The whole thing reads like a far-fetched plot for a completely unrealistic action movie, but it's all too real:
> The report identifies at “least a half dozen” active gangs and cliques — and names them: the Executioners, the Banditos, the Regulators, the Spartans, the Gladiators, the Cowboys, and the Reapers.
Gangs proudly calling themselves "the Executioners" or "the Gladiators" likely have antisocial and violent tendencies. Think for a moment about the kind of person such names will attract. After reading about the horrifying things these gangs do, I'm left speechless. Reality truly can be stranger -- and more shocking -- than fiction.
Just once can we please have a self-effacing police gang? I want the "Smooth Criminals" or something. Stop trying to be the most badass and have some fun with it!
At least for me, “The Regulators” sounds like a bunch of guys in dark suits with stacks of records and regulations. “Pursuant to 17 USC § 501, we’re going to break your kneecaps”
The coolest possible use of a regulator is maybe scuba diving?
> Jason Zabala, an inked Regulator, is responsible for the deaths of at least two people and cost the County $4 million.
...
> In October 2011, an on-duty Zabala ran a red light and was involved in a collision. Sonya Benton, 49, was inside the other car. The impact gravely injured her spine, causing long-term damage and prompting a fusion surgery. At the beginning of the case, the County’s counsel asserted that Benton’s injuries weren’t serious and the surgery wasn’t necessary. The case settled for $80,000 before trial. Taxpayers picked up the bill for her award and everyone’s attorney fees. Zabala remained a deputy.
...
> The deputies later claimed Laffitte had a gun. However, Zabala said in his deposition that he never saw a weapon on Laffitte. A handgun was recovered from the scene, but it tested negative for Laffitte’s DNA, according to court documents. The testing did conclude, however, that at least two other individuals handled the gun. Shortly after the incident, Cotton said in a press conference, “I want revenge for my brother’s death. There will be no justice in Los Angeles until my brother’s murderers go to prison… I want them jailed for killing my brother and brutalizing my family.”
> That didn’t happen. Laffitte’s family settled the case for $1,500,000 before it went to trial. Taxpayers, of course, footed the bill. But the deputies who killed Terry Laffitte were never charged, and it does not appear they were disciplined. It appears as if Barrios was still a member of the department as recently as 2019. Horrifyingly, Zabala went on to kill another man in front of his family.
A sibling comment mentions the 2018 film Den of Thieves - that's the Regulators. Their tattoo's even on screen.
>Gangs proudly calling themselves "the Executioners" or "the Gladiators" likely have antisocial and violent tendencies
...its a gang. Of course it has antisocial and violent tendencies. That's part and parcel of it being a gang. If it wasn't violent and antisocial it would just be a club or organization.
To someone who's accepted that gangs and violent people in them are a normal part of life, sure, that makes sense.
But what's the internal monologue of someone who styles themselves a deputy and an Executioner really like?
Do they genuinely believe themselves to be doing smart or good things? Do they hate themselves, do they hate the flawed world they're in? Is this an unfortunate but temporary state of affairs, ends justifying the means until they can fully replace the flawed system? Are they stuck in their position, wishing they had said no when/if they had the chance, but now unsure how to safely exit?
Could you or I, with a few different life choices, have been not a software dev but a law enforcement deputy who's also a member of a violent, antisocial gang? I'd like to think I could not, but I have no clue what actually goes on inside the mind of someone in that situation.
Makes me wonder about the real meaning of all those Punisher patches that some of them wear. We tend to think of gangs as coherent forces, but identity is not always that clear-cut.
Haha, this stuff is perfectly depicted in the film 'Den of Thieves' [0]. In the motel scene 'Big Nick' (LASD) makes it clear 'they' are part of a gang.
Fiction dialed it in somewhat well - there was one TV show about one of those smart not-really-a-detective people who had a score to settle with a well known criminal ended up belonging to a gang of police officers (who had matching tattoos. Then again, the FBI came to clean things up in that show after it was ousted, so I guess you're right...
why are you limiting this to california cities? yes, you're right, it's not just LA, but pretty much any policing agency of significant size. location doesn't matter. i will gladly accept i'm painting with an overly large brush if someone can show counter evidence of a decent sized police force where similar is NOT occurring.
> It describes one “chasing ink” episode in which deputies transporting a shooting victim to the hospital allegedly took an “off-route” detour and instead “assaulted the victim.” Other deputies “chasing ink,” the investigation states, have actively tried to “get into shootings.” It elaborates: “These deputies would follow a suspect believed to have a gun so that a shooting would be justified.”
If these feel justified and cops doing their jobs I don't know what to tell you.
> beating up criminals in my neighborhood isn't a "feeling" of security it's actual security
You’re describing police beating up suspects. Few people have a problem with police beating up criminals, our prisons being Exhibit A. Police beating up suspects leaves all of us less safe, because now anyone who looks like a criminal has an incentive to not cooperate with law enforcement, and be prepared for violent encounters with the state, which means more accidental violence with non-state persons.
Police gangs are criminal gangs. The very nature of the report is that these people are committing crimes and getting away with it via their position as police officers.
That's the thing, they actually have less oversight. Criminal civilian gangs are harassed by police. The police have almost unlimited power, who provides oversight? If police leadership is involved, not them. On top of that police have qualified immunity. So they kill someone, and throw a gun on them. Everyone in the police department knows and is in on it. They investigate themselves and find no wrong doing. If a criminal beats you to death, the police investigate. Who investigates when the police do it and the entire department is corrupt?
I know we have to hold law enforcement to very high standards but maybe the problem is that we are asking them to do an impossible task. How do you convince a group of highly ethical, moral people to police communities with no ethics or morals?
Came back five days later to say this:
I understand that the problem is these cops being criminals. That's unacceptable. Full stop.
My larger point was that apparently people without morals or ethics are being attracted to the police force for some reason. And that could be because there's no way to attract moral/ethical people to do that job.
The UVA rape story was blatantly obviously false to any male who read it (no man is going to intentionally put his junk near a bed of broken glass, frat-bro gang rapist or no) but this particular article is simply about the details of a report created by the LA County Civilian Oversight Commission, so I'm not sure what attacks on Rolling Stone's (admittedly poor) credibility have to do with that.
> this particular article is simply about the details of a report created by the LA County Civilian Oversight Commission, so I'm not sure what attacks on Rolling Stone's (admittedly poor) credibility have to do with that
This article dances around these “gangs” being deputy cliques with allegedly violent tendencies, not actual infiltration by LA street gangs. That smudging makes the lack of evidence for those violent tendencies or refusal to provide back-up easier to digest.
> The UVA rape story was blatantly obviously false to any male who read it
That feels like 20/20 hindsight. There were certainly plenty of males who did believe it. I'll fess up, I was one of them. I believed it for 2 main reasons:
1. The story was outlandish, but I thought "you'd have to be insane to lie about this, with this much detail". Well, yeah, in retrospect, insane people exist.
2. Since there was so much detail, I thought there was plenty of stuff that could have been easily vetted, and given Rolling Stone's reputation, thought "for sure they have researched this." I honestly didn't realize at the time about the story being "too good to vet" phenomenon.
Yes, I learned a valuable lesson about consuming information with a more critical eye, and mea culpa. But I know I definitely wasn't the only male who originally believed the story.
At least for me, I immediately doubted the story and any of my friends that I discussed it with (most of whom hadn't actually read the article) did as well the moment I pointed out the broken glass. So probably a bit of bias on my part to assume everyone else felt the same way, sorry that you got taken in by their lies.
Having lived in LA county when I was younger (and poor, nearly homeless, etc.), I've seen plenty of gang-like behavior from the police: I doubt this article is exaggerated at all.
Is there any publication that has never published a false story? You need to accept stories from all media outlets on the merits of the story itself. There is clearly a lot of corroborating evidence with regard to gangs in the LASD.
> The recent-former Sheriff Alex Villanueva won office in 2018 after campaigning as a reformer. But if Villanueva paid lip service to ending LASD’s gang culture, his hiring practices told a much different story. “Sheriff Villanueva promoted Timothy Murakami, a tattooed Caveman, to Undersheriff and Lawrence Del Mese, a tattooed Grim Reaper, to Chief of Staff,” the investigation reports. (The report states that both Villanueva and Murakami refused to participate in the investigation, while Del Mese testified he’d had his tattoos removed when joining the Villanueva regime, because they were a “liability” and “a bad look.”)
Listening to the LA sheriff debate was interesting:
They both have connections to gangs? And one is denying they exist.
It makes you wonder if hiring for these top positions would be nearly impossible if you had to exclude gang-connected (directly or indirectly) because almost all of the seniority probably had some connection to it in order to get where they are.
Some organizations are so deeply rotted it's nearly impossible to do an internal clean up without getting rid of the bulk of the staff.
