Speaker 1: What's upsite Gang. I know it's Monday and you usually
Speaker 1: expect an episode, but we're actually taking a little bit
Speaker 1: longer of a break just to refresh going into the
Speaker 1: end of the year. But we didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: you hanging. We have uploaded the first episode of Sires
Speaker 1: Castle's fantastic podcast, A Tradition of Violence, which is dealing
Speaker 1: with the issue of deputy gangs in the l A.
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department. This was brought to national attention and something
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the podcast before and I personally
Speaker 1: believe without the work of Sires and her colleagues, this
Speaker 1: would not have been an issue that would eventually have
Speaker 1: led to the ouster of the l A Sheriff, Alex Villaneueva.
Speaker 1: So this is a fantastic podcast. It's really really important
Speaker 1: information just to understand what's at stake and the idea
Speaker 1: of policing in our modern world. And if you like it,
Speaker 1: we highly encourage you to go and subscribe to the
Speaker 1: entire thing because it's fantastic and you don't want to
Speaker 1: miss it. Enjoying this podcast can sains explicit language and
Speaker 1: details acts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. There is
Speaker 1: a longstanding urban legend in Los Angeles County the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Department is the biggest gang on the streets. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about a metaphor for a police violence. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about a real gang. Members have matching tattoos. They get
Speaker 1: together and have meetings about the different crimes that they
Speaker 1: will get up to, stealing from people, brutally beating them,
Speaker 1: and even killing them. But this gang is even worse.
Speaker 1: They've got a badge, unlimited resources paid for by taxpayers,
Speaker 1: and the blessing of the courts and local government. And
Speaker 1: it's all true. My name is Serres Castle, and I'm
Speaker 1: a local l a reporter. I grew up out here
Speaker 1: and I've been curious about Deputy Gang since i was
Speaker 1: a kid. I heard stories about them from my older brother,
Speaker 1: teachers and kids at school. It never made sense to
Speaker 1: me that the people with badges who warned me about
Speaker 1: dangerous neighborhood gangs and went after people I knew for
Speaker 1: just associating with them, we're actually part of their own
Speaker 1: powerful criminal organization. A few journalists before me, like Sabrina
Speaker 1: Steele and Marie O'Connor, Tina dont and my Allow uncovered
Speaker 1: stories confirming that these gangs existed, but they only scratched
Speaker 1: the surface. I thought about deputy gangs for years. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know who they were, what exactly they got
Speaker 1: up to, and that never went away. After George Floyd
Speaker 1: was murdered on May, the world had a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about police. While I was covering a protest in
Speaker 1: response to his death, I was shot by a police
Speaker 1: officer with a rubber bullet. Even though I was wearing
Speaker 1: a press badge, carrying a bunch of equipment and yelling
Speaker 1: out to the officers that I was a member of
Speaker 1: the media. I watched a cop turn, make eye contact
Speaker 1: with me and shoot me. The impact made me fall
Speaker 1: into the street. Yeah, I was hurt pretty badly. I
Speaker 1: was bruised up and my ankle was in a cast
Speaker 1: for the next few months. The doctors told me to
Speaker 1: stay on the couch, but I didn't feel right just
Speaker 1: sitting still, so I decided to use the time to
Speaker 1: finally investigate. And what I found deeply disturbed me. This
Speaker 1: is a traditional violence, a history of deputy gangs in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. It's not hypo elice
Speaker 1: when the gangs look a big block gang. E's not
Speaker 1: say not, hippi Elice, when the gangs look a gang gang.
Speaker 1: The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has at least twenty
Speaker 1: gangs amongst its members. Officials at various government agencies from
Speaker 1: the local level here in l A County all the
Speaker 1: way up to the California state and federal agencies have
Speaker 1: known about the presence of these gangs for at least
Speaker 1: thirty years, and the first ever investigation was opened after
Speaker 1: Knock l A published my fifteen part series laying it
Speaker 1: all out in October. The l A County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 1: is led by Sheriff Alex Vianueva. Here's one of his
Speaker 1: campaign videos. While s Angela is my home and my community,
Speaker 1: as your sheriff, I'll use my experience both with the
Speaker 1: community and with the department to mend the relationships with
Speaker 1: our immigrant communities, Increase resources for training our deputies, make
Speaker 1: the sheriffs depart more effective, and make sure that every
Speaker 1: person will saying just counting their life safely. I'm Alex Vigenueva.
Speaker 1: In an election day, I hope I can count your book.
Speaker 1: The Los Angeles County Share to reform, rebuild, and restore
Speaker 1: our sheriffs. Alex Vienueva is about five ft seven with
Speaker 1: heavily lighted blue eyes and shortly cropped gray hair. He's
Speaker 1: usually wearing a gray suit with an official green Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Department name tag. If there was such a thing as
Speaker 1: a deputy gang, understanding the full knowledge what a gang means,
Speaker 1: we'd fire playing a simple I've yet to find one.
Speaker 1: In fact, if someone can find one, or a gang
Speaker 1: member who wears Tannon Green, please let me know. And
Speaker 1: they just don't exist. Viennueva was elected in after campaigning
Speaker 1: as a progressive Democrat, but as the years have gone on,
Speaker 1: he's overseen the resurrection of band deputy gang logos. He's
Speaker 1: rehired deputies fired for violating department policy, defied subpoenas. This
Speaker 1: stuff didn't start out of nowhere, Alex Viennueva wasn't made
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. All of this is a symptom of
Speaker 1: a larger problem with the culture of the l A.
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department. So what evidence we have says that they
Speaker 1: founded the l A Sheriff's Department in eighteen fifty that's
Speaker 1: Jessica Piko, a lawyer and writer. She researches sheriff accountability
Speaker 1: and is currently working on a book about sheriff's And
Speaker 1: so I want to caveat all the discussions about history
Speaker 1: with this sort of broad brush, which is that everything
Speaker 1: we have about the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and most
Speaker 1: other early police departments are written by law enforcement officers.
