33:38):
I study prison inque. You know tattoos because they all
mean a bunch of stuff. But you don't get a
tattoo just because you can. You have to and be
given permission to get a tattoo. So some white kid
gets the lightning boats tattooed on the side of his neck.
He doesn't realize you have to pay for that. When
you go to jail, they're going to ask you where'd
you get your lightning boats? How did you earn them?
(34:02):
If you didn't earn them, you're gonna be called to account.
They're gonna beat you or are they gonna make you
do what you're supposed to have done to get those
lightning bolts. And usually lightning bolts means you attack a minority,
so they will require you to attack a minority in
the jail or prison. So if you go around the
Big Iron Cross, you know, I see a lot of
(34:24):
motorcycle guys adopting the Big Iron Cross. Well, you better
be careful. You know, you're gonna get that stuff on
and then you're gonna go to jail from some minor thing.
But those jail people take those things seriously. And the
same thing with the Hispanic gangs and their tattoos of
you know, various prison tattoos that they haven't earned. Well
(34:46):
you haven't earned them. Somebody's gonna ask you about it,
and you're gonna have to pay for it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
That's fascinating. Boy. I wish we had more time to
discuss the different tattoos. I didn't realize that. Yeah, how
about the tear drop. I've heard that a lot. You
see that in the movies. Is that what is that that?
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Originally there's a lot of different versions that say that
the tear drop was when you did one year and
the Youth Authority, and then they colored it in when
it was five years. It was also used like if
somebody killed your homeboy, you're crying for your homeboy, and
then when you sought vengeance, then you colored it in.
So both those two stories are pretty prevalent. But now
(35:23):
it's become just a popular thing. And one thing about
the placement of a tattoo on your face is it's
different than a tattoo on your shoulder that you can cover.
You're claiming this gang or this affiliation. If you broadcast
it on your face, then it's much more serious. You're
(35:43):
a hope to die gangmber, right, you don't care, you're
not trying to hide it, and so you're going to
be challenged much more often.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Some of those ms thirteens individuals that we've seen on
some of these video clips or documentaries that have their
whole neck in the part of their face. It's almost
like a Kamakazi mission in a sense, or a suicide
mission for them.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
You're saying, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Very dangerous individuals, then.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Very dangerous, very dangerous. We had this I got this
picture from the Probation Department in Los Angeles with this
guy that had thirteen on his face and Surenho on
the top. And he was appoint for a job as
a probation officer. And they said, could this be a problem.
I said, hell, yes, this guy can't talk to people.
He's broadcasting that he's sureno, you know, he's already saying
(36:32):
he's a gang member. That's the other thing gang prevention programs.
Having an ex gang member and running your gang prevention
programmers like having Chiesh and Chong tell your kids about
the evils of marijuana. Okay, it doesn't work. No matter
what they say, the kids perceived them as a representative
(36:52):
of the gang. How did he get that platform to
be able to speak to them because he's a gang member? Right,
So no matter what he said, I used to be
a gang number. But it doesn't matter. They don't hear that.
What they hear is I don't want to be like
that guy. I mean, look, even the police respecting you know,
they put him in front of the class.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Okay, yeah, sure, you know. It's something I've read a
couple of times. I don't know how real it is
or not, but I've heard that there are actually some
member gang there has become police officers or things like that,
or really confuse issues or maybe attorneys or whatnot. Is
that true?
Speaker 4 (37:32):
You ever heard that? Yes, yes, there is. There's a
couple of different versions of that. One. You have a
kid who grew up in a gang area, who is
a peripheral gang member. He goes into military service, he
serves his country, he moves away from the gang life,
he comes back on and becomes a police officer. He's
(37:54):
still owes that gang something, and they may call on
him at some time for that. Uh, you know the
fact that he's left the gang with unofficial means, and
so they might call on him. And then they're gang members.
The skinheads especially, we're told they should get jobs, they
(38:14):
should become lawyers, they should become policemen, they should become
doctors and grow hair and dressing suits. But they still
keep the skinhead philosophies, so that that happens to the Uh.
The Hell's Angels for a long time had a recruitment
where they would get their women to date cops, okay,
(38:36):
and so they would be intelligent sources and also compromise
the police officers in integrity. So all those things happen.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Right, Crazy stuff, Boy, I wish we had more time, Sergeant.
We have to bring it back from war.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
We glad to come back. A lot of people need
to hear these things because they have these warped stereotypes
that that are not true. I'm sure you know.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Well, I'm learning a lot more. I mean every time
I interview or speak with you off camera or other individuals,
It's amazing how much stuff I realized either I never
knew or knew incorrectly. I was misinformed. Movies are just
they're fun to watch. But I'll tell you it's a
lot of times not very accurate at all. No, even
(39:26):
if you have the individuals are trying to consult. Sometimes
I write about consultants that go on shows and they
just get flustered because they're now listening to or.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Yeah, happened to me. Yeah, Michael Jackson's beat it. Yeah,
I was the technical advisor. I brought all the gang
members to that, and you know, I try to convince them,
you know, some of the things you don't do to
gang members, and they, of course they did them. And
then when they found out that they didn't like Michael
(39:59):
Jackson's em and in ways and they were going to
attack him. So I had to hold him back all
the crips, it was East Coast crips and they they
didn't like him, so he had to hide in his trailer.