And I'm sure the difficulty of hiring new police officers since 2020 is a big excuse for keeping them, because who is going to replace them? You almost have to a) choose the less bad ones or b) spend a lot of time/money to import senior police from other states or counties.
The solution is to bring in huge amounts of military police from other parts of the state or country, and arm the citizens. Street gangs and police gangs are analogous to having armed battalions of enemy soldiers in your city, that calls for a military response.
LA country sheriffs are one of the largest police organizations in the country. Where would you ever find enough military police? Are they even trained for normal policing?
They can hardly be larger than the army. Who else except the regular military could have the means to combat a militarized police force and militarized street gangs?
You can have military police without martial law. You can split investigative units from the enforcing/order keeping battalions, the military does not need to be involved in investigative work. Most lawyers could be suited for investigative police work.
Gangs would have a hard time forming in battalions mixed by people from all over the country.
Most military gangs form on aircraft carriers. Lots of people + difficult day to day + natural divisions (everything is shift work, work is isolated to different areas). In any kind of deployment you will tend to see the same issues.
MPs have jurisdictional limits. Their jurisdiction can only be expanded to broad civilians under martial law conditions (there are some weird exceptions here like posse comitatus but those remain exceptional).
Nor do you want MPs broadly enforcing the law. Handcuffing someone to a radiator for a half day because they mouthed off is not aligned with a civilian led culture.
In the past this has been successfully dealt with the FBI investigating and imprisoning local cops to clean up police departments. Not the military and militias roaming the streets(?)
If you are willing and have the time, I would appreciate any specific instance/cases of this you could point me towards. My current understanding is that the FBI often investigates such situations, but I am not familiar with any such cases that I would consider "successfully dealt with" -- rather, a few specific folks are hung out to dry, but it appears to me that the institutional issues always remain.
Part of me wonder if issue may be (at least partially) a result of the fact that the FBI themselves are "cops", and it can be unsettling to prosecute illegal conduct in which you and your fellow officers also engage.
This article has a sensational title and lacks on actual numbers. The number "least a half dozen" seems very approximate. What about the incidence of ex-gang members? Out of how many LA Sheriffs are we referring to?
> Last week, at a public hearing, the Civilian Oversight Commission presented new evidence to suggest that the investigators’ diminishing focus on the Banditos was directed from above. (Villanueva denies giving any orders that discouraged investigation.) Throughout the inquiry, the lead investigator kept a detailed log of his work. While votes in the election for sheriff were still being counted, in early November, he wrote that he was told to ask witnesses “additional questions about subcultures at East LA.” In a deposition for the case of the eight deputies, parts of which were read into evidence at the hearing, the investigator said that, after Villanueva’s victory, his supervisor had mentioned needing to “check with the sheriff” about the Banditos inquiry. Ten days later, the investigator noted a new instruction from his supervisor: “I do not need to ask about subculture groups at ELA Station.” He explained in his deposition, “We’re a paramilitary organization. He gives me an order; I follow through.”
The financial cost is more well known:
> Since 1990, according to the Office of the Inspector General, settlements involving deputies with gang affiliations have cost taxpayers at least $54 million.
That New Yorker story also describes several ex-deputies with gang connections, including the Paul Tanaka trial (Vikings) and Villaneuva reinstating "Creepy" Carl Mandoyan (Grim Reapers).
In addition to this it is well known that the cartels are actively involved in politics in many states along the southern border. Imagine how the cartels would then want to influence politics. It has always struck my as incredibly naive that we in America believe that organized crime just can't be running and involved in the government because that would be a "conspiracy" when they are so actively involved in so many other countries governments.
Interesting language in this article. They're trying their hardest to make it seem like members of LA street gangs are running the LAPD, but, really, it's just cops being cops. This type of stuff happens even in PD's where there are no deputy gangs to join:
Deputies eager to join a gang are notorious for “chasing ink” — or engaging in violence toward county residents... This has led to a rash of “excessive force or other forms of unconstitutional policing,” the report says.
Everyone gets to have their own favorite fear of law enforcement, but corruption in law enforcement is bad--everywhere.
Cops killing cops and their families in gang initiations and power struggles makes for nice FX shows, but it is bad for communities, no matter what race the cops are.
IMO, it's among the worst forms of crime and should be punished accordingly. The damage goes far beyond the immediate action, since it undermines the public's trust in the system as a whole. It should be punished accordingly.
Just a nit, this is talking about the LA County Sheriff and not the LA police department.
The language might be a bit confusing to outsiders but the gang problem in the sheriff's department is well known to angelenos and isn't confused with street gangs. It's been going on for years.
These are police gangs that are not directly under street gangs in terms of culture or leadership structure. These aren't former or current street gang members who became cops.
There are white supremacist LASD gangs. Google "Lynwood Vikings".
The US's police force, like the country at large, is only 10% black, so unless you have some data to suggest some pretty extreme differences in white and black police participation rates in supremacist groups, it seems fairly unreasonable to be equally concerned about two groups when we can estimate one being nearly ten times the size of the other.
The beatings / deaths happen in big cities where higher % of black cops are the norm. The cops who attack Floyd were black and this happened in a large city.
You know that we can all very easily check Google Images for "george floyd murder" and see the white guy with his knee on Floyd's neck, right? Multiple people have pointed out that your statements on the racial makeup of the people who killed George Floyd have been- and this is being generous- extremely misleading.
That was not what I specifically asked for. And of course I haven't had time to do a google search on it, you just brought it up after me and multiple other people pointed out what you said made no sense. But I might later- can't say I have high hopes given the first run round, afraid to say.
A group of officers all one skin color picking on someone because of skin color are the acts of supremacists. He was singled out because of his skin color.
You have a very unique definition of "supremacist" if targeting black people for beatings can be termed "black supremacy".
If you're alleging they targeted Tyre Nichols based on his skin color, that's an anti-Black action. I'm entirely comfortable with the idea that minority groups can internalize bias against their own identities, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.
That would make them "police supremacists", perhaps, but not "black supremacists".
"Black supremacists" believe the Black race is inherently superior to other races. This means it would be very, very odd for them to beat someone up for being Black.
Oh ok, so not only were you talking about a completely different police killing than the one you originally brought up, but you were using a completely different definition of black/white supremacy than what anyone else here would too.
Edit: I wasn't incorrect, I can't see your post anymore but I don't remember you specifying metro in it. Additionally, I can process the not-new idea just fine, I just think you're applying it entirely incorrectly. I'm done here.
You will bring up a mistake I made but ignore that you were shown to be incorrect about the percentage of metro cops who are black. Be honest you didn't have a definition of black supremacist before this thread. This is a new concept you haven't been able to fully process.
I’m not sure I understand. They pretty reliably referred to them as deputy gangs and no where did I see anything that made me think they were referring to street gangs. They also discussed they’re racially segregated and biased, to your race gang point of concern. I didn’t see anything that seemed ok or normal, either. I think some semblance of this happens in a lot of police departments in some subcritical state, but this sounds organized, structured, and operating with impunity - which is not normal.
I noticed that too. I think it’s an attempt to change the narrative in order to make the story new again and hopefully shock people out of complacency. Thing is, I think most people just don’t care, and they won’t until they have a violent run in with an officer.
Thanks, though there are Mexican militias in the US. The Brown Berets (Los Boinas Café) were not a gang, they were a militia.
On another note, if anyone could provide any hints as to why my comment made in good faith with an actual link to a reputable site that backs up a well-known phenomenon affecting police nationally was flagged, that'd be great. It's difficult to judge the group-think of ycombinator comment moderators.
What is this phenomenon -- is it the "bystander effect" or something else?
Pretty much everyone knows that the LA Sheriff's Department has been heavily infiltrated by gangs like the Compton Executioners. The phenomenon is extensively well-documented in the press and it even has a Wikipedia entry.
Thanks for the link. That largely matches my perceptions, so it at least passes my smell test.
That said, I find it rather odd the absolute highest quality news achievable is...ABC15 in Arizona. Kinda feel they should leave local stations off altogether.
Hard to know what "center" is in a country where even the "left" is arguably to the right of the "right" in Europe. The US's "right" is so-far-extreme-right, there's no similar extreme in Europe. All as far as I can tell (not an expert).
> The report identifies at “least a half dozen” active gangs and cliques — and names them: the Executioners, the Banditos, the Regulators, the Spartans, the Gladiators, the Cowboys, and the Reapers.
This list isn't exhaustive but many of these are civilian gangs, so it's probably a case of both.
The law enforcement Banditos are not affiliated with the outlaw-motorcycle-centric gang of the same name. A Sheriff's "Bandito" might earn his ink by shooting a 1% "Bandito".
There are of course corrupt members of law enforcement who collaborate with organized crime for various nefarious purposes, but the in-department gangs are a distinct issue.
Bizarrely, we Americans treat our EMTs worse than other first responders. They are trained to a lower standard and paid less but still have demanding hours and lots of stress.