Speaker 1: So either it's information from media of the time, which
Speaker 1: I think people are now more aware of how law
Speaker 1: enforcement excuse media, but it was the same then. So
Speaker 1: it's either media at the time, it's either law enforcement
Speaker 1: or law enforcement fans who go back and write these histories.
Speaker 1: And then we have some contemporary accounts, but most of
Speaker 1: those contemporary accounts are also written by law enforcement. You know,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of these histories are written by white
Speaker 1: Anglo settlers who moved to California to establish various forms
Speaker 1: of government, and one of those forms of government was
Speaker 1: the sheriff's department. The sheriff's department started out as a
Speaker 1: group of white male landowners. The first l A sheriff's
Speaker 1: department had Jeff Brell and then two deputies, so he
Speaker 1: really didn't have a lot of people working for him. Now. Again,
Speaker 1: as southern California's population began to grow, law enforcement sort
Speaker 1: of grew with it. So the l A p D
Speaker 1: and the l A Sheriff's Department with both grow immensely.
Speaker 1: I think when you think about changes to the l A.
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department over sort of a long term, the two
Speaker 1: things to think about. One the fact that a lot
Speaker 1: of law enforcement activity was still being done by vigilantes
Speaker 1: and vigilance committee, which in a sense they were like
Speaker 1: parts of the Sheriff's department. Just this expanded posse system
Speaker 1: in which folks volunteered their time, did some of the work,
Speaker 1: and then would go back to whatever their regular job was.
Speaker 1: Those vigilantes would often commit crimes against people of color
Speaker 1: in the area. In October of eighteen seventy one, the
Speaker 1: largest mass lynching in American history was carried out here
Speaker 1: in l A against nineteen Chinese residents. Deputies stepped into
Speaker 1: action after the crime happened. The Sheriff's department itself was
Speaker 1: responsible for carrying out racist practices like renting out indigenous
Speaker 1: people to landowners for labor. Despite all of this, many
Speaker 1: people wanted to be part of the department. So Peter
Speaker 1: Pitches was appointed basically by his predecessor to take over
Speaker 1: the department, and until he became sheriff, the department was
Speaker 1: really still very like quote unquote wild West. The sheriffs
Speaker 1: are very proud of being wild West. Peter Pitches was
Speaker 1: a former FBI agent. He joined the Sheriff's department under
Speaker 1: Sheriff Eugene Biskuylouse and eventually became under sheriff the second
Speaker 1: in command when Peter Pitches took over. This was also
Speaker 1: at the same time as the sort of quote war
Speaker 1: on crime ramped up, right, so we had a whole
Speaker 1: you have to sort of also look at it at
Speaker 1: this whole backdrop of all these things passed by L B. J.
Speaker 1: And Nixon to give money to police departments to buy
Speaker 1: military equipment, to equip people with uniforms and riot gear
Speaker 1: and helicopters and all sorts of goodies that they would use.
Speaker 1: And of course a lot of the impetus for this
Speaker 1: and how it would culminate was because in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties there were so many you know, there were lots
Speaker 1: of street actions, so you know, especially in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: that was a time in which many groups of people
Speaker 1: held various actions, so civil rights actions and gay and
Speaker 1: lesbian actions and Latino actions. So there was this idea
Speaker 1: that the l A Sheriff's part was also going to
Speaker 1: service kind of like riot control. Because this was a
Speaker 1: big problem, the department got bigger, the weapons got more powerful,
Speaker 1: all on the dime of l A County residents. Deputies
Speaker 1: became increasingly physically violent, sometimes ending in death. A local
Speaker 1: journalist started to pay attention Reuben Salazar and it may
Speaker 1: have just gotten him killed. Ruben Salazar was born in
Speaker 1: Sioda Duarez, Mexico, and immigrated to El Paso as an infant.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get a better sense of who Reuben was,
Speaker 1: so I took a trip out to northeast l A
Speaker 1: to meet Philip Rodriguez. Philip makes documentaries and he directed
Speaker 1: a film looking into Ruben's life and his untimely mysterious death.
Speaker 1: According to my sources, Reuben was raised by kind of
Speaker 1: Mexican Northeniel people who ultimately harbored probably white supremacist ideas
Speaker 1: about things and believe that whiteness and affiliation with whiteness
Speaker 1: and imitation of whiteness was was the proper way to
Speaker 1: go about things that would would lend what would make
Speaker 1: your life easier. Certainly, um and um was maybe a
Speaker 1: more respectable way to live and become an American. A
Speaker 1: recent study from the Pure Research Center found that millions
Speaker 1: of people who previously identified themselves as Hispanic change their
Speaker 1: racial identity to white. Some researchers are concerned that some
Speaker 1: people treat whiteness as the ideal and social baseline of
Speaker 1: American life. His mother was strongly discouraged any affiliation of
Speaker 1: Reuben from kind of Ruffians or maybe even dark skinned
Speaker 1: indigenous kind of Mexicans, and suggesting and and and and
Speaker 1: had him aspire to again being an assimilated, mainstream, get
Speaker 1: along American boy. Ruben a medium bill guy with dark hair.
Speaker 1: Once a high school at El Paso High started college
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas at El Paso, which was
Speaker 1: then called Texas Western College. He started writing for his
Speaker 1: campus newspaper, The Prospector, but left school after his sophomore
Speaker 1: year to work with his father. After two years, he
Speaker 1: enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served in the
Speaker 1: Korean War from nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty two, then
Speaker 1: came home to Texas. He returned to school and the
Speaker 1: Prospector as the managing editor, and landed a job at
Speaker 1: the El Paso Herald Post. For one of his first assignments,
Speaker 1: he pretended to be drunk and was arrested and ordered
Speaker 1: a report on jail conditions. Because he's good at his
Speaker 1: job and because he's passionate, he ends up at the
Speaker 1: biggest newspaper on the West Coast at the time, Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times, and it becomes a reporter, and becomes a columnist,
Speaker 1: and eventually ends up as the news director of the
Speaker 1: fledgling channel thirty four k m e X Spanish language
Speaker 1: flagship for what was to become Univision on TV network
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. And he was a columnist at the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times. That's a great hustle. That's a great
Speaker 1: platform from which to communicate news and uh and ideas too,
Speaker 1: to two pieces of the l a PI that usually
Speaker 1: don't meet up to have every little in comment. Even
Speaker 1: to this day, the Spanish language Latino and the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Time reading non Latino are living in two different realities.