But most of the shoot the Hispanics and that I
(40:19):
had the fifty Hispanics and fifty blocks and they can't
mix because they're at war, so we had to control that.
I told him, hey, you're all getting paid. Wait till
after you get paid, then you can fight.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I can't wait. Now I have to watch beat it again.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Well, thank you so much again, Sergeant Baltimore for being here.
We truly appreciate it. And thank you also for your service. Well,
thank you, thank you very much for your service.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
Well, thank you for what you're doing. I think this
is badly needed. That they need to see policemen in
a proper perspective, and that's not coming from our.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Media, Absolutely not. It isn't. And I like to actually
give it more too that maybe we can bring it
back and have a discussion on that, or even a
panel with you and maybe some other friends of yours
and have that discussion a little bit more about social media,
about media and the prescript portrayal of police officers. Folks
that wraps up today's show. We had a lot of
(41:16):
fun stuff and a lot of interesting stuff, and hopefully
we enjoyed that. Remember you can follow Inside the Badge
everywhere Instagram, you can follow us on Twitter at inside
the Badge LinkedIn, as well as YouTube. When you go
to YouTube, hit subscribe and hit that little belts we
can get notified for all these great interviews and catch
our spinoff. I think that's where we're going to bring
Sergeant Baltimore back too. We're gonna have a spinoff with
Trooper Casey, former retired trooper. He was a police officer
(41:38):
for I think nine years and then became a trooper
for ten, and we're gonna do a special show called
Watch Your six So you definitely want to be it
turns out. Thank you so much everyone, catching it all
next time.
Welcome to Understanding Gangs. This podcast examined street and prison
gang structure and activity in the United States from the
perspective of law enforcement academics and former gang members.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Let's get started in expense F three tensions of defense.
If you want a past test, you could keep it too,
says I don't want to be another tonguet on a head.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome everyone. I'm doctor Carlos, professor of forensic Psychology and
your host of Inside the Badge, where we try to
bridge the gap between law enforcement and the community. With
me today as a special guest, Richard Valdemar. You know
anything about gangs? You know about Richard Valdemar. Sergeant Richard
Valdemar retired from the La County Sherifes Department after spending
most of his thirty three years on the job combatting gangs.
(00:51):
For the last twenty years, he was assigned a Major
Crimes Bureau. He was also cross and designated as an
FBI agent for ten years of his career when he
served on the Federal Metropolitan Gang Task Force. From nineteen
ninety five until his retirement in two thousand and four,
Richard was a member of the California Prison Prison Gang
Task Force helping prosecute members of the Mexican mafia. We
(01:11):
don't have a whole day for all the stuff that
he's done. Welcome down to the show without further ado,
mister Develtimore. Welcome, sergeant, Thank you, thank you for being here.
This is an honor and I truly appreciate. I'm looking
forward to it. If we're going to learn about something
that seems to be pretty prevalent in everybody's life, which
is gangs. But before we get to that, I want
(01:32):
to find out what motivated Sergeant Vaalimore have become a
police officer.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
That's kind of a funny story. I grew up in
the city of Compton, in the area called Willabrook, which
is the worst area in Compton, and I ran a
teen center when I was a young activist in the
Willowbrook community, the War on Poverty program and the Team
Center program in the Catholic teens in a program, So
(02:00):
I ran a thing for kids there and if anything,
I would be probably considered today activist anti gang sixty six.
I went into the military and gets what the army
maybe a military policeman, so in as serving as a
(02:21):
police officer. In the military police, I met a lot
of good police officers and kind of changed my mind.
So when I came out of the service, I joined
the La County Sheriff's Department in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, let me ask you this. We'll start getting into
the topic of gangs. Did you encounter gang members early
on in your career while working in the prison system,
and that something that happened to you.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I encountered gangs when I was growing up. My neighborhood
was infested with gangs, Black and Hispanic gangs. And when
I went into the military, of course, the gangs are
prevalent in the military as well. Army doesn't like to
admit it, but we have gang to the military. And
when I came out, I joined the Sheriff's Department, and
I really did want to work gangs. But when I
(03:07):
went to the jail, I found that prison gangs controlled
the jails and prisons. Those are the big four, the
Mexican Mafia, Ruster Familiar, Aaron Brotherhood, and the Black Girl Family.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Oh wow, so one from almost from each race. It
sounds like, wow, let me ask you this, and this
maybe will come along throughout our conversation. But you said
you grew up in an area with gangs involved, something
we always hear about in the media, maybe in some
academic circles. Oh, you know, they grew up in a
(03:39):
gang area. They grew up in a poor social economic area.
That's why they joined gangs. Why didn't you join the gang.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Well, I'm gonna have to say that ninety percent of
the people that grew up with me never joined a gang.