That dictionary definition is simply factually and legally wrong. US law is very clear about who is and is not a civilian. Anyone acting as a sheriff's deputy is 100% a civilian. If you're not subject to the UCMJ then you're a civilian. (Some deputies are also military Reserve or National Guard members, but when activated they are no longer acting as civilian peace officers.)
To make this more interesting, Posse Comitatus employs the language to signal "non-Federal forces" eg: National Guard activated by a state to operate domestically are referred to as "civilian law enforcement".
In any of the above cases, calling LEOs civilians would be incorrect and would eschew them of many of their responsibilities.
LA times has been reporting on the problem deputy gangs for years. The new part in this article is how high up their members are but it’s also captain obvious reporting as the gang members have had decades to make it up there. Still good for it to be explicitly called out.
I haven’t seen any reports in Bay Area papers but it’s been reported on in LA. It’s been local news. Similarly Californian don’t hear about >90% of the scandals in Chicago.
The corruption in southland policing departments is absolutely nothing new. Rampart comes easily to mind here, but the list is unfortunately a long one and wikipedia has many documented examples.
Rampart, for instance, was such a large media issue that they even made a movie about it. Not a small one either: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640548/
You've probably heard about this before and didn't realize it. Did you watch Training Day? That whole movie was centered around the leader of a cop gang.
Den of Thieves as well. In that movie they're actually doing their job as police but they're clearly a gang within the police force who routinely break the law and abuse their position for personal gain. They even very clearly describe themselves as a gang in one scene.
Well documented and was the base for "GTA San Andreas" and "Training Day".
And even though it has been 20 years now, the problem seems far from solved.
If you're from the Bay Area, you may want to read "The Riders Come out at Night," about a gang within the Oakland Police Department. (and more generally about organized misconduct by the OPD in recent history)
Just an aside, as I don't live in CA and haven't followed the current scandal, but you should take it as a matter of fact that police departments in all major cities of the US have been formally and informally infiltrated by street gangs. For the past 10-20 years all major orgs have reoriented from physical control towards establishing political and social influence and co-opting powerful antagonistic organizations is a big part of that.
Here in Australia - I’ve heard of police corruption, but never heard of corrupt police forming a gang. I can’t remember hearing anything about that in the UK or New Zealand or Canada either. Is this another one of those “only in America” things?
Well, I’m sure not only in America-a lot of developing countries I wouldn’t be surprised if such things existed too-but not the countries the US would want to be compared to
Neither article mentions a "deputy gang". It just talks about ordinary police misconduct and corruption, which happens anywhere. It never mentions corrupt police forming a gang with an identifiable name, emblem, membership, etc – which is something I've never heard of outside of the US.
The Department of Justice is too busy enacting selective enforcement against SpaceX for a hiring practice that is prevalent throughout the defense industry[1]. They don't have time to prosecute gangs.
I'm sure the DoJ can find the same reference as I could: "An employer may restrict hiring to U.S. citizen only if a law, regulation, executive order, or government contract requires the employer to do so." I doubt that they failed to consider this prior to bringing enforcement action.
It’s almost as if the police are a gang that society allows to have the ability to legally steal from other gangs in return for enforcing some laws.
For those downvoting me, care to offer any counter? Even if you have no experience in this you should be able to tell from first principles you cannot get rid of gangs but you can have one gang to rule them all.
The response is ‘welcome to having a government?’ Monopoly on force is one of the key points of having a government. When it is run well (or at least not to the point of being irredeemably corrupt), this is a positive. When the government becomes irredeemably corrupt, it is functionally indistinguishable from the criminals.
The government doesn't want concentrated responsibility because that concentrates accountability. Concentrated accountability reduces the power to screw people as much/often because if responsibility is concentrated then the task of holding people accountable is much more tractable.
One bad man can be removed from power with one election, one prosecution and jail sentence, one bullet. You can't get rid of an entire misbehaving department so easily and it's even harder when most of them are "just doing their jobs" most of the time and it's the sum total of their jobs that's causing harm.
Having ineffective governing bodies and government departments that harbor abuse and do their jobs sloppily is just part of the tradeoff.
Well you have to square it with the very fact that these forms of affiliation are rather compatible with actually existing policing in our world. It's something that seems bad, and is certainly some kind of scandal, but there is nothing about it that is going against the goals we quantify for cops. Whether cops themselves follow any kind of law or have decenency/humanity is like a very minor concern at the end of the day, if not actively disincentivized in some cases. The extremely important thing is enforcing ingroup/outgroup mentality, and so we have stuff like this.
Either way, if its not these more local gangs, its the nationwide fraternities which arguably serve the same kind of function. So there isn't really like a way out either way.
I don't really think its the "mentality" that's the problem in this particular case though. Insofar as we want the particular kind of policing that we apparently do in the U.S., we need to teach cops they are somewhat outside/above of society. Those in charge aren't dumb, this isnt just simply a greed for power, its all highly research-based and intentional, it maximizes the desired outcomes.
I mean who is "we" here? In this particular case, it has been decades, and its not like this wasn't known or a particularly spacey conspiracy theory... You either gotta believe the democratic process is totally bankrupt, or that there is an implicit/unconscious compromise among voters to choose particular promises of safety even if the cops are sometimes corrupt.
There is the idea of policing, and then there is the reality. They can only coincide so much, but if you talk to any cop or read an literature about this, it really is only "so much."
And it's not like we have any historical precedence for a police force being different than this either, its just how it always been. You can't blame them for doing their jobs!
>And it's not like we have any historical precedence for a police force being different than this either, its just how it always been
Policing like we do it today in the West with state employees going looking for violations of law didn't exist before the surpluses of the industrial revolution enabled the high touch administrative state.
In the 18th and 19th century there were far, far fewer professional local/county "police", many of the duties were performed by other offices/officials and when needed they got their muscle from community volunteers or the state (usually from the national guard or army in the US). Consequently they didn't spend much time enforcing petty civil laws and enforcing social norms because the manpower simply wasn't there and you couldn't afford to piss off the fraction of people such enforcement pisses off.
(Obviously this all varies by country and year so I'm speaking generally)
> Policing like we do it today in the West with state employees going looking for violations of law didn't exist before the surpluses of the industrial revolution enabled the high touch administrative state.
It often used to be up to the victim to pursue justice.
A question I intuit but probably has a fallacy of some kind: if you want to enforce the law for dangerous and violent people, doesn’t it seem reasonable you’ll need at least equally if not more dangerous and violent people to do so? And wouldn’t a natural result of that be that those dangerous and violent “enforcers” emulate the same kind of organizational underpinnings as those they are enforcing against?
Imagine there wasn’t a rule of law at all and no police officers. A gang of “baddies” forms. What would be a natural response to the formation of that gang? Wouldn’t it be a gang of “also baddies but baddies whose interests align more closely with ours?”
> if you want to enforce the law for dangerous and violent people, doesn’t it seem reasonable you’ll need at least equally if not more dangerous and violent people to do so?
No. There are other ways.
For example, mobbing with massively superior numbers, resulting in no harm to anyone, and a suspect getting the hospital care they needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY
Ah, but ok now you’ve lead me into my next point. You see how many officers it takes to subdue a single person wielding a close range weapon. Guns are multiplier of violence in and of themselves and so many people in the US have them, especially criminals. So we’re asking for a critical mass of people crazy enough to go toe to toe with people with guns who have nothing to lose. How could they not be similar if not the same as the criminals they’re up against and stand some kind of hope of making it out of the other side?
I’d never be a cop personally because, well, many reasons, frankly, but the biggest one is I have better options. And I’m sure you do too. Almost everyone does.
I’m not saying there doesn’t exist a way to nonviolently deal with the US criminal populace but I’ve yet to see any good examples of it outside of sound socioeconomic policies and a penal system that focuses on rehabilitation. And those are indirect.
I would hope that with the whole might of the state behind them the cops don't need to rely on being as violent and stupid as their street gang opponents.
They can rely on superior armaments, better funding and numeric advantage.
Good question. The US is full of guns but people stand down when police open carry in their communities, why? police have to earn/maintain that legitimacy or they’re just more bad guys.
I suspect your conceptualization of 'dangerous and violent' as a single axis may be the main weakness here. We've struggled with 'dangerous and violent' for a long time (e.g., incorporating 'friendly' Gallic tribes in the late Roman era as a defensive buffer) - but over the long term there's been a clear transition away from the 'friendly barbarian' model towards the modern professional military?
I don't have a clear conclusion here to wrap it up, but the multiple dimensions at play here intuitively reject the assumption that you have to embrace the same characteristics that you are trying to protect against.
In what case has that ever been true though? In military conflict, there are possibly varying levels of morality at play, sure, but at the end of the day, people with guns and tanks end up killing people with guns and tanks, right?
Not at all. Modern war isn't some sort of battle royal with guns and tanks, it's more of a strategy and logistics problem. If you're interested in a window into modern military thinking that's accessible to laymen like you and me, I'd recommend checking out this article: https://warontherocks.com/2023/02/the-war-will-grind-on-refl...