Speaker 1: At some point amidst this kind of ideological shift that
Speaker 1: occurs in his middle in his mid career, he starts
Speaker 1: to move away from the assimilated idea of himself that
Speaker 1: that that he that he had embraced, and and take
Speaker 1: to the ideas that the young people had been pushing,
Speaker 1: expousing of of of kind of Chicindo nationalism, and in
Speaker 1: doing that becomes kind of intimate and becomes an ultimately
Speaker 1: the chronicler of the Chicano Revolution rebellion that occurs in
Speaker 1: that period. What was I think that the relationship with
Speaker 1: the cops, It was rather fluid one uh. And I
Speaker 1: think as he became more critical, or as he became
Speaker 1: more uh fearless, and as his power grew um, I
Speaker 1: think that he received pushback from law enforcement. Reuben developed
Speaker 1: a wariness at the very least about cops and what
Speaker 1: how cops interpret reality and how they and how complicit
Speaker 1: the press would tend to be with cops. Reuben's friends
Speaker 1: say that attitude made him a target for police violence.
Speaker 1: Here's Philmontez, a friend of Reuben's and a member of
Speaker 1: the U S Commission on Human Rights. Ruben said, I
Speaker 1: have a problem with the l A p D. I said,
Speaker 1: what's the problem? He says, Well, they came to see me,
Speaker 1: and they said that Mexicans aren't ready for my kind
Speaker 1: of reporting, and they want me to stop. Bill Drummond,
Speaker 1: a former Los Angeles Times reporter. He had a right
Speaker 1: to be alarmed, and that's part of the price you pay.
Speaker 1: You know, when you stick your head out of the foxhole,
Speaker 1: there's somebody that's going to take a shot at you verbally, certainly,
Speaker 1: maybe they might even do it for real. Deputies started
Speaker 1: to create their own systems of policing and rewarded other
Speaker 1: deputies who went along with those violent tactics. I'm Roger Clark.
Speaker 1: I'm a retired l A County sheriff. I did twenty
Speaker 1: seven and a half years of service active service on
Speaker 1: the department. I came on during the Peter J. Picchus era.
Speaker 1: I came on after they completed my background December of
Speaker 1: sixty six. Is there a culture of violence inside the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department? Well, these guys are violent, I mean, no
Speaker 1: kill you. Roger started out in the county jail in
Speaker 1: downtown l A. So my first night I had reported in,
Speaker 1: they gave me my keys and my badge. You know,
Speaker 1: I put on my uniform period a main control. Here's
Speaker 1: your badge, Clark, here's you and I reported to a module.
Speaker 1: Roger was there as relief for the deputies already working
Speaker 1: on that floor. They can't leave and go to chow
Speaker 1: unless they have somebody watching. These guys. They're asleep. We
Speaker 1: did the count and we did uh breakfast that um,
Speaker 1: I'm woke him out for court. The deputy in charge
Speaker 1: of the module or unit told Roger to follow his lead.
Speaker 1: So he says, uh, go in there and go sit
Speaker 1: down and watch us. Watch me. My dad as a
Speaker 1: captain on the department, he just you know, I was
Speaker 1: a little life, you know, a new guy, and they
Speaker 1: treated me a setch. I don't care, you know, as
Speaker 1: happy as a claim. So so this goes on for
Speaker 1: about two days and then uh, and I see these
Speaker 1: guys show up, about four of them, and they and
Speaker 1: Clark watched the module. We'll be back later, and they
Speaker 1: disappeared to come back. This happened again and again. So
Speaker 1: the about third night and they say come with us.
Speaker 1: They get so I go to a day room and
Speaker 1: they've got two guys braced against the wall and they
Speaker 1: just beat the pool out of him, and uh, we're
Speaker 1: walking back. I just stood there. I was stunned, but
Speaker 1: I was convinced of two things. At that point. The
Speaker 1: sergeant and the lieutenant at school knew this was going on,
Speaker 1: and that this is the way they run the jail.
Speaker 1: I mean just assumed it. Of course, this is the
Speaker 1: way they run the jail. Roger was disgusted. So I
Speaker 1: go back and they said, what do you what do
Speaker 1: you think? I said, you know, I guess this is
Speaker 1: my last day here. Why because I can't do this.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm talking from this is the way you
Speaker 1: guys run this place. I can't do it. I won't
Speaker 1: do it. And there's a mumble mumble. Go home, tell
Speaker 1: the wife. They're going to call me in the lieutenant's
Speaker 1: office tomorrow tonight when I report for duty. Tell me
Speaker 1: they can't use me, and thank me very much. And
Speaker 1: I'm going back to the phone company. And you know
Speaker 1: that is that was it. So I show up, they
Speaker 1: give me my badge. No one says a word, not
Speaker 1: a word, but word eventually got out. January, I report
Speaker 1: to the academy. Across the front page of the l
Speaker 1: A Times are all eleven of these guys, the entire shift,
Speaker 1: almost They've all been arrested and fired. For cruelty to inmates.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting at the academy in my desk thinking,
Speaker 1: waiting for the tap on my shoulder. Obviously they're going
Speaker 1: to come and talk to me because I was on
Speaker 1: the shift. Never said it, never touched me. And the
Speaker 1: only conclusion is when they ask who does this, Clark
Speaker 1: would not do it. And they never came to me
Speaker 1: from then on, regardless of rank, regardless of where I
Speaker 1: was or what I was doing, never allowed it. Never,
Speaker 1: you know, and I should have at that point said
Speaker 1: you're going to do this, I'm here. You've got to
Speaker 1: do it through me, because you're not going to do
Speaker 1: it while here. How did that incident affect you and
Speaker 1: your outlook? Well, it's profound because the fact that they
Speaker 1: did not try to recruit me or pressure me because
Speaker 1: I was pretty blunt. I was twenty five years old,
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't a even the woods like a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys. So I mean it was clear.