By very few of them actually joined a gang. And
the other part of that that a lot of researchers
don't see is that where you're getting your information is
from another gang member, right, and he doesn't necessarily tell
you the truth. So if you ask them when did
they join the gang, they'll tell you I was twelve
(04:06):
years old, you know, and I had to join the
gang because my whole family is That's not true. That's
not true at all. You know, we have families where
everyone was in the gang except one kid. That kid
is a little nerd. And then on the other side
of the fence, we see these very well to do
families who are the rest of the family is not
gang related at all, and one kid is gang related.
(04:29):
So it's a choice. It might be pushed by economics
or social conditions and abuse and that type of thing,
but it's actually a choice.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Interesting, it seems like it falls along the lines of
the eighty twenty year old twenty percent. Probably less than
that commit eighty percent of the crimes or gang activity.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yeah, I would say eighty percent in these kind of communities,
eighty percent of the crimes are gang related. Are they're
victims of gang crime?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, let's do an analysis a little bit now regards
to gangs, and then we'll talk more specifically about current events.
But evolution in regards to gangs when you knew them,
were living in the community, as you grew up, throughout
going into the police to the sheriff's department. Have the
gangs changed over the last few decades.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yes, certainly, they don't dress the same. The dynamics of
how the gangs are formed remains the same. You know,
they may wear football jerseys now instead of penaltons, but
there's still the same hierarchy and expected behavior code of
(05:37):
conducts that we saw in the old days. In fact,
the old gang members say that the new gang members
are out of order, they're wild, they're not as disciplined
as the old gang members were. They allow things that
old time gang members would never have allowed.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Do you think that's true? Seeing it from the side
of a sheriff's department, from everybody you work with the
thirty years, you think they are in less disciplined.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yes, we're getting influenced by society. Outside society the gang members,
you know, terrorism affects them, the cartels, the brutality of
the cartels. You know, gang members in Los Angeles normally
would not attack your grandmother, or attack you at a funeral,
or attack your mother or your little nephew. But cartels
(06:28):
don't have those restrictions. They'll attack anyone and they will
kill the whole family if they have to. Well, some
of that's leaking over to the to our street games.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So their moral code is sorry to dissipate.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yes, let me.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Ask you this. You talked about clothes. How about technology?
How's it changed gangs over the last three or four
decades A lot?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
That's probably that's probably the biggest change. You know, A
lowrider car was at the farthest technology that these guys
had when I first started. But now, uh, some of
them owned, you know, computer companies and uh, pager companies,
they have record labels. They you know, they they connect
(07:12):
on the internet internationally, right like Marisalvatrucha, you know, connecting
internationally with their their home boys back in El Salvador.
So so all this has led to more sophistication.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, how about income sources? Now you mentioned you own
uh pagers or the telephone or cell phone companies or
pager companies, I think you mentioned a minute ago. How
about income sources? Is that something that was new then
owning these kind of properties. Uh, drug trafficking is that
still one.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Of the right. Drug trafficking is number one, that's the
drug in Human trafficking is a number one money makers.
But more and more with seeing white collar crime, you know,
identity theft, those type of.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Things interesting, so they're still they have increased there are
levels of income sources.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Then, yeah, now let.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Me ask you this. I'm going to try to spill
some myths and trying to hear some of the rumors
that I've been hearing around the wire over the course
of the last year. Some people say that the gang
members a lot of times are kind of the footmen
for the cartel. They do all the dirty work or
there may be hired as the people to go on
the streets to sell drugs. Is that accurate.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yes, They've always been in charge of distribution of the narcotics.
You know, the source is going to be cartels Columbia
and Mexico primarily, and then the drugs are smuggled, and
that involves the Mexican cartels bringing the smuggling products through
and then the street gang members distributing and collecting the
(08:48):
fees and then kicking back the money to these groups.
But more recently it's become much more sophisticated. I talk
about what I call the Unholy Trinity, the alliance of
American street gangs, Mexican drug cartels, and international terrorists. And
the international terrorists get into it by the finances. You know,
(09:11):
all the terrorist groups are financed by the sales of
drugs and humans. Okay, so in order to conduct their
terrorist activities, they are involved in the drug industry. They
also are involved in the banking industry, and so they
fund a lot of this. At one time, almost all
the funding came through Panama and Noriega, but now it's
(09:33):
spread out a little bit and you have different countries
in Africa and Central America that are the banking centers,
but they're primarily set up by Middle Eastern interests.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Wow. So that's a pretty intricate wab we got going on.
How does China play a role here? Is that the
federoyl role?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
First of all, just think about meth. Almost all the
meth comes from a Federan And who's the source of
a federal China? China is a federal. Where's our opiates
coming from? Right? They're coming from Afghanistan? Right? Uh So
these countries are are as as the cartels. And Columbia
(10:13):
once said these these are the poor man's atomic bomb.
These are the way they destroyed the United States is
by providing them with these drugs which destroyer society. And
in the Colombian cartel case, they actually said that.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
You know, it's interesting. I was watching a movie the
other day I've seen I've seen a different version. It
was about the Gary Webb, the journalist remember him from
the I think it was a San Jose or another
Mercury or something like that newspaper up north. Yeah, he
was the one that discovered, I supposedly discovered the CIA
funding drugs to be sent into l A and all that,
remember that, right. I guess my point was is it
(10:54):
as complicated as that or did we have these kind
of issues were floating around in that, not in regards
to the CIA, but do we have these issues of
of these intricate webs happening.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, yes, And I think this CIA is included in that.