It's a strategy and logistics problem for the generals sitting in their safe air conditioned offices.
But it absolutely is about men maiming and killing one another with terrible weapons. The logistics are required to fuel the battle royale and the strategy is required to kill and maim more of the enemy more cheaply than they are maiming and killing your people.
I think this closely tracks Hobbes' social contract theory: governments/nations/etc. are themselves gangs to compete for resources with other gangs.
I've thought about this here and there too, with the framing of "how do we break the cycle of violence", or "if we always require a bigger bad to defeat a bad, aren't we doomed to depend on the bad?" My latest thought experiment was the dynamic where electorates sometimes make Faustian bargains with strongman dictators to solve an urgent problem (economic destruction, raids, social change) but then they get stuck with an even worse problem: a brutal dictatorship. A couple of things I think:
- Violence is downstream of trauma. Stop the trauma, stop the violence. Frustratingly this can be relative because status factors in (in 800 AD maybe you got called out for your jank farming tools, now you get called out for your year-old shoes), so there's a cultural component to solve as well. But yeah, generally avoid catastrophes (invest in mitigations like levees, heterogeneous crops, insurance, and a free press) and lean on your culture when you can't (community disaster relief for hurricanes, draft every capable person to kick Putin the fuck out of your country, etc.)
- If you can't nip trauma in the bud, you can mob a big bad with lots of small violent actions. Like it doesn't matter how good Putin is at judo; if 1000 clumsy townspeople show up he's going down.
But like, we know how these things happen, all the way down from dictatorships to street gangs. They're ancient human stories. But they're deeply entwined in our group psychology, so knowing how the dynamic works isn't sufficient to free us from the cycle. We have to collectively rise above. But, that's pretty hard so we haven't been able to do it yet.
(n.b. I'm sorry for anything you may have gone through).
I think there are so, so many excuses for violence. If someone burst through my door looking to rob and victimize my family I would work pretty hard to do violence to them, and I think that's excusable. One doesn't have to think too hard to come up with other examples.
My theory here is that the people who would try and commit that crime against me are doing it for systemic reasons. Sure there are psychopaths or whatever, but broadly people are products of systems. We know this because people behave differently in different systems--if they didn't matter, we'd see similar aggregate behavior in all societies: crime rates, poverty rates, drug use, education rates, etc. Or to be more concrete: the US has more mass shootings than the EU because of its gun policies and culture, not because more people are randomly choosing to perpetrate mass shootings.
De-escalation is an important tool in anyone's belt when it comes to handling erratic behavior. However, my question is more looking at how we actually expect these positions to be filled with actual people. Who's going to jump at being a cop? Someone who favors de-escalation, or someone who favors violence?
As always, politics is downstream of culture. If every movie cop for the past 100 years had been a Jimmy Stewart aww shucks goody good, maybe we would be in a different place. Instead we tell ourselves (and therefore the next generation of cops) that policing is a macho violent profession, then recruit ex-soldiers to do it, and finally give them Pentagon-surplus equipment to do it with.
It's a fair question, but in other contexts this hasn't worked out. At judges' discretion, America funneled some number of criminals into the military pipeline up until the end of Vietnam. The recruits would often have antisocial tendencies and did not follow orders well (surprise...criminals don't obey social constructs like chain of command).
Russia is doing the same through the Wagner group, but they've learned to just use the convicts as first-wave cannon fodder so they're minced before they can get rebellious.
This "band of rogues" stuff makes for fun television but falls short in practice. Hence this article.
“What would be a natural response to the formation of that gang? Wouldn’t it be a gang of “also baddies but baddies whose interests align more closely with ours?”
Yes, and this is so obvious I can’t believe you are being downvoted. If authorities do nothing, vigilantism will become the increasingly common response. This is exactly what happened in the Seattle CHOP zone- no police = adhoc armed groups claiming that authority for themselves.
> What would be a natural response to the formation of that gang? Wouldn’t it be a gang of “also baddies but baddies whose interests align more closely with ours?”
Only the government can do something about this. Depending on the official/body, either they think the costs are too high (both to their career and to the functioning of the system) or they actively support this.
In short, this is treated as an acceptable trade-off for enforcing the hierarchies of power.
Technically anyone can do something about it, but that person would be a vigilante and quickly killed, and people like their life more than they hate corruption
> In short, this is treated as an acceptable trade-off for enforcing the hierarchies of power
Why don’t you unpack that statement in the context of LA. The “hierarchies of power” you’re talking about here is the civilian government having control over organized crime.
Considering the amount of influence that police organizations exert on local elections, and their willingness to weaponize that against any politician they see as a threat to their control, one might argue that it's more accurately organized crime having control over the civilian government.
Sorry, the US is a democracy even if you don’t like the results. Police organizations carry tremendous weight in elections because people think the police are good guys, are (correctly) more afraid of criminals than the police, and don’t really care about abuses against criminals and their associates. You can see this playing out right now in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, etc., where mayors have been defeated or come into power because people are outraged by the increase in crime.
edit: I misspoke, there is no data, but at least there is a claim with numbers that can or cannot be refuted for specific things. Your claim is really vague. How do you define "time in history"? How do you define safety?
That article is 7 years old, and doesn't really apply to the rise in crime people are talking about of the early 2020's. Sure, maybe taking a look at large swaths of history you could say crime is down. But no one gives a shit about that. People who are alive today remember crime 5 or 10 or 20+ years ago because that is relevant to their lives. Saying 'crime is down if you take a long look at history' is little consolation to someone who is noticing a rise in crime in their neighborhood over the last few years
Looking at tiny fluctuations is exactly how the cherry picking happens, there will always be fluctuations because life is dynamic. Add that to the fact that human memory is notoriously fallible and I can just call BS on the claim that crime is rising, it definitely isn't.
We are more connected now than ever and fear porn is streamed into homes 24/7. Perception may have changed due to a new influx of biased information and looking at historical trend is the only rational way to measure progress.
The article was posted as a response to the contention that crime was up in comparison to large swaths of history. Why would it not be germane to show that crime is actually down in comparison to large swaths of history?
Because the original point about crime had nothing to do with large swaths of history, thus the point about large swaths of history is irrelevant. See below:
> You can see this playing out right now in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, etc., where mayors have been defeated or come into power because people are outraged by the increase in crime.
We are talking about people voting because they are outraged due to recent crime
I don't think Chicago is a good example of this, given who the two runoff candidates are: the proto-Republican (there is no serious Republican nominee for Chicago mayor, only the Republicaniest Democrat) and a neo-Defunder who is likely to win.
Chicago has much more to do with outgoing mayor Lightfoot's across-the-board negatives --- with her handling of the school system, with her COVID handling, and with her handling of the police department --- than it is a straightforward reaction to crime.
> We are talking about people voting because they are outraged due to recent crime
They're outraged due to recent outrage about crime, which has absolutely nothing to do with recent crime levels and everything to do with recent outrage levels. It's entirely manufactured.
I'm not denying that the media may be talking about crime more, but, at least in my city, crime rates are actually up. In fact, 2021 and 2022 are higher than they've been in 15 years.
Saying people are not outraged about crime, but are outraged about outrage of crime is a little silly. The other side of that coin would just be that people hear more about it and are more informed. So attributing outrage to a media coverage conspiracy is not really meaningful (not to mention difficult to prove) because people are allowed to be outraged at what they want. One could even say the news covers what people are interested in, which is a classic chicken vs. the egg case in this context.
The actual data is more important, and for many cities, it is trending up recently.
I can't speak to the other cities you listed, but living in New York I think the media narrative around Eric Adams's mayoral victory is... a bit overblown.
It's true that he won 67% of the vote in the actual election [0]. But this was effectively a foregone conclusion -- his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, was a man best known for owning 15 cats [1] and faking his own kidnapping [2].
The "real" election was the primary -- notably the first ever election in the city to make use of ranked-choice voting. Wiley and Garcia, the runners-up in the first round, effectively split the "progressive" vote 50/50. Morales was a significant progressive up until a few weeks before the election, at which time her campaign staff walked out citing poor working conditions, effectively ending her campaign.
Looking at the final-round vote tally [3], it was 404,513 for Adams and 397,316 for Garcia -- a difference of just 7,197. He won, but just by the skin of his teeth. The population of NYC in 2021 was 8,468,000, with 4,992,792 registered to vote [4]. That doesn't exactly paint the picture of a resounding victory and a mandate to crack down on ne'er-do-wells that the Post would have you believe. It starts to look a bit more like a perceived centrist barely squeaking through by merit of being the best-known/least-objectionable candidate.
This of course speaks to OP's point: do the public really crave a paternalistic figure who will come and "crack down on crime" (i.e. sign off on more... questionable overtime pay for the NYPD) or is there, for some reason, undue weight given to the narrative that just by happenstance sounds identical to SBA/PBA talking points?