Speaker 1: I mean they I didn't leave any wiggle room there.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do this. But I always assumed
Speaker 1: it was an anomaly. Were those officers part of a
Speaker 1: deputy gang, they were the beginnings. They didn't tattoo at least, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they had a tattoo or not.
Speaker 1: When I went to the academy, I was only aware
Speaker 1: of one type of a problem, and that was in
Speaker 1: East l A, a tattooed group called the Little Red Devils,
Speaker 1: and they made a big deal of it in the academy.
Speaker 1: To tell me and all the everybody else, the academy
Speaker 1: was rigorous in oose days. I mean we started with seventy,
Speaker 1: we ended with twenty. That in East l A there's
Speaker 1: a problem. The sheriff does not sanction, it does not allow,
Speaker 1: it is critical of it. And they are called the
Speaker 1: Red Devils, and if you're smart, you'll not be part
Speaker 1: of it. I mean that was I knew that right
Speaker 1: from the time I was in the academy. The Red
Speaker 1: Devils appeared to be the first ever gang inside the
Speaker 1: l A County Sheriff's Department. On August the Deputy gang
Speaker 1: took their tactics to the streets of East Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in an incident that would change the relationship between l
Speaker 1: A residents and the department forever. The Chicano Moratorium and
Speaker 1: Ruben Salazar was there watching more after the break by
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies. The Vietnam War had been raging
Speaker 1: for several years. Wealthy Americans could afford to not think
Speaker 1: about it, but the draft was responsible for the decimation
Speaker 1: of the population of young men in communities of color.
Speaker 1: A study from cal State l A found that Latinos
Speaker 1: made up twenty of US troops killed in Vietnam. Chicanos
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles were one community seeing an astronomical loss.
Speaker 1: Dr David Sanchez is a civil rights activist and founding
Speaker 1: member of the Brown Berets Approach Chicano political organization. The
Speaker 1: Brown Berets organized around many issues. One issue was the
Speaker 1: war in Vietnam. We wanted to bring an end to
Speaker 1: the war in Vietnam, and we did. We did bring
Speaker 1: an end to the war in Vietnam by these demonstrations,
Speaker 1: but also know it's because of police matality. We were
Speaker 1: organizing demonstrating against the police mar chality in East Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and other places. Doctor Sanchez was one of the
Speaker 1: organizers of the Chicano Moratorium, a march through East l
Speaker 1: A calling for an end to the war. We were
Speaker 1: trying to organize a peaceful, peaceful march, at peaceful rally uh.
Speaker 1: We were trying to organize a peaceful demonstration. About twenty
Speaker 1: two tho people marched through East l A that day.
Speaker 1: About seven some people stayed in Belvedere Park to listen
Speaker 1: to speakers. Some witnesses say around this time, people left
Speaker 1: a liquor store without paying for their stuff. The Sheriff's
Speaker 1: deputies nearby responded and began making their way into the park.
Speaker 1: Then the scene exploded. Most people tried to get away,
Speaker 1: some fought back. Dr Sanchez was nearby watching and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the gangs got into a fight
Speaker 1: with the sheriff. What happened was at the park, UH,
Speaker 1: where we had our rally. It resulted in about uh
Speaker 1: two thousand people going out in the middle of the
Speaker 1: park and fighting with five policemen hand to hand combat,
Speaker 1: fish to fist, and the police were hitting everywhere to
Speaker 1: put times and people were throwing rocks and stones and
Speaker 1: it was just a big, big physical fight. The deputies
Speaker 1: brought in reinforcements from around the county into the East
Speaker 1: l A area. Suddenly the community was under occupation. Deputies
Speaker 1: made their way through the streets beating people. Fires erupted
Speaker 1: from buildings, people were shot down in the street, then
Speaker 1: the fire. After they finally broke up the fight in
Speaker 1: the middle of the park, he went into the streets
Speaker 1: and turned into riots. And there was talking about three
Speaker 1: riots going on at one time, and uh I was
Speaker 1: rooting self as are facing one of the riots. Reuben
Speaker 1: was at the Chicano Moratorium with his km X colleague Guermasta,
Speaker 1: who was getting very dangerous during the last walking down.
Speaker 1: We're starting the left hand side street going down, and
Speaker 1: he's someone that stays let's go back to the other inside.
Speaker 1: He did it twice, he says, more than once. Somebody
Speaker 1: is following us. Reuben and Guerma ducked into a bar
Speaker 1: called the Silver Dollar to try to get away from
Speaker 1: the melee outside. They pulled up some bar stools and
Speaker 1: ordered beer. Outside, witnesses reports seeing a man in a
Speaker 1: red vest talking to sheriff's deputies nearby. The man has
Speaker 1: never been publicly identified. Philip Rodriguez interviewed the man for
Speaker 1: his documentary on Reuben Salazar neighborhood dude. I think he
Speaker 1: was a former cb UM World War Two. He had
Speaker 1: some patriotic notions and the most kind of underdeveloped way
Speaker 1: and um I cop ass kisser. I think he had
Speaker 1: some alcohol issues, um abuse allegations, a bit of a record,
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, like a lot of scoundrels, Uh,
Speaker 1: trying to be helpful too to the guys with the
Speaker 1: guns and misinformed them about suggest that they were three
Speaker 1: men with rifles over their shoulder. Uh kind of marched
Speaker 1: militantly into the Silver Dollar Bar and the cops followed
Speaker 1: up on that allegation and then did what they did.
Speaker 1: Why would you say something? People tell kinds of stories
Speaker 1: to get attention, to feel important, to rectify and wash
Speaker 1: away their own sins, their own personal shame. Why do
Speaker 1: people grandstand? Maybe he was mad, maybe he had drunk
Speaker 1: too much. Maybe I I can't I can't know why
Speaker 1: he made an allegation, but it was completely false. Sergeants
Speaker 1: Tom Wilson was standing nearby the Silver Dollar when a
Speaker 1: deputy ran up to him and said three men had
Speaker 1: just entered the bar with guns. Wilson and a group
Speaker 1: of deputies started to make their way towards it as
Speaker 1: a crowd of protests, ers and journalists gathered to watch.