Sometimes the best enemy of our enemy happens to be
a drug lord, and so we wind up supporting a
drug lord, uh, in order to fight communism. Well, I
don't know if that works. But then they also do
(11:26):
the same thing, right, they fark supported by the Communists,
and they're a drug group. Zetta. We trained as anti
drug guys in Mexico and they turned out to be
their own cartel. You know, it's hard to hard to
know the players.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
And the thin interesting thing about that movie too, it
sounds like cocaine when it hit the streets made a
huge change.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Well, there's always been cocaine since the twenties. But what
happened was rock cocaine. When they begin to rocket and
sell it, uh, an entrepreneur like sales of rock and
it went crazy. That's probably the most violent eighty four
through eighty six, by the most violent time in Los
(12:11):
Angeles history, and it was rock houses that were our problem,
and even they called people rockheads and pluckheads, derogatory terms
for people who used rock.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I remember I was watching The Corner. I don't know
if you ever saw The Corner from Baltimore. It was
a sixth as a little mini series on HBO, and
they attributed the same thing to when the introduction of
crack came in, it just really decimated their city, and
it seems to be a pattern on that.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Yes, I like that series that the characters were very realistic,
were they.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yes, there you go, folks, definitely catch the Corner. I
believe the Wire two is pretty deep.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Wire was very good, but I would say watch Cicatio.
The second Chicadio is even better than the first one. Cicadio, Yes,
showing the complicated backing of US government and the Mexican
government and the cartels all funding each Other's hit me.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
In interesting stuff. So we're gonna have to check that out, folks.
We've got a lot of stuff. You can see some
of those things down here below. We'll put the names
down here so everybody can catch that. So let me
ask you this a backped a little bit I didn't
want to, but I want to have typically just on
of it. Sergeant so a man of Solituca. You mentioned
earlier MS thirteen as they were commonly known for everybody
(13:26):
out there. They came in here in the eighties, but
they weren't. They didn't exist. If I'm correct, They came
in as a former militia form Mil Salvador, losing that
fight over there. If I remember my history, correct, If
I do, I don't know, you can correct me if
I'm wrong. Of course they came into La, but they
encountered some difficulties here in La. There was a rivalry
(13:47):
going on.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
And my accurate on this, well, that's that's the common
uh history that you hear in the sound bite, But
it's more complicated than that. The war now Salvador involved
children soldiers on both sides, and I mean twelve year
olds carrying AK forty seven killing one another, Okay, And
(14:10):
that's both the pro government and the anti government, and
the anti government won, right. So now almost everybody in
El Salvador is from the communist revolutionary group which was
backed by the PLO. Okay, But the ones who fled
the revolution came to the Los Angeles area. Many of
(14:30):
them took an oath to the devil when they were fighting,
you know, they became heroin addicts, and they took an
oath to the devil. They land in the United States
in the mid eighties, and what do we have going
on in our communities? Then we have the heavy metal
thing going on. So mars Alvatrucha originally becomes a heavy
(14:51):
metal rock group. Stoners are called stoners. There were stoners.
They still maintained the hand sign of the heavy metal
people horn hands. Okay, since they worshiped the devil or
they had allegiances to the devil there. They had the
allegiances here with the heavy metal groups. Eventually they become
(15:11):
more and more like Hispanic gang members and they leave
that stoner persona and become more like Hispanic gang members,
if we traditionally know. Originally when they land, some of
them joined the Eighteenth Street Gang because they settled in
the Peico Union District. So because they joined the Eighteenth
(15:33):
Street Gang, and later on there becomes a mars A
Vatruci gang, which is Salvadorian. There's this rivalry between those
two groups which persists to this day. And wherever you
find MS thirteen. You'll find eighteenth Street. They'll call it
Mara eighteen in Central America, but it's the same gang.
(15:54):
And so that that happened, and they became more and
more violent against one another. These are soldiers who who
saw murder and you know, killings in the streets all
day long. And now they're not twelve anymore. Now they're sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen years old, and they still have that same attitude.
So they were looked on as being so terrible, but
(16:18):
they were no more terrible than many of the gangs
we already had. We had the Jamaicans operating and their
favorite weaponism machete, and they were terrible as well. And
you know, people said they were the worst gang that
was ever going to come.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
The Posse I think it was called.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yes, they were political, by the way, right and left,
the same thing the Posse's were. What happened I'm hearing
is that some senator or congressmen got assaulted in Washington,
DC during this period by members of the mars Alvatrucha.