The _only_ problem is the lack of checks and balances - a founding principle of this country. Are they breaking the law? If so, what is the check? Are they too powerful? If so, what is the balance?
edit: the obvious answer is there are few to none.
Robert Luna was elected into office for this specific reason, LA County voters also enacted additional measures to deal with rogue LA Sheriffs because there were no legal remedies.
People are doing something and have made sure they can do more things.
yes, you are reading this correctly, that Los Angeles County, starting in 2023 just received the power to do anything to Los Angeles Sheriff department
Villaneuva and the internal gangs were that unconscionable.
I don't think this is the bystander effect at work here.
(Perhaps initially, as it went from mostly clean to compromised, there was bystander effect plus other effects)
An individual would be suicidal to join the LA Sheriff's force and try to solve it from within.
US military force needs to take control of the department, restructure the command, flush the compromised, and monitor as control is transferred back. That is what we would do if the force were compromised by a foreign force, and the same logic applies.
No idea of how it works in US Police, but over here a cop would rarely raise a finger, or testify against another cop, save for exceptional cases, and evidence often isn't enough. That otherwise wonderful thing called esprit de corps went clearly too far, becoming in some circles more akin to Mafia's code of silence.
That's why might be worth leaving out other cops.
The OIG, ATF, DEA, Marshal Service, and the FBI all agencies within the DoJ, though the FBI has always had signfiicant levels of autonomy within the DoJ compared to the others
The status quo is also martial law. Bringing in the Army is an extreme plan and probably a bad idea, but some guys in suits flying in from D.C. to give a powerpoint about police accountability will absolutely not solve this either.
The Posse Comitatus Act bars federal military forces from participating in civilian law enforcement (except in unusual circumstances that don't apply here). And the military doesn't even have the skills to root out police corruption; it's just not their job.
The appropriate response would be for the county or state government to request assistance from the California Highway Patrol and/or Department of Justice.
The military does have experience in overthrowing existing governments and setting up all-new civilian governments (including police). Perhaps they should try that in LA.
I can’t tell if you’re serious or simply trolling here. The blunt instrument required to overthrow a government is not at all the same tool required to ensure public safety, not to mention the rooting out corruption. Radically different functions, radically different training, and radically different day to day skills required.
You're right about the instruments being different, but I'm just pointing out that the US military has, in the past, set up all-new civilian governments in places after bluntly overthrowing the existing governments. In some cases it ended up working out rather well, certainly better than what was there before. So it is absolutely possible, as proven by experience, to use a military power to conquer a place, and then set up a better, democratic, civilian government. Even better, all the places where the military has done this (except Afghanistan) now have much better governments than LA. (Even Afghanistan was better until its government fell because it couldn't defend itself.)
All of the money has been consolidated into a privileged few. They've bought and paid for the judges and have all the money to hire the lawyers. They own all the media so 99.9% of reporting is only what they want you to hear.
The people who have all of the money don't give a shit. They have enough money to drown out the plebs rattling our cages.
As long as they crack the right heads, suppress any movement looking to challenge power, and enforce the laws they deem important the police can act with impunity.
As the story notes, none of these are revelations. They've been around since the 1970s; two of these gangs have Wikipedia pages, and there's a list page compiling reports going back to 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs.
The only news is that an official report is directly calling them "gangs". Previous official reports had merely called them "cliques", like this one in 2012 from the LA County's Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence: https://ccjv.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CCJV-Re...
Yeah, I could easily see one person reading this and thinking that organized crime has infiltrated the police, while another would see this as a hit piece on cop buddies who give each other cutesy nicknames and get the same tattoos
Maybe known corrupt locales should be subject to a similar interstate traveling circuit system as the one that judges followed (what the "circuit" in "circuit court" originally referred to—albeit for different reasons).
If the issue is police and sheriff's departments having roots in the crime world of LA, then perhaps the appropriate mitigation strategy is for those departments to be wholesale swapped out with ones that were previously operating in, say, Idaho. The idea is that what these regions need are law enforcement, and any PD or sheriff's department educated on local laws should do. All of the reasonable arguments against this that I can anticipate are ones that involve so-called problems that either have trivial solutions, or are actually just a collection of tremendous upsides only dressed up to seem bad.
What citizens would trade their own police force for one known to be corrupt to the core? That’s asking to import violence into their previously peaceful towns. You are basically asking to spread the disease everywhere; this is not a cure.
> You are basically asking to spread the disease everywhere
Only if you're not paying attention.
Corrupt departments getting swapped out for others limits their impact in the affected region. The same principle is at play at the next location.
Additionally: corruption thrives (e.g. in the first location) because it has the necessary preconditions to tolerate it; courts and the local folks at the next location are not going to take up a passive posture if the new guys show up and their town is plunged into corruption.
Both factors should lead to the corrupt departments being discouraged to the point that they recognize the futility.
Alternatively, you could limit it to only swapping out the LA units for the ones that were in Idaho, sending the LA ones nowhere—they're just gone. The problem, after all, is the inability to get rid of all law enforcement headcount in an entire region, even if it is by and large thoroughly corrupt. The Idahoans coming in make that a non-issue.
The sheriff is typically elected, and the sheriff's department has specific jurisdiction over the area's courts and jails. As part of that, they're usually the ones who serve summonses from the courts, and as such they often play a role in evictions.
Depending on the state, they may be limited to almost exclusively those roles, or they might be equivalent to a full police department that also happens to have those roles. In LA, it's closer to the latter.
From an outsider's perspective, at a glance, LA's case sounds very redundant when they also have an LAPD?
I mean, it makes sense having the distinction between the FBI and municipal police forces and state police forces when the state forces primarily police non-municipal areas like expressways and can provide some more mobile backup when there's a local crisis that exceeds a local force's ability to manage.
But I don't understand the logic of having so many overlapping police service organizations beyond that.
Oh, you haven't seen anything yet. Richmond, Virginia has a city police department, a sheriff's department, a capitol police department, and a campus police department, and is of course within the jurisdiction of the state police department. Most of the city is within the jurisdiction of at least four of these five.
It seems that each entity starts out performing a specific function, but policing is important and we don't want them to just not enforce the law because it's "not their jurisdiction", so we'll just give them more jurisdiction... and the funding to match... and eventually you have 3-5 departments doing basically the same thing in basically the same area.
It's terrible. It leads to budget bloat and overpolicing, complicates oversight, and makes it harder for locals to manage police interactions because they're dealing with discordant department policies and ethos. (edit: It may be important to note that the police departments themselves seem to consider all of these things a feature, not a bug.)
It’s a problem that’ll get a lot worse as being a police officer was already a shit job that has gotten much worse in recent years. For a gangster the fringe benefit of being a police officer makes a lot of sense. I agree with Bernie Sanders on the point that cops need better pay to go along with higher quality controls.
Governments are way too comfortable with gangsters/mobsters, many of whom are regular donors to politicians. These gangsters are famous and everyone know who they are and what they do yet they only rarely get arrested let alone charged with anything. And in the rare cases they do get charged they walk. The way I see it the gangsters are paying govt for the privilege to rob the people unmolested which is another way that govt vicariously robs the people. I consider it a more violent arrangement and that govt has with big companies where big companies rip off people and get away with paying fines.
The group of Memphis police officers who were responsible for the murder of Tyre Nichols operated as a gang.
I'm just speculating at this point, but naming your specialized unit the "Scorpion Unit" probably also resulted in these guys working as a internal cell, with their own unwritten rules and definitely a propensity to not talk about or work collaboratively with other's outside the unit. Essentially the definition of a gang.
It's not a problem with naming, that's absurd. There's a systemic problem with policing in the US, why do you think there are protests every few years? Do protests only happen when a named group does something?
The naming of your group is a symptom of the overall problem. No one names their gang the "community outreach response unit" which is what these units should be.
People name their gangs the "Outlaws" or "Vipers" or "Scorpions" etc because they are intending to send a message of fear or strength. It's Gang 101 activity.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 317 ms ] threadI suspect the LASD will very successfully resist reform efforts.
> The report identifies at “least a half dozen” active gangs and cliques — and names them: the Executioners, the Banditos, the Regulators, the Spartans, the Gladiators, the Cowboys, and the Reapers.
Gangs proudly calling themselves "the Executioners" or "the Gladiators" likely have antisocial and violent tendencies. Think for a moment about the kind of person such names will attract. After reading about the horrifying things these gangs do, I'm left speechless. Reality truly can be stranger -- and more shocking -- than fiction.
The coolest possible use of a regulator is maybe scuba diving?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY
I suspect this is a different group.
I think you are correct. You gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean.
https://knock-la.com/lasd-gang-regulators-shooting-zabala/
> Jason Zabala, an inked Regulator, is responsible for the deaths of at least two people and cost the County $4 million.
...