Speaker 1: Wilson was armed with a projectile gun loaded with a
Speaker 1: Federal Flight Right projectile capable of punching through a wall
Speaker 1: and explicitly labeled not to be used against crowds. Witnesses
Speaker 1: did not hear a warning before Wilson fired. The canister
Speaker 1: rocketed into the bar, spreading smoke everywhere. People poured out
Speaker 1: of the back entrance. Garama made it outside and looked
Speaker 1: around for Reuben. He never came out. He had been
Speaker 1: hit in the head with the canister and was lying
Speaker 1: dead on the bar floor. Ellie's Chicano community was devastated
Speaker 1: by Reuben's death. The line for his wake was so
Speaker 1: long it stretched throughout the streets of East l A.
Speaker 1: People wanted to know why he had been killed. The
Speaker 1: Los Angeles County Warner launched an inquest into the shooting.
Speaker 1: An inquest is a fact finding court procedure that looks
Speaker 1: and sounds a lot like a trial, but the verdict
Speaker 1: is for the manner of death, natural, accidental suicide, or murder.
Speaker 1: There might be a criminal prosecution, but it isn't guaranteed.
Speaker 1: Dozens of people were called to testify, including Tom Wilson,
Speaker 1: the sergeant who killed Reuben. I testified in the morning.
Speaker 1: A man jumped up and started screaming, was a little
Speaker 1: purdy and he had pointed directly at me like that.
Speaker 1: Wilson almost shot another unarmed man with the same projectile
Speaker 1: gun right there at the inquest looked like a forty five.
Speaker 1: I had the tear gas gun and I loaded the
Speaker 1: weapon because I figured if he was gonna shoot me,
Speaker 1: I was gonna get him at least once. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody hit him and turned him sideways, and I could
Speaker 1: tell that he had a magazine rolled up instead of
Speaker 1: a gun. That's how quick I usually react things. Wilson
Speaker 1: testified that he did not know and was not concerned
Speaker 1: about the type of projectile he fired into the bar.
Speaker 1: The jury eventually returned with a split verdict between murder
Speaker 1: and accidental. No charges were ever filed against Wilson. Salazar's
Speaker 1: family eventually settled a legal claim against l A County
Speaker 1: for seven hundred thousand dollars about five point three million
Speaker 1: dollars today, which was paid for by taxpayers. Wilson and
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department were off the hook. Sheriff Pitches said
Speaker 1: there was absolutely no misconduct on the part of deputies
Speaker 1: involved or the procedures they followed. Deputy is working at
Speaker 1: the East Los Angeles station appeared to take pride in
Speaker 1: terror they inflicted on the community during the chicon A Moratorium.
Speaker 1: They created the so called Fort Apache logo to commemorate
Speaker 1: that day, and you can see it on pins, hats
Speaker 1: and other swag deputies rock in the streets of East
Speaker 1: l A today. The logo is named after a nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight john Ford Western centered on a remote U. S.
Speaker 1: Cavalry outpost surrounded by enemies whom the white officers regard
Speaker 1: as dangerous savages, and that is said to be the
Speaker 1: attitude harvard by many deputies working at the East Los
Speaker 1: Angeles station. The image shows a nineteen seventies style police
Speaker 1: riot helmet over a boot. It sits inside a circle
Speaker 1: of mottels that say cemprea and los bantolones, which translates
Speaker 1: to always a kick in the ass. The other motto,
Speaker 1: low Profile, is a tongue in cheek reference to shaff
Speaker 1: pitches his instructions to the deputies at the Chicono Moratorium.
Speaker 1: The logo was banned by Sheriff Jim McDonald in because
Speaker 1: he found it to be disrespectful to the East l
Speaker 1: A community. Current Sheriff Alex Bianueva revived the logo shortly
Speaker 1: after he took office in but declined to comment on why.
Speaker 1: At one point he kept a model of the logo
Speaker 1: in his office. He worked at the East Los Angeles
Speaker 1: station earlier in his career and even met his wife there.
Speaker 1: The Little Red Devils and the Fort Apache logo were
Speaker 1: cemented into l A s de Lore. Deputies with tattoos
Speaker 1: were celebrated by the department and went on to choice positions.
Speaker 1: Other stations wanted to form their own gangs too. Here's
Speaker 1: retired Lieutenant Roger Clark. I did not consider that the
Speaker 1: department was under was going through this metamorphosis and that
Speaker 1: was spreading so wildly. But once it took off, um,
Speaker 1: every station you want to do one upsmanship and that's it.
Speaker 1: You know, we're tougher than you guys. You know, let's
Speaker 1: just got awful. Roger Clark was right, and a lot
Speaker 1: of those deputies got away with it. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of cops that have gotten away with out and
Speaker 1: out murder that are in their retirement right now, drawing
Speaker 1: their retirement checks and living in Idaho and Arizona. Left.
Speaker 1: That's David Lynn. He's an intriguing guy with a resume
Speaker 1: out of a superhero movie. He's a former marine tank
Speaker 1: commander who served in the Vietnam War. He worked for
Speaker 1: the United Nations as a homicide investigator looking into death
Speaker 1: squad murders. He went undercover in apartheid South Africa to
Speaker 1: document horrific working and living conditions of black South Africans.
