Sad price of gang 'rent'

[Elano]

The shooting death of a 23-day-old baby has sparked what officials hope will be Los Angeles' most vigorous crackdown yet on gang members charging "rent" to merchants and vendors, a practice authorities believe is thriving despite an overall drop in crime.

Los Angeles police detectives and prosecutors say gangs have long charged "taxes" and "rent" to those working in underground economies: street vendors, prostitutes, drug dealers, some residents and immigrant business owners.

But as gang violence has declined in recent years, authorities said this extortion is increasing because there is less fighting among gangs, who have vetted major boundary disputes and have more time to focus on clamping down on their territories.

The Los Angeles Police Department has received 23 extortion complaints this year, compared with 10 for all of 2006. Although officials believe these numbers represent a tiny fraction of the larger problem, they said it suggests the problem is worsening.

The issue rose in prominence last month after gang members allegedly shot a merchant on 6th Street near MacArthur Park who had refused to pay $50 in "rent." A stray bullet hit the baby boy, who was with his mother and hundreds of others in the marketplace.

In response, city officials and prosecutors are considering new efforts to combat gang extortion including:

* Placing surveillance cameras in the crowded shopping districts in the MacArthur Park and Pico-Union areas to better understand how the extortion schemes work and build better cases against gangs.

* Meeting with officials from El Salvador, who have experience dealing with gang extortion involving MS-13, which is also active in Los Angeles. Brian Truchon, the FBI's former director of the MS-13 National Gang Task Force, said El Salvadoran authorities recently turned to video cameras after an MS-13 extortion ring squeezed millions of dollars from the country's bus systems.

* Assigning more officers to deal specifically with street vendor-related crime. The LAPD tried this strategy in the downtown Fashion District, where vendors and police say incidents of gang extortion are now low.

"This is really the core crime of 18th Street and MS-13," said Deputy City Atty. Bruce Riordan, director of the office's anti-gang operation. "When I started this job 15 years ago, the first day, the detectives took me out and said the No. 1 crime among these gangs is extortion, but said 'it's just so hard to prove.' "

Riordan and others said the rent problem extends beyond MacArthur Park to North Hills in the San Fernando Valley, the Eastside neighborhood around the Ramona Gardens housing project and in some areas of South Los Angeles.

Driving along Olympic Boulevard last month, Officer Randy McCain spotted an illegal vendor at Maple Avenue and jumped out of his cruiser. He told Julio Olivares, 19, that he had an hour and a half to get his dozens of hats and sunglasses off the corner or face arrest. Olivares appreciated the grace period.

"We don't have a license to vend here," Olivares said, packing Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees hats into a large brown box. "I'll have to go and try and get a business permit from the city before I come back." Olivares and his goods were gone in 45 minutes.

McCain is one of a handful of LAPD officers devoted to vending. On a Tuesday afternoon last month, he drove into the neighborhood with a can of orange spray paint, marking lines where legal businesses are permitted on the street, so that authorities could tell them from illegal vendors.

Officials believe cracking down on unauthorized vendors is crucial because they are vulnerable to extortion. Many are illegal immigrants -- and therefore reluctant to go to police or serve as official witnesses to the extortion, authorities said.

The LAPD points to McCain's unit as a potential model for regulating street vendors and keeping gang extortion to a minimum. Olivares said he sets up shop in the Fashion District because there is less extortion there than other places, including MacArthur Park.

A year and half ago, 18th Street gang members began selling DVDs in the district, and police heard rumblings they were working to control the area by using extortion as a means to dominate the territory.

Raul Ortega, 23, a vendor in the Fashion District, said he won't forget what