> In October 2011, an on-duty Zabala ran a red light and was involved in a collision. Sonya Benton, 49, was inside the other car. The impact gravely injured her spine, causing long-term damage and prompting a fusion surgery. At the beginning of the case, the County’s counsel asserted that Benton’s injuries weren’t serious and the surgery wasn’t necessary. The case settled for $80,000 before trial. Taxpayers picked up the bill for her award and everyone’s attorney fees. Zabala remained a deputy.
...
> The deputies later claimed Laffitte had a gun. However, Zabala said in his deposition that he never saw a weapon on Laffitte. A handgun was recovered from the scene, but it tested negative for Laffitte’s DNA, according to court documents. The testing did conclude, however, that at least two other individuals handled the gun. Shortly after the incident, Cotton said in a press conference, “I want revenge for my brother’s death. There will be no justice in Los Angeles until my brother’s murderers go to prison… I want them jailed for killing my brother and brutalizing my family.”
> That didn’t happen. Laffitte’s family settled the case for $1,500,000 before it went to trial. Taxpayers, of course, footed the bill. But the deputies who killed Terry Laffitte were never charged, and it does not appear they were disciplined. It appears as if Barrios was still a member of the department as recently as 2019. Horrifyingly, Zabala went on to kill another man in front of his family.
A sibling comment mentions the 2018 film Den of Thieves - that's the Regulators. Their tattoo's even on screen.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County_Regulators
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County_Regulators
Probably named after a previous gang:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County_Regulators
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal
Yes, I think OJ was “framed”. But I also believe he was guilty.
...its a gang. Of course it has antisocial and violent tendencies. That's part and parcel of it being a gang. If it wasn't violent and antisocial it would just be a club or organization.
But what's the internal monologue of someone who styles themselves a deputy and an Executioner really like?
Do they genuinely believe themselves to be doing smart or good things? Do they hate themselves, do they hate the flawed world they're in? Is this an unfortunate but temporary state of affairs, ends justifying the means until they can fully replace the flawed system? Are they stuck in their position, wishing they had said no when/if they had the chance, but now unsure how to safely exit?
Could you or I, with a few different life choices, have been not a software dev but a law enforcement deputy who's also a member of a violent, antisocial gang? I'd like to think I could not, but I have no clue what actually goes on inside the mind of someone in that situation.
The root of all evil is pride when you really analyze it.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lD9D5PjOco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal
It's a lot harder to sneer when you see what the movement is up against.
Edit (to the downvoters):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americ...
just think of the money
And one crank.
They can get away with literal murder thanks to qualified immunity.
If these feel justified and cops doing their jobs I don't know what to tell you.
You’re describing police beating up suspects. Few people have a problem with police beating up criminals, our prisons being Exhibit A. Police beating up suspects leaves all of us less safe, because now anyone who looks like a criminal has an incentive to not cooperate with law enforcement, and be prepared for violent encounters with the state, which means more accidental violence with non-state persons.
There's no "beating up" as part of the official justice system, even in the US.
aren't they the same group of people?
It's corruption of the worst kind.
That's a practical, but not an ethical, reason for me to prefer police gangs over criminal gangs.
The police gang has qualified immunity if they harm or murder you. So what's your reasoning?
I'm old, boring, and the most tense police interaction I'm likely to have is for a minor traffic ticket or expired parking meter.
Communities have to police themselves first.
My larger point was that apparently people without morals or ethics are being attracted to the police force for some reason. And that could be because there's no way to attract moral/ethical people to do that job.
The actual report is found here (and linked to by the Rolling Stone article): https://www.scribd.com/document/629758526/ladeptygang
This article dances around these “gangs” being deputy cliques with allegedly violent tendencies, not actual infiltration by LA street gangs. That smudging makes the lack of evidence for those violent tendencies or refusal to provide back-up easier to digest.
It never explicitly makes that point nor backs it up, which is typical Rolling Stone. It’s a fun read. But a better source is warranted.
That feels like 20/20 hindsight. There were certainly plenty of males who did believe it. I'll fess up, I was one of them. I believed it for 2 main reasons:
1. The story was outlandish, but I thought "you'd have to be insane to lie about this, with this much detail". Well, yeah, in retrospect, insane people exist.
2. Since there was so much detail, I thought there was plenty of stuff that could have been easily vetted, and given Rolling Stone's reputation, thought "for sure they have researched this." I honestly didn't realize at the time about the story being "too good to vet" phenomenon.
Yes, I learned a valuable lesson about consuming information with a more critical eye, and mea culpa. But I know I definitely wasn't the only male who originally believed the story.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-02/la-me-de... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-03/civilian...
NPR, March 2022: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/25/1088905429/lasd-gangs-investi...
Reuters, March 2022: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/la-is-investigating...
NBC Los Angeles, June 2019: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/los-angeles-county-compto...
BuzzFeed, August 2018: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/la-co...
Fox News, 18 hours ago: https://www.foxnews.com/us/ex-los-angeles-sheriff-alex-villa...
Fox 11, 3 days ago: https://www.foxla.com/video/1189078
NBC News, 5 days ago: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deputy-gangs-cancer-los...
Fox 11, Feb. 20: https://www.foxla.com/news/banditos-la-county-seeks-dismissa...
LA Times, Feb. 10: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-08/new-depu...
Loyola Law School, 2022: https://www.lls.edu/academics/centers/centerforjuvenilelawpo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_Force
Listening to the LA sheriff debate was interesting:
https://youtu.be/C0BHOA1mMco
They both have connections to gangs? And one is denying they exist.
It makes you wonder if hiring for these top positions would be nearly impossible if you had to exclude gang-connected (directly or indirectly) because almost all of the seniority probably had some connection to it in order to get where they are.
Some organizations are so deeply rotted it's nearly impossible to do an internal clean up without getting rid of the bulk of the staff.
And I'm sure the difficulty of hiring new police officers since 2020 is a big excuse for keeping them, because who is going to replace them? You almost have to a) choose the less bad ones or b) spend a lot of time/money to import senior police from other states or counties.
2. You probably almost certainly do not want martial law.
3. The military is not an intelligence organization.
Gangs would have a hard time forming in battalions mixed by people from all over the country.
MPs have jurisdictional limits. Their jurisdiction can only be expanded to broad civilians under martial law conditions (there are some weird exceptions here like posse comitatus but those remain exceptional).
Nor do you want MPs broadly enforcing the law. Handcuffing someone to a radiator for a half day because they mouthed off is not aligned with a civilian led culture.
Part of me wonder if issue may be (at least partially) a result of the fact that the FBI themselves are "cops", and it can be unsettling to prosecute illegal conduct in which you and your fellow officers also engage.
> Last week, at a public hearing, the Civilian Oversight Commission presented new evidence to suggest that the investigators’ diminishing focus on the Banditos was directed from above. (Villanueva denies giving any orders that discouraged investigation.) Throughout the inquiry, the lead investigator kept a detailed log of his work. While votes in the election for sheriff were still being counted, in early November, he wrote that he was told to ask witnesses “additional questions about subcultures at East LA.” In a deposition for the case of the eight deputies, parts of which were read into evidence at the hearing, the investigator said that, after Villanueva’s victory, his supervisor had mentioned needing to “check with the sheriff” about the Banditos inquiry. Ten days later, the investigator noted a new instruction from his supervisor: “I do not need to ask about subculture groups at ELA Station.” He explained in his deposition, “We’re a paramilitary organization. He gives me an order; I follow through.”
The financial cost is more well known:
> Since 1990, according to the Office of the Inspector General, settlements involving deputies with gang affiliations have cost taxpayers at least $54 million.
That New Yorker story also describes several ex-deputies with gang connections, including the Paul Tanaka trial (Vikings) and Villaneuva reinstating "Creepy" Carl Mandoyan (Grim Reapers).
https://lasdgangs.knock-la.com/
Deputies eager to join a gang are notorious for “chasing ink” — or engaging in violence toward county residents... This has led to a rash of “excessive force or other forms of unconstitutional policing,” the report says.
I'm more worried about white supremacists gang members in law enforcement: https://whyy.org/articles/oath-keeperes-membership-data-poli...
Cops killing cops and their families in gang initiations and power struggles makes for nice FX shows, but it is bad for communities, no matter what race the cops are.
Why? Does it feel nicer to be beaten or murdered by cop depending on their political affiliation?
The language might be a bit confusing to outsiders but the gang problem in the sheriff's department is well known to angelenos and isn't confused with street gangs. It's been going on for years.
The LASD is not the LAPD.
These are police gangs that are not directly under street gangs in terms of culture or leadership structure. These aren't former or current street gang members who became cops.
There are white supremacist LASD gangs. Google "Lynwood Vikings".
Randomly I will pick Atlanta. 58%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Police_Department#:~...
I did mistake a mistake I meant to say Tyre Nichols: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/01/20/...
Have you had a chance to do a google search on that?