Speaker 1: He was in Iraq during the first US invasion in
Speaker 1: March of two thousand and three. He worked in Unicas
Speaker 1: refugee camps in darfour. I met up with David and
Speaker 1: Baja California, Mexico, where he had been living for the
Speaker 1: past few years. The day before we met was actually
Speaker 1: his last day there. He was moving to Ukraine to
Speaker 1: volunteer with humanitarian efforts against the Russian invasion. He says
Speaker 1: that no matter where he goes, there is brutal state
Speaker 1: violence against citizens. It was all the same thing. Well,
Speaker 1: you go to Iraq or South Africa, I had a
Speaker 1: right here in my hometown in Los Angeles, South Central
Speaker 1: I don't need to travel the world to see this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and documented it's right here in my
Speaker 1: home state. So I became a private investigator and made
Speaker 1: a career out of documenting police misconduct. Police abuse cases
Speaker 1: and doing criminal defense as well. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: David was living in l a and working for an
Speaker 1: organization of attorneys called the Police Misconduct Lawyers Preferral Service
Speaker 1: or p m l r S. It's no longer around today,
Speaker 1: but the group was find several big civil rights cases
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties and nineties. Carol Watson was one
Speaker 1: of the lawyers there. At the time. P m l
Speaker 1: r S was run by a civil rights attorney named Humanus.
Speaker 1: Humanus was an amazing individual. He basically trained a cadre
Speaker 1: of civil rights lawyers. He took on cases that were
Speaker 1: impossible and just kept at it and at it. He
Speaker 1: or for the a c l U for a while.
Speaker 1: Uh he took a couple of a case to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. He has numerous cases that he won an
Speaker 1: appeal that are now still precedent and important cases in
Speaker 1: civil rights litigation. Back in the nineteen eighties, it was
Speaker 1: really hard to find someone to represent police misconduct cases.
Speaker 1: Juries in those days didn't believe that the police did
Speaker 1: anything wrong. The police are the most adept perjurors that exists.
Speaker 1: They come into court and they look like boy scouts
Speaker 1: and they look you right in the eye and lie
Speaker 1: to you. I think there is a huge amount of corruption,
Speaker 1: not in the form of bribe taking, but a culture
Speaker 1: of violence and thuggery. The lack of oversight by the
Speaker 1: sheriff for generations has been drastic to the community. I
Speaker 1: think there is a culture of violence and the gang problem,
Speaker 1: the deputy gang problem is a big part of it.
Speaker 1: After Carol started working with you, p M l r
Speaker 1: S started to grow. More people began to call the
Speaker 1: office looking for help, and more attorneys wanted to lend
Speaker 1: a hand. Carol hired an executive director for the organization,
Speaker 1: David Lynn. When I took the job, it was just
Speaker 1: in a box. There was no staffing. There was just
Speaker 1: a box of files and names of attorneys and that
Speaker 1: was it. I started separating it by department and by
Speaker 1: type of complaint, and to see which departments had the
Speaker 1: biggest problems, and of course the Star's department. Carol got
Speaker 1: a huge tip about the Sheriff's department from the inside.
Speaker 1: There was insider in the county who took Hugh and
Speaker 1: me to lunch and told us that he had information
Speaker 1: about the Vikings and that he had seen their tattoo
Speaker 1: and he told us where it was, and that was
Speaker 1: the first we heard about the Vikings. What's going through
Speaker 1: your hat while you're sitting at this lunch here in
Speaker 1: this pretty shocked I had never heard this before. Shocked
Speaker 1: in one way that they would be as organized as
Speaker 1: affiliating themselves with a gang, but not surprised that the
Speaker 1: person who was the source for our source um was
Speaker 1: a violent person and involved with other violent people. Carol
Speaker 1: didn't know it yet, but she and the team at
Speaker 1: p mL r S were about to begin a year's
Speaker 1: long fight against the gang. At that point, no one
Speaker 1: knew about them except for other people inside of the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department who were the Vikings. There were primarily let's
Speaker 1: say white. They were a lot of them veterans, a
Speaker 1: lot of them Vietnam veterans, a lot of them Marines,
Speaker 1: a few token minority deputies. So they can't nobody could
Speaker 1: say that there were racist. How does someone become a
Speaker 1: member of the Vikings. It's proved yourself and then you
Speaker 1: gotta kill somebody, and you gotta kill somebody of your
Speaker 1: own race, if human minority, a Viking of color may
Speaker 1: have killed someone to prove themselves worthy of a tattoo.
Speaker 1: In the early morning of March eighth, before sunrise, twenty
Speaker 1: one year old Hung Pyo Lee was driving his white
Speaker 1: Audie through the Compton area. Hung Pio was about to
Speaker 1: start auto mechanic classes and an l A Area trade school,
Speaker 1: and was balancing that with the fifty to sixty hour
Speaker 1: work week at his parents liquor store in Anaheim. Some
Speaker 1: l A Sheriff's deputies claimed that they saw Hung Pyo
Speaker 1: run a stop sign as he drove. They got behind
Speaker 1: him and started to pursue his car. Hung Pio stayed
Speaker 1: on surface streets and never got above forty five miles
Speaker 1: per hour. Yeah, it was a slow pursuit. Um, they said.
Speaker 1: He like, I can't remember California stopped or something, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't come to He says, something petting and he didn't
Speaker 1: pull over because, um, he had a hash pipe in
Speaker 1: the car. So he's scared to death, so he just
Speaker 1: kept driving. Didn't know what to do. Two officers from
Speaker 1: the Long Beach Police Department joined in the pursuit. Hung
Speaker 1: Peyo came to a stop in a rail yard in
Speaker 1: Long Beach and he wound up in a dead end
Speaker 1: industrial area, turned in and it was another dead end.
Speaker 1: He was trapped, so uh four deputy cars and the
Speaker 1: Long Beach PD car and they all lined up like
Speaker 1: a firing squad and tour Vikings Deputies Robert Peppini, Daniel McLeod,
Speaker 1: Brian Lee, and Sergeant Paul Tanaka, who would eventually become
Speaker 1: number two in the department, stopped their patrol vehicles out
Speaker 1: fifteen ft behind Hong Pyo's car. Chapman claims to have
Speaker 1: approached and ordered him to surrender. Ben out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: all the deputies opened fire. Hong Pyo was hitting nine
Speaker 1: times in the back only shot once, which means he
Speaker 1: knew what was wrong, but he wanted to be part
Speaker 1: of it, so he shot once. But they claimed that
Speaker 1: he was backing up into them, so they opened up
Speaker 1: on him to protect themselves. But we proved where his
Speaker 1: car wound up. It wound up forward. It wasn't backing up.