So suddenly the federal government said the most dangerous gang
(16:58):
in the whole world was mars Selvia through job you know,
until you're the victim of their crimes. You know, you
don't even know who they are. But when you become
the victim of their crimes, then all of a sudden
they become the most important thing in the world. So
you see this national geographic cover that says the most
dangerous gang in the world, you know, and it shows
picture of a Marsovatucci guy. Well, in truth in Los Angeles,
(17:20):
Mars Latrucci was paying tribute to the Mexican mafia and
they were falling under all the dictates of the prison
gang while they were in prison. In fact, they were
assigned to kill Damien Football Williams, the guy who beat
up the people that were passing by in the truck
during the Rodney King thing where he hit with the
(17:43):
brick and stuff. Well, they were assigned to kill that
guy as proof that they were now royal serenos. So
we picked up those kites coming out of the jail
system kites or prisoner's notes, and we picked those coming
out of the jail system right after the riots, and
we had to protect Damian Williams from from the Marcela
(18:04):
Truca and Hispanic gangers because they were going to kill him.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Oh, Wow.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
So then they became MS thirteen. Thirteen is the thirteenth
letter of the alphabet, and that stands for MME Mexican Mafia.
So they were paying tribute to the Mexican Mafia, and
they have somewhere along the line all the time. But
what happens is they move further east, there's less influence
of the Mexican Mafia. So if you talk to a
(18:30):
fifteen year old in Washington and ask him if he's
paying taxes to the Mexican mafia, he's going to tell
you Noah. But if he went to prison, guess what
he's gonna pay taxes. It was more dangerous Mexican Mafia
or the MS thirteen. It's the Mexican Mafia that's more
(18:52):
dangerous because they're consolidating these groups and making alliances with
the cartels and terrace and they may that makes them
very danger.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And I appreciate that, Sergeant. That's one of the things
about the show we try to do is dispel mints
and trying to get accurate stories, and that's something you
hit the nail on the head a lot of times
with the media or politicians will only focus on what
managed to them at the moment, right, I think it's
throwing aside. I remember listening to Isis and beheadings, and
I'm thinking, well, wait a minute, how about the cartels
in Mexico. It's about three hours away doing the same thing.
(19:23):
I mean, yeah, they're not videotaping it, mind you, but
still throwing it off there. Well, that's true they did,
that's sure. You're right. Actually they did to take the
heads off the freeways. I think, right, yeah, yeah, it's
funny stuff. We're pretty struss. Let me ask you this.
I also heard a lot of times a little bit
(19:43):
of history again, but some of these Hispanic gangs, when
they started growing, there was a huge conflict between the
Hispanic games and the African American gangs because obviously the
population was exploding the Hispanic side. Is that pretty accurate too,
were being they were pushing out the African Americans from
a lot of territories.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Having grown up in Compton, I can tell you that
there's always been this rivalry between these minority groups. When
when we, as Hispanics, were the minority in a black neighborhood,
guess who got picked on, right? Uh So these gangs
have always had this rivalry. But there's been this tense
troops that, you know, since there's more of you and
(20:21):
we don't want to start this war. And never and
never blew up to a full bown riot until the
Rodney King incident. During the Rodney King incident, when this guy,
Damian Williams was pulling people out of the car, he
pulled a Mexican man out of a car. He beat him.
He uh, he spray painted him with spray paint and
(20:43):
did terrible things to him. I'm not sure even survived it.
But that videotape was shown in the jail system. The
Hispanics saw that, and the war was on. They declared
war instantly on all blacks. That's why we had to
protect Amian Williams and they began to riot. Now, the
(21:03):
rioting in the jail went to the state system pretty
in the writing in the state system. Then the writing
came all the way to Arizona and all the way
to Las Vegas, Hispanics attacking blacks. Then it became open
warfare against blacks. But I think it's fun. It's primarily
about the control of the drug trafficking in south central
(21:24):
Los Angeles, which the Blacks controlled. And now the Hispanics want.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Well, they still control it now, the Blacks. So it
always stops with the buck stops, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yes, it's money, and that's how they finance everything they do.
Every gang has two arms. They have a militant war
making arm. That's the left arm. Right that's the arm
that we concentrate all our attention on. But they need
finances to run the military arm. That's their money making arm.
The right hand is the real problem. We need to
work on that right hand, follow the money back to it,
(21:58):
and dry up with sources so they can't build this
left hand to be so powerful and violent and effective.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Let's do it if we can. We can do a
little bit of a breakdown in regards to the gang
structure to spell a couple of minutes too that we'll
get to a little bit. But the gangs, they're actually
hierarchical in a sense, there's a hierarchy.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
There's two two major differences. East Coast gangs are nothing
like West Coast gangs. Okay, so we're talking about the
you know an almighty Latin Kings are we're talking about
you know Black Rilla, I mean Chicago Disciples. Okay, those
(22:41):
are hierarchical because they actually have a corporate structure. They
have a president or a king, and then they have
a ruling council and then they have not at the
bottom a foot soldier. On the West coast, that doesn't exist.
On the West Coast, we have more like a communist
or a terrorist structure. It's unified by its but it's
made up of groups of clicks subclicks within the group,
(23:06):
and there they act independently except when there's something that
threatens the whole gang, and then they act in unison.
But each one is responsible for making their own money,
you know, protecting their own group and that type of thing.