If you're alleging they targeted Tyre Nichols based on his skin color, that's an anti-Black action. I'm entirely comfortable with the idea that minority groups can internalize bias against their own identities, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.
"Black supremacists" believe the Black race is inherently superior to other races. This means it would be very, very odd for them to beat someone up for being Black.
Edit: I wasn't incorrect, I can't see your post anymore but I don't remember you specifying metro in it. Additionally, I can process the not-new idea just fine, I just think you're applying it entirely incorrectly. I'm done here.
There's a picture of the guy who killed George Floyd in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Chauvin. Go take a peek.
Tell me you need police reform without saying it.
On another note, if anyone could provide any hints as to why my comment made in good faith with an actual link to a reputable site that backs up a well-known phenomenon affecting police nationally was flagged, that'd be great. It's difficult to judge the group-think of ycombinator comment moderators.
Pretty much everyone knows that the LA Sheriff's Department has been heavily infiltrated by gangs like the Compton Executioners. The phenomenon is extensively well-documented in the press and it even has a Wikipedia entry.
But … no one cares?
The federal government's Department of Justice just ignores it? ( https://raskin.house.gov/2022/2/chairman-raskin-rep-gomez-ur... )
At the state and county level, people just kind of ignore it?
And individuals can't do much about it, since after all the state has a monopoly on violence?
I mentioned the deputy gangs to a family member a while back and they were baffled that nobody is doing anything about it. But who would?
What is the word for "assuming someone else is going to do something about that, but there is no one"?
Would note that this isn’t infiltration by street gangs as much as deputies forming gangs.
> state and county level, people just kind of ignore it
I am from the Bay Area. This is the first I’m hearing about it. I do wish we had a more neutral source than the Rolling Stone.
The wikipedia article on this cites several reputable looking sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
Here's a 50-page summary from Loyola Law School: https://lmu.app.box.com/s/uci2ir4mkpudtvvfp7z8iu4kv1gre1dj
You can see that Rolling Stone skews left and is lower than the peak of reliability.
I dont understand how you can claim media bias is at the core of this story.
> Define "neutral" and I can find one
I think I misunderstood their comment to say "I don't understand why you are claiming Rolling Stone is not neutral". Sorry.
That said, I find it rather odd the absolute highest quality news achievable is...ABC15 in Arizona. Kinda feel they should leave local stations off altogether.
This list isn't exhaustive but many of these are civilian gangs, so it's probably a case of both.
There are of course corrupt members of law enforcement who collaborate with organized crime for various nefarious purposes, but the in-department gangs are a distinct issue.
It specifically mentions armed services, police, and firefighters are not civilians.
Civilian in law enforcement jargon means a non-sworn position: https://www.discoverpolicing.org/explore-the-field/civilian-...
To make this more interesting, Posse Comitatus employs the language to signal "non-Federal forces" eg: National Guard activated by a state to operate domestically are referred to as "civilian law enforcement".
In any of the above cases, calling LEOs civilians would be incorrect and would eschew them of many of their responsibilities.
It very much is gangs infiltrating LAPD and SO.
On top of that, they also have their own cliques or gangs that form within.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
I haven’t seen any reports in Bay Area papers but it’s been reported on in LA. It’s been local news. Similarly Californian don’t hear about >90% of the scandals in Chicago.
The corruption in southland policing departments is absolutely nothing new. Rampart comes easily to mind here, but the list is unfortunately a long one and wikipedia has many documented examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal
Rampart, for instance, was such a large media issue that they even made a movie about it. Not a small one either: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640548/
EDIT: Dorner should also ring a lot of bells too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings_a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrel...
How about that outstanding episode:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources_Against_St...
Well documented and was the base for "GTA San Andreas" and "Training Day". And even though it has been 20 years now, the problem seems far from solved.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Riders-Come-Out-a...
Well, I’m sure not only in America-a lot of developing countries I wouldn’t be surprised if such things existed too-but not the countries the US would want to be compared to
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I can certainly speak to that effect as a Canadian aware of at least one similar 'police gang'
What’s it called? Where is it?
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/02/24/massive-gta-mafi...
https://www.cp24.com/news/two-york-region-cops-charged-in-co...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-a...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-justice-department...
[0]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a23080/spacex...
For those downvoting me, care to offer any counter? Even if you have no experience in this you should be able to tell from first principles you cannot get rid of gangs but you can have one gang to rule them all.
And it's a feature not a bug.
The government doesn't want concentrated responsibility because that concentrates accountability. Concentrated accountability reduces the power to screw people as much/often because if responsibility is concentrated then the task of holding people accountable is much more tractable.
One bad man can be removed from power with one election, one prosecution and jail sentence, one bullet. You can't get rid of an entire misbehaving department so easily and it's even harder when most of them are "just doing their jobs" most of the time and it's the sum total of their jobs that's causing harm.
Having ineffective governing bodies and government departments that harbor abuse and do their jobs sloppily is just part of the tradeoff.
Either way, if its not these more local gangs, its the nationwide fraternities which arguably serve the same kind of function. So there isn't really like a way out either way.
I would say overcoming that mentality is one of the most important things for which our society could strive.
There is the idea of policing, and then there is the reality. They can only coincide so much, but if you talk to any cop or read an literature about this, it really is only "so much."
And it's not like we have any historical precedence for a police force being different than this either, its just how it always been. You can't blame them for doing their jobs!
Policing like we do it today in the West with state employees going looking for violations of law didn't exist before the surpluses of the industrial revolution enabled the high touch administrative state.
In the 18th and 19th century there were far, far fewer professional local/county "police", many of the duties were performed by other offices/officials and when needed they got their muscle from community volunteers or the state (usually from the national guard or army in the US). Consequently they didn't spend much time enforcing petty civil laws and enforcing social norms because the manpower simply wasn't there and you couldn't afford to piss off the fraction of people such enforcement pisses off.
(Obviously this all varies by country and year so I'm speaking generally)
It often used to be up to the victim to pursue justice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief-taker
There are obvious problems with this approach.
Imagine there wasn’t a rule of law at all and no police officers. A gang of “baddies” forms. What would be a natural response to the formation of that gang? Wouldn’t it be a gang of “also baddies but baddies whose interests align more closely with ours?”
No. There are other ways.
For example, mobbing with massively superior numbers, resulting in no harm to anyone, and a suspect getting the hospital care they needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY
I’d never be a cop personally because, well, many reasons, frankly, but the biggest one is I have better options. And I’m sure you do too. Almost everyone does.
I’m not saying there doesn’t exist a way to nonviolently deal with the US criminal populace but I’ve yet to see any good examples of it outside of sound socioeconomic policies and a penal system that focuses on rehabilitation. And those are indirect.
I don't have a clear conclusion here to wrap it up, but the multiple dimensions at play here intuitively reject the assumption that you have to embrace the same characteristics that you are trying to protect against.
But it absolutely is about men maiming and killing one another with terrible weapons. The logistics are required to fuel the battle royale and the strategy is required to kill and maim more of the enemy more cheaply than they are maiming and killing your people.
I've thought about this here and there too, with the framing of "how do we break the cycle of violence", or "if we always require a bigger bad to defeat a bad, aren't we doomed to depend on the bad?" My latest thought experiment was the dynamic where electorates sometimes make Faustian bargains with strongman dictators to solve an urgent problem (economic destruction, raids, social change) but then they get stuck with an even worse problem: a brutal dictatorship. A couple of things I think:
- Violence is downstream of trauma. Stop the trauma, stop the violence. Frustratingly this can be relative because status factors in (in 800 AD maybe you got called out for your jank farming tools, now you get called out for your year-old shoes), so there's a cultural component to solve as well. But yeah, generally avoid catastrophes (invest in mitigations like levees, heterogeneous crops, insurance, and a free press) and lean on your culture when you can't (community disaster relief for hurricanes, draft every capable person to kick Putin the fuck out of your country, etc.)
- If you can't nip trauma in the bud, you can mob a big bad with lots of small violent actions. Like it doesn't matter how good Putin is at judo; if 1000 clumsy townspeople show up he's going down.
But like, we know how these things happen, all the way down from dictatorships to street gangs. They're ancient human stories. But they're deeply entwined in our group psychology, so knowing how the dynamic works isn't sufficient to free us from the cycle. We have to collectively rise above. But, that's pretty hard so we haven't been able to do it yet.
There is no excuse for violence. There is always choice.
I think there are so, so many excuses for violence. If someone burst through my door looking to rob and victimize my family I would work pretty hard to do violence to them, and I think that's excusable. One doesn't have to think too hard to come up with other examples.
My theory here is that the people who would try and commit that crime against me are doing it for systemic reasons. Sure there are psychopaths or whatever, but broadly people are products of systems. We know this because people behave differently in different systems--if they didn't matter, we'd see similar aggregate behavior in all societies: crime rates, poverty rates, drug use, education rates, etc. Or to be more concrete: the US has more mass shootings than the EU because of its gun policies and culture, not because more people are randomly choosing to perpetrate mass shootings.