Speaker 1: He was calling forward and nine to the back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When we saw that, it's just as a Long Beach
Speaker 1: training officer, who wouldn't it and said to his partner
Speaker 1: and his trainee, we just wished us a execution, and
Speaker 1: that's what it was. So we sued him like we
Speaker 1: always do, and they settled like they always knew. Settlements
Speaker 1: are proved by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors and
Speaker 1: historically come out of the county's general fund. And Tanaka
Speaker 1: got promoted by the sheriffs department always does. It's just
Speaker 1: business as usual. And his kid, who was guilty of
Speaker 1: having a Hashike penness car paid the ultimate press for advance.
Speaker 1: The Vikings two Vikings and then Tanaka became one, so
Speaker 1: technically three Vikings involved. After Hong Kyo's death, the l
Speaker 1: A County District Attorney Ira Rehiner decided the deputies acted
Speaker 1: in self defense. Two years later, in April of nineteen,
Speaker 1: Lee's family accepted a nine hundred and ninety nine thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred and ninety nine dollars settlement that didn't come
Speaker 1: from the Sheriff's department, though that was paid for by
Speaker 1: l A County taxpayers. Lee's father, Sunk Lee, set at
Speaker 1: a press conference, I hope now my son's name has
Speaker 1: been cleared. Now it's time to take care of the
Speaker 1: rest of the family. More. After the break, white supremacist
Speaker 1: displays were becoming more frequent inside of the l A
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's department, several operated inside of the jails in
Speaker 1: a criminal defense attorney and member of the p MLRS
Speaker 1: decided to take them on with the help of David
Speaker 1: Lynn George Denny God bless him incredible, incredible human being
Speaker 1: and lawyer. Former You never know when you met him
Speaker 1: and lord her name, but yeah, he was one of
Speaker 1: those guys. But so he knew all the ins and
Speaker 1: how he knew how everything works, and he was good by.
Speaker 1: George had uncovered deputies burning crosses in the style of
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan inside of the Downtown Men's Central Jail. Later,
Speaker 1: he was contacted by the family of a young man
Speaker 1: who had been horribly beaten by deputies gang banging for
Speaker 1: the Wayside Whitey's Gang. On December two, one year old
Speaker 1: Clyde L. Crawford was incarcerated at the Wayside Honor Rancho
Speaker 1: or the Pitch's Detention Center as it's known today. He
Speaker 1: had a pretty idyllic childhood. His parents were preachers who
Speaker 1: raised him and his siblings in West Covina, a fast
Speaker 1: growing suburb in the nineteen seventies. When he was a kid,
Speaker 1: he wanted to be a police officer. He took criminal
Speaker 1: justice classes in college, even though his uncle, who was
Speaker 1: a policeman, told him that it was not a good
Speaker 1: working environment for black men. After he was pulled over
Speaker 1: by a cop as a teenager, his relationship with the
Speaker 1: police shifted and started off thirty years worth of negative
Speaker 1: interactions with the police. This incident at the Honor Ranch, though,
Speaker 1: would change his life forever. I spoke to Clyde l
Speaker 1: about the incident a few months ago in a local park.
Speaker 1: They put me on a place back then. It was
Speaker 1: called the Honor Ranch, and you can there was a
Speaker 1: place where lord custody immates would be. He got into
Speaker 1: an argument with another inmate who was white. The man
Speaker 1: didn't pay Clyde for some cigarettes he sold him. Then
Speaker 1: a fight started. So he stands up and swings and
Speaker 1: I got the better of my head. Him flies and
Speaker 1: he felled. When he fell, he was shaking and he's
Speaker 1: bouncing around, and I'll run over to him. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to hurt the guy, that man, but so I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get him stable, you know. And when that happened,
Speaker 1: the officer passed by, and the officer seeing everyone around him,
Speaker 1: and he looked, and he looked, and he hits the button.
Speaker 1: He says, everyone on your box, on your box. So
Speaker 1: they finally the guy comes to and will sitting in
Speaker 1: our bombs waiting and so now they're investigating. They bring
Speaker 1: about four officers and they're all walking around talking to
Speaker 1: him and we on. So when I came up to
Speaker 1: my box, they I said, yeah, you stand up, put
Speaker 1: them behind your back. So someone had told him it
Speaker 1: was me, right, so I thought, oh my goodness. So
Speaker 1: I put my hands behind my back and hand Customer
Speaker 1: Clyde was escorted by an officer, not unusual in County jail,
Speaker 1: but something was off. He tells me to walk to
Speaker 1: the back door, and uh, I monked to the back door,
Speaker 1: and I thought maybe I was going that's the wrong
Speaker 1: way to walk. First of all, I never did you know.
Speaker 1: I'm nervous about that one from the very beginning, because
Speaker 1: step the way to wherever you're going. Uh see the sergeant,
Speaker 1: the whole wherever you're going, it's out the front door,
Speaker 1: the back doors. You know, there's no where nowhere, really
Speaker 1: no way to get to the places. They still happened
Speaker 1: taking me so kind of like pushes me against the wall,
Speaker 1: and I remember he pushes me in my head heads
Speaker 1: and he says, I'm gonna teach about beating up in
Speaker 1: white guys. Then he was brutally beaten. Remember he takes
Speaker 1: me he hits my face against the window. Man. Then
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh man, when the world's going on? And
Speaker 1: he takes the handcuffs, and I remember he took the
Speaker 1: handcuff and he grabbed my arm and he pushed it
Speaker 1: up the highest he can push it, and and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What are you doing? Now? I
Speaker 1: remember two more officers calm and they run about of
Speaker 1: the corner and they have white officers and they they
Speaker 1: don't say nothing. They just come pulled their flashlights out.
Speaker 1: And one hit me in the shoulder first, I remember,
Speaker 1: and the other one hit me in the back of
Speaker 1: the leg. And I knew I was going down because
Speaker 1: the other one swinging at me and then he hit me.