So if you see graffiti from the Hispanic gangs in
the West Coast, you're going to see the primary name
eighteenth Street, okay, and then down below it you'll see
(23:29):
the subgroup. What group are they? The tiny Whinos?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Uh yeah, the crypts of bloods are follow the Hispanic example.
So it's very difficult to fight against this cell like structure.
Very easy to prosecute the you know, the corporate structure,
because you just attack the top right and you take
out the leadership and they're gone. But if you attack
(23:54):
the subgroups within the West Coast gangs, you're only breaking
up a little cell. Then the gang continues to function.
And and so when you prosecute uh singly you know,
like you like many of the things that you see
that are reused against the various gangs. Uh, you know
(24:15):
where they do the sweeps or they prosecute this guy
and they say he's the leader of the gang. Not
the leader of the gang. He is one of the
leaders of the gang, Okay, But you take him off,
he doesn't. The gang doesn't slow down. It fills that
void with you know, somebody who's charismatical will take that
that job on himself. He doesn't get appointed. Uh. The
(24:37):
nearest thing to any kind of leadership in the Hispanic
gang most most gangs is a OG. In the Black gang,
and call it o g and in the Hispanic gang,
you call it a veteran vetterano Is is a guy
he's not. He can't tell them what to do, but
because of his experience, they defer to his opinion. So
they'll say, hey, man, we're gonna go right on so
(24:59):
and so, and he tell them, hey, stupid, don't write
on them. You know it comes will be looking for
you today, man, give them a week. They're right on him. Okay,
Now he didn't order them not to do it. He
appealed to their senses, and because of his experience, he
inflicts his opinion into the to the situation and delays it.
(25:21):
So those vetnandos are are like the wise men of
the gang, and they go to them for advice, but
they don't control anything. None of them can say let's
go to war. It has to be consensus to go
to war. On the other hand, on the East coast,
you know, King so and So from the from the
Latin kings can say let's go to war, and everybody
(25:42):
has to go to war. So we have a more
democratic structure in the Hispanic gangs of the West coast.
And this is why the Mexican mafia is so effective.
There's no one leader of the Mexican mafia. They're each
considered a leader and each controlled very street gangs below them.
So you have this coalition, and that's the very dangerous part.
(26:05):
Gangs are, by their nature coalitions. The only successful prosecution
of gangs is the conspiracy laws, especially rical that's the
only way we can really affect them. The only way
we're going to do it against all these international gangs
is through international cooperation. You know, we have to solicit
(26:27):
help from you know, international police organizations because it's no
longer just our problem. We've infected everybody else.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Let me ask you that that's great, thank you very
much for that. Is there a power sweedgle to be
able to get these individual leaders that we see those
subgroups that are floating around? I mean, how do they
become a leader if their leader gets taken out? For instance?
Is it kind of like, okay, well he's he's been
around the longest, he's got the most guns. I mean,
how do they pretty much? That way?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
Pretty much that way is the facto leadership. You know,
there's fifteen guys and somebody will step out of the
crowd and say, hey, I've been here the longest, this
is what I've done time for. This is who's my backup?
And so and so in the Mexican mafia is my uncle,
and then they pass pass him to the leadership. But
he's only the leader as long as he's working. Well.
(27:17):
If he becomes a problem to them, they will take
him out. They'll kill him. Whenever you see murder within
the gang, So you have a homeboy killing homeboy. That's
the influence of the Mexican mafia or prison gang over
the street gang, because their alliance to the prison gang
is greater than their alliance to their homeboy. Wow, that's scary.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It is very scary. Let me. Actually, we're going to
try a couple of myths here and I don't know
if they're miss and you're going to tell us as
they are. Once you join a gang, can you leave?
You've heard a lot of times people say you can't
leave you Is it true or not? And you'll leave?
Speaker 4 (27:53):
This is now we're talking traditionally, Okay, there's always going
to be an exception. Okay. Traditionally, when you in a gang,
you're in for life. Okay. When they jump you in,
there's no formal there's one formal way to get out.
That's you appeal to your home boys and you tell
them you need to get out of a gang, and
then they jump you out. When they jump you in,
(28:14):
they love you. When they jump you out, they hate you.
So guess what happened when they jump you out? Okay,
Usually it's some physical They you wear a scar if
you had, you know, a third street gang tattooed on
your arm. They're good, that's gotta go, okay, And they
don't take you to the you know, doctor and have
(28:34):
a laser laser it off, right, They cut it off.
They burn it off. You see this in the Hell's
Angels that they fall out of favor, they lose their
patch and they have a tattoo of the Hell's Angels
on them. They burn the patch off. Okay, okay, So
you don't want to You don't want to formally ask
permission to leave the gang because that's very painful and
could result in your death. So very often we have
(28:57):
what they call the geographic They desert. Okay, when you
desert from the military, you're wanted man, And the same
thing happens to the gang. You desert, you're wanted man.
If anybody sees you and knows you're a deserter, they'll
kill you. Okay, so you have to be afraid of that.