Russia is doing the same through the Wagner group, but they've learned to just use the convicts as first-wave cannon fodder so they're minced before they can get rebellious.
This "band of rogues" stuff makes for fun television but falls short in practice. Hence this article.
Yes, and this is so obvious I can’t believe you are being downvoted. If authorities do nothing, vigilantism will become the increasingly common response. This is exactly what happened in the Seattle CHOP zone- no police = adhoc armed groups claiming that authority for themselves.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohortes_urbanae
In short, this is treated as an acceptable trade-off for enforcing the hierarchies of power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings...
How? Even a victim suit against department would likely be tossed out due to USSC 'qualified immunity'.
Why don’t you unpack that statement in the context of LA. The “hierarchies of power” you’re talking about here is the civilian government having control over organized crime.
edit: I misspoke, there is no data, but at least there is a claim with numbers that can or cannot be refuted for specific things. Your claim is really vague. How do you define "time in history"? How do you define safety?
I can make up numbers too.
Robbery is down 76% compared with 1928 and assaults are down by 22%! Incredible!
This nonsense is just reactionaries being scared, people love fear
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/excellent-beauty/201...
We are more connected now than ever and fear porn is streamed into homes 24/7. Perception may have changed due to a new influx of biased information and looking at historical trend is the only rational way to measure progress.
7 years is not a long time.
> You can see this playing out right now in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, etc., where mayors have been defeated or come into power because people are outraged by the increase in crime.
We are talking about people voting because they are outraged due to recent crime
Chicago has much more to do with outgoing mayor Lightfoot's across-the-board negatives --- with her handling of the school system, with her COVID handling, and with her handling of the police department --- than it is a straightforward reaction to crime.
They're outraged due to recent outrage about crime, which has absolutely nothing to do with recent crime levels and everything to do with recent outrage levels. It's entirely manufactured.
Saying people are not outraged about crime, but are outraged about outrage of crime is a little silly. The other side of that coin would just be that people hear more about it and are more informed. So attributing outrage to a media coverage conspiracy is not really meaningful (not to mention difficult to prove) because people are allowed to be outraged at what they want. One could even say the news covers what people are interested in, which is a classic chicken vs. the egg case in this context.
The actual data is more important, and for many cities, it is trending up recently.
It's true that he won 67% of the vote in the actual election [0]. But this was effectively a foregone conclusion -- his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, was a man best known for owning 15 cats [1] and faking his own kidnapping [2].
The "real" election was the primary -- notably the first ever election in the city to make use of ranked-choice voting. Wiley and Garcia, the runners-up in the first round, effectively split the "progressive" vote 50/50. Morales was a significant progressive up until a few weeks before the election, at which time her campaign staff walked out citing poor working conditions, effectively ending her campaign.
Looking at the final-round vote tally [3], it was 404,513 for Adams and 397,316 for Garcia -- a difference of just 7,197. He won, but just by the skin of his teeth. The population of NYC in 2021 was 8,468,000, with 4,992,792 registered to vote [4]. That doesn't exactly paint the picture of a resounding victory and a mandate to crack down on ne'er-do-wells that the Post would have you believe. It starts to look a bit more like a perceived centrist barely squeaking through by merit of being the best-known/least-objectionable candidate.
This of course speaks to OP's point: do the public really crave a paternalistic figure who will come and "crack down on crime" (i.e. sign off on more... questionable overtime pay for the NYPD) or is there, for some reason, undue weight given to the narrative that just by happenstance sounds identical to SBA/PBA talking points?
[0] https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/results/new-york-city/mayo...
[1] https://nypost.com/2021/06/23/an-inside-look-into-curtis-sli...
[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-25-mn-1060-s...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/22/us/elections/...
[4] https://vote.nyc/sites/default/files/pdf/vote/2021/county_fe...
edit: the obvious answer is there are few to none.
People are doing something and have made sure they can do more things.
https://abc7.com/la-county-sheriff-robert-luna-alex-villanue...
https://ballotpedia.org/Los_Angeles_County,_Measure_A,_Remov...
yes, you are reading this correctly, that Los Angeles County, starting in 2023 just received the power to do anything to Los Angeles Sheriff department
Villaneuva and the internal gangs were that unconscionable.
(Perhaps initially, as it went from mostly clean to compromised, there was bystander effect plus other effects)
An individual would be suicidal to join the LA Sheriff's force and try to solve it from within.
US military force needs to take control of the department, restructure the command, flush the compromised, and monitor as control is transferred back. That is what we would do if the force were compromised by a foreign force, and the same logic applies.
This is martial law. Los Angeles doesn't need martial law. What you're describing is the DoJ's job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence
DoJ aren’t cops. (FBI are cops.)
The appropriate response would be for the county or state government to request assistance from the California Highway Patrol and/or Department of Justice.
They're shouted down for being "pro-crime" and "anti-cop".
I know this may be new to you (Welcome. We have a snacks.), but the least you could do is become a bit informed about this before spouting off.
It just seems like garden variety indifference/apathy/complacency...
The people who have all of the money don't give a shit. They have enough money to drown out the plebs rattling our cages.
As long as they crack the right heads, suppress any movement looking to challenge power, and enforce the laws they deem important the police can act with impunity.
In Southland, maybe. This is the first I'm hearing about it.
It's a big planet with a lot going on, you know.
The only news is that an official report is directly calling them "gangs". Previous official reports had merely called them "cliques", like this one in 2012 from the LA County's Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence: https://ccjv.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CCJV-Re...
The Executioners are the Compton station and known white supremacists; the county paid out $7M over a fatal shooting tied to the gang in 2019: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-20/lasd-gan..., https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/los-angeles-county-compto...
The Banditos are the East LA station: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-fbi-investigating-...
Lots of “widespread” and similar quotes such but no solid numbers. Not much but lots of weighted / non specific language…
If the issue is police and sheriff's departments having roots in the crime world of LA, then perhaps the appropriate mitigation strategy is for those departments to be wholesale swapped out with ones that were previously operating in, say, Idaho. The idea is that what these regions need are law enforcement, and any PD or sheriff's department educated on local laws should do. All of the reasonable arguments against this that I can anticipate are ones that involve so-called problems that either have trivial solutions, or are actually just a collection of tremendous upsides only dressed up to seem bad.
Change my view.
Only if you're not paying attention.
Corrupt departments getting swapped out for others limits their impact in the affected region. The same principle is at play at the next location.
Additionally: corruption thrives (e.g. in the first location) because it has the necessary preconditions to tolerate it; courts and the local folks at the next location are not going to take up a passive posture if the new guys show up and their town is plunged into corruption.
Both factors should lead to the corrupt departments being discouraged to the point that they recognize the futility.
Alternatively, you could limit it to only swapping out the LA units for the ones that were in Idaho, sending the LA ones nowhere—they're just gone. The problem, after all, is the inability to get rid of all law enforcement headcount in an entire region, even if it is by and large thoroughly corrupt. The Idahoans coming in make that a non-issue.
Depending on the state, they may be limited to almost exclusively those roles, or they might be equivalent to a full police department that also happens to have those roles. In LA, it's closer to the latter.
I mean, it makes sense having the distinction between the FBI and municipal police forces and state police forces when the state forces primarily police non-municipal areas like expressways and can provide some more mobile backup when there's a local crisis that exceeds a local force's ability to manage.
But I don't understand the logic of having so many overlapping police service organizations beyond that.
It seems that each entity starts out performing a specific function, but policing is important and we don't want them to just not enforce the law because it's "not their jurisdiction", so we'll just give them more jurisdiction... and the funding to match... and eventually you have 3-5 departments doing basically the same thing in basically the same area.
It's terrible. It leads to budget bloat and overpolicing, complicates oversight, and makes it harder for locals to manage police interactions because they're dealing with discordant department policies and ethos. (edit: It may be important to note that the police departments themselves seem to consider all of these things a feature, not a bug.)
Governments are way too comfortable with gangsters/mobsters, many of whom are regular donors to politicians. These gangsters are famous and everyone know who they are and what they do yet they only rarely get arrested let alone charged with anything. And in the rare cases they do get charged they walk. The way I see it the gangsters are paying govt for the privilege to rob the people unmolested which is another way that govt vicariously robs the people. I consider it a more violent arrangement and that govt has with big companies where big companies rip off people and get away with paying fines.
I'm just speculating at this point, but naming your specialized unit the "Scorpion Unit" probably also resulted in these guys working as a internal cell, with their own unwritten rules and definitely a propensity to not talk about or work collaboratively with other's outside the unit. Essentially the definition of a gang.
People name their gangs the "Outlaws" or "Vipers" or "Scorpions" etc because they are intending to send a message of fear or strength. It's Gang 101 activity.