Speaker 1: I'll got the ball. And while while I'm like on
Speaker 1: the ground, I see a couple more running around the corners. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they they had their minds made up. They had
Speaker 1: no idea, uh where happened. They didn't here. And I
Speaker 1: remember hearing wayside white these and I didn't understand, what's that? Man?
Speaker 1: At that time, and he understand who he he must
Speaker 1: not know about the wayside why these it was a
Speaker 1: little things they were saying. And they said it more
Speaker 1: than a dozen times. And I was like, there was
Speaker 1: a black guy standing there, and there was probably three
Speaker 1: more came so thinks the total I think eight and
Speaker 1: the black guys. But the black guy he didn't jump in.
Speaker 1: There was another white guy. He didn't do nothing. And
Speaker 1: they were just standing there. I looked at the black
Speaker 1: guy and asking the help, you know, black officer, and
Speaker 1: he shook his head and you know done like shugged
Speaker 1: this old shoulders and and they just took me. And
Speaker 1: if you said why King video, I think it was
Speaker 1: way worse. I mean, I've never seen um guys can't
Speaker 1: say they wrote my jaw, uh engine, my braves really
Speaker 1: messed up all the cards in my face. The officers
Speaker 1: continued to humiliate and punish Clyde. And I'm yelling and
Speaker 1: screaming on my life and I can see in bays
Speaker 1: out the wind in the windows, and some of those
Speaker 1: n bays were yelling, uh, they don't go, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't do too my stock and they're yelling trying to
Speaker 1: get you know, trying to help the best way they can.
Speaker 1: They couldn't do much. So I remember feeling my legs snap.
Speaker 1: I'm really breathing bad. But they tell me they stand up.
Speaker 1: I still have the handcuffs on, and he told me
Speaker 1: to hop up this hill. So I stood up. When
Speaker 1: I felt. Man, I'm like, something's wrong. Should you better
Speaker 1: get up? I'm like, my legs broke. He said, I
Speaker 1: don't care. So I'm like hunt and he hits me again.
Speaker 1: So I'm hopping up the hill on one leg and
Speaker 1: I can't make it. I think maybe chin hops and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't do it and I fall. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm inside, you know, I'm telling them I can't do this. Man.
Speaker 1: I thought they're going to kill him now. I thought
Speaker 1: that was my last game. Once inside a treatment area,
Speaker 1: the officers left Clyde laying in a gurney underneath the
Speaker 1: row of pay phones. He took a chance, reached up
Speaker 1: and called his parents. He told them where he was,
Speaker 1: and they came the following morning. The family hired attorney
Speaker 1: George V. Denny the Third and investigator David Lynn. Clyde's
Speaker 1: case never made it to trial. That's usually what happens
Speaker 1: with deputy gang cases. The lawyers like settled because they
Speaker 1: don't have to go to the trial and it's kind
Speaker 1: of easy money. They threw a million dollars at you,
Speaker 1: and the clients are thinking, and this sappens a lot.
Speaker 1: The lawyers sometimes talk the clients into taking a settlement
Speaker 1: when they don't want to, and it's it's just all
Speaker 1: part of the game that's played with these lawsuits. And
Speaker 1: the reason why on the sheriff side, the county side
Speaker 1: where they settled them, is because they do not I
Speaker 1: want to go to trial. They do not. These deputies
Speaker 1: sworn in on the witness stand in front of juries
Speaker 1: and the press and everybody else, um lying or exposing
Speaker 1: extra what they did so to avoid all of that
Speaker 1: and getting all this on the record and all this
Speaker 1: evidence in on the record today. So and it just
Speaker 1: goes away and everybody goes away, and next day there's
Speaker 1: another one and there's another million dollar, two million dollars,
Speaker 1: thirteen million dollars settlement, you know, just and then supervisors
Speaker 1: keep signing the checks and the deputies keep doing their thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what other word to use except
Speaker 1: that it's institutionalized Clyde settled for just sixty dollars and
Speaker 1: signed an affidavid, saying he wouldn't pursue any action on
Speaker 1: residual injuries. He says he settled because his dad was
Speaker 1: gravely ill with colon cancer, and with insurance the family
Speaker 1: would lose their home. He never considered that over thirty
Speaker 1: years later, he'd still suffer from splitting headaches and a
Speaker 1: never ending aching pain in his leg, which makes it
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult to find work. He didn't know how long
Speaker 1: this experience would reverberate inside of him. Well, I made mistakes,
Speaker 1: but I think we all do. And to be so
Speaker 1: cool to people, you know, they don't know what they
Speaker 1: do literally the inside, and they wonder why people are
Speaker 1: bea looking us him. I don't like him. They don't
Speaker 1: like us. You know, it's like, uh, why did the
Speaker 1: Why take the bad if you're gonna do something wrong
Speaker 1: with it, make room for those who want to do
Speaker 1: the right thing, you know. And it's so corrupt and
Speaker 1: it's so everything's hit and he covered up so far
Speaker 1: as till you know that would he killed he They
Speaker 1: weren't even kid you know, conty care. It was a
Speaker 1: joke to all the I have in following into it.
Speaker 1: Thirty years later, I'm still going to compared for above it.
Speaker 1: But the deputy gangs were just getting started. Next week,
Speaker 1: Robert takes his leg rolls up his sleep brights to
Speaker 1: the tattoo. So that was the one and only time
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to throw up in my
Speaker 1: entire career. The rise of the Linwood Vikings. I used
Speaker 1: to below. Did the whole hood fuck the police. I'm
Speaker 1: a fucking other trophy. Better keep a pistol in the
Speaker 1: field with the ship, keep a automatic weapon nine golf ship.
Speaker 1: But you've been listening to a tradition of violence. The
Speaker 1: history of Deputy Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Department posted an executive produced by series Castle, music by
Speaker 1: Yellow Hill and Steels. For breaking news and updates and
Speaker 1: deputy gangs, follow at LA s D Gangs on social
Speaker 1: media the support series's reporting, and for exclusive bonus content,
Speaker 1: subscribe to the l s D Gangs Patrio