But what I say is, well, the problem is that
(29:19):
when they geographically desert, they go to another place just
like the place they just left. They buy their dope
at the same kind of place, and eventually somebody's going
to say, hey, aren't you so and so from such
and such, and then you're in trouble. But if they
change culturally, they get a job, you go to junior college,
(29:40):
they never get challenged. Why because there's no gang members there.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So if they leave maybe the city, go to another city,
join a junior college. It's very unlikely the lover of
openers or.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Just get out of that lifestyle, right, the drug crime lifestyle.
But if you stand a drug and crime lifestyle and
you go back into that underworld, you're going to get
found out.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
What happens if you change gangs.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
You can't change. That's that's like you going over to
the Russians.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
No triple agents allowed. Huh No, let me ask you this.
We've got a few minutes left here. We were talking
about them leaving the gangs. Sometimes I've heard they have
a high attrition rate. It kind of goes along the
same line. We're just talking about a lot of people
join gangs, or say they join gangs, but really don't
last very long.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Is that true, right? I would say that within the
first five or six years most of them defect, drop
out or killed, okay, or go they go to prison
with life sentences, you know, which effectively takes them off
the street. Of course, not in California. We release all
those people. But but it's supposed to take them off
(30:50):
the street. So as they get older, those veteranatos at
the top are very few, very few. They also, I'm
a disillusion with their own gang. You know, when they
first joined, they're fifteen, sixteen years old, they believe all
that hype. But after they've lived in the gang for
a while, I mean, the gang's made up of liars, cheaters, thugs, murderers,
(31:14):
and they're that way to their own friends, just like
they're that way to the general public. So I always
ask the narcists how many how many grams in an ounce?
Twenty eight right, how many of you ever bought an
ounce of dope? That's twenty eight grams? And they all
laugh because nobody's ever bought an ounce of dope. It's
(31:35):
twenty eight grams. How much are they they're called? They say,
usually about twenty five grams, right, And that's called the
Mexican ounce. Why is it called Mexican ounce? Because you
already know you're gonna get ripped off for that amount
of dope, because you're dealing with underground dope dealers, right,
And then plus they jack each other, they cut their dope,
(31:57):
they do all kinds of things with one another that
results and internal friction as well.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
This is a question I've asked you for another gang expert,
I wanted your take on this. As we're wrapping up,
we see a lot of people who dress up like
gang members who are not gang members. We see teenagers
that are going around with the baggy clothes and they
look like it. Well, we didn't count. So let's say
doctor Carlos walks out looking like a gang member, he's
(32:24):
got the certain colors that had whatever it may be,
and I run into a real gang member, or what
happens to me.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
You're gonna get challenged, you know by the way that,
hey man, where are you from? When they ask you
that question, there's no correct answer. You can't say Bisbee, Arizona,
and then you get a pass. You know, by the
time they ask you that question, they've already determined that
you must be in a gang. So you're what they're
(32:54):
looking for. Is either you confirming that by saying, yeah, man,
I'm from Third Street and then they attack you, or
you say no, man, I'm not from nowhere. Then you're
ranking on your gang and then they attack you for that,
for being a coward. So we had an incident in
Los Angeles where they asked this guy and he was
on his bunch bench bus bench, and asked him where's
(33:17):
he from? And he said Arizona. Well, Arizona's a street
in Los Angeles that has a very strong gang. They
killed him when he turned out to be from Phoenix, Arizona. Okay,
but you dress like that, and what they'll do they'll
watch rappers or or these music groups and then imitate
the way they look and then get challenged. A lot
of them. I see a lot of them with tattoo.
(33:38):
I study prison inque. You know tattoos because they all
mean a bunch of stuff. But you don't get a
tattoo just because you can. You have to and be
given permission to get a tattoo. So some white kid
gets the lightning boats tattooed on the side of his neck.
He doesn't realize you have to pay for that. When
you go to jail, they're going to ask you where'd
you get your lightning boats? How did you earn them?
(34:02):
If you didn't earn them, you're gonna be called to account.
They're gonna beat you or are they gonna make you
do what you're supposed to have done to get those
lightning bolts. And usually lightning bolts means you attack a minority,
so they will require you to attack a minority in
the jail or prison. So if you go around the
Big Iron Cross, you know, I see a lot of
(34:24):
motorcycle guys adopting the Big Iron Cross. Well, you better
be careful. You know, you're gonna get that stuff on
and then you're gonna go to jail from some minor thing.
But those jail people take those things seriously. And the
same thing with the Hispanic gangs and their tattoos of
you know, various prison tattoos that they haven't earned. Well
(34:46):
you haven't earned them. Somebody's gonna ask you about it,
and you're gonna have to pay for it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
That's fascinating. Boy. I wish we had more time to
discuss the different tattoos. I didn't realize that. Yeah, how
about the tear drop. I've heard that a lot. You
see that in the movies. Is that what is that that?
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Originally there's a lot of different versions that say that
the tear drop was when you did one year and
the Youth Authority, and then they colored it in when
it was five years. It was also used like if
somebody killed your homeboy, you're crying for your homeboy, and
then when you sought vengeance, then you colored it in.
So both those two stories are pretty prevalent. But now
(35:23):
it's become just a popular thing. And one thing about
the placement of a tattoo on your face is it's
different than a tattoo on your shoulder that you can cover.
You're claiming this gang or this affiliation. If you broadcast
it on your face, then it's much more serious. You're
(35:43):
a hope to die gangmber, right, you don't care, you're
not trying to hide it, and so you're going to
be challenged much more often.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Some of those ms thirteens individuals that we've seen on
some of these video clips or documentaries that have their
whole neck in the part of their face. It's almost
like a Kamakazi mission in a sense, or a suicide
mission for them.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
You're saying, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Very dangerous individuals, then.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Very dangerous, very dangerous. We had this I got this
picture from the Probation Department in Los Angeles with this
guy that had thirteen on his face and Surenho on
the top. And he was appoint for a job as
a probation officer. And they said, could this be a problem.
I said, hell, yes, this guy can't talk to people.
He's broadcasting that he's sureno, you know, he's already saying
(36:32):
he's a gang member. That's the other thing gang prevention programs.
Having an ex gang member and running your gang prevention
programmers like having Chiesh and Chong tell your kids about
the evils of marijuana. Okay, it doesn't work. No matter
what they say, the kids perceived them as a representative
(36:52):
of the gang. How did he get that platform to
be able to speak to them because he's a gang member? Right,
So no matter what he said, I used to be
a gang number. But it doesn't matter. They don't hear that.
What they hear is I don't want to be like
that guy. I mean, look, even the police respecting you know,
they put him in front of the class.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Okay, yeah, sure, you know. It's something I've read a
couple of times. I don't know how real it is
or not, but I've heard that there are actually some
member gang there has become police officers or things like that,
or really confuse issues or maybe attorneys or whatnot. Is
that true?
Speaker 4 (37:32):
You ever heard that? Yes, yes, there is. There's a
couple of different versions of that. One. You have a
kid who grew up in a gang area, who is
a peripheral gang member. He goes into military service, he
serves his country, he moves away from the gang life,
he comes back on and becomes a police officer. He's
(37:54):
still owes that gang something, and they may call on
him at some time for that. Uh, you know the
fact that he's left the gang with unofficial means, and
so they might call on him. And then they're gang members.
The skinheads especially, we're told they should get jobs, they
(38:14):
should become lawyers, they should become policemen, they should become
doctors and grow hair and dressing suits. But they still
keep the skinhead philosophies, so that that happens to the Uh.
The Hell's Angels for a long time had a recruitment
where they would get their women to date cops, okay,
(38:36):
and so they would be intelligent sources and also compromise
the police officers in integrity. So all those things happen.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Right, Crazy stuff, Boy, I wish we had more time, Sergeant.
We have to bring it back from war.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
We glad to come back. A lot of people need
to hear these things because they have these warped stereotypes
that that are not true. I'm sure you know.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Well, I'm learning a lot more. I mean every time
I interview or speak with you off camera or other individuals,
It's amazing how much stuff I realized either I never
knew or knew incorrectly. I was misinformed. Movies are just
they're fun to watch. But I'll tell you it's a
lot of times not very accurate at all. No, even
(39:26):
if you have the individuals are trying to consult. Sometimes
I write about consultants that go on shows and they
just get flustered because they're now listening to or.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Yeah, happened to me. Yeah, Michael Jackson's beat it. Yeah,
I was the technical advisor. I brought all the gang
members to that, and you know, I try to convince them,
you know, some of the things you don't do to
gang members, and they, of course they did them. And
then when they found out that they didn't like Michael
(39:59):
Jackson's em and in ways and they were going to
attack him. So I had to hold him back all
the crips, it was East Coast crips and they they
didn't like him, so he had to hide in his trailer.
But most of the shoot the Hispanics and that I
(40:19):
had the fifty Hispanics and fifty blocks and they can't
mix because they're at war, so we had to control that.
I told him, hey, you're all getting paid. Wait till
after you get paid, then you can fight.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I can't wait. Now I have to watch beat it again.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Well, thank you so much again, Sergeant Baltimore for being here.
We truly appreciate it. And thank you also for your service. Well,
thank you, thank you very much for your service.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
Well, thank you for what you're doing. I think this
is badly needed. That they need to see policemen in
a proper perspective, and that's not coming from our.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Media, Absolutely not. It isn't. And I like to actually
give it more too that maybe we can bring it
back and have a discussion on that, or even a
panel with you and maybe some other friends of yours
and have that discussion a little bit more about social media,
about media and the prescript portrayal of police officers. Folks
that wraps up today's show. We had a lot of
(41:16):
fun stuff and a lot of interesting stuff, and hopefully
we enjoyed that. Remember you can follow Inside the Badge
everywhere Instagram, you can follow us on Twitter at inside
the Badge LinkedIn, as well as YouTube. When you go
to YouTube, hit subscribe and hit that little belts we
can get notified for all these great interviews and catch
our spinoff. I think that's where we're going to bring
Sergeant Baltimore back too. We're gonna have a spinoff with
Trooper Casey, former retired trooper. He was a police officer
(41:38):
for I think nine years and then became a trooper
for ten, and we're gonna do a special show called
Watch Your six So you definitely want to be it
turns out. Thank you so much everyone, catching it all
next time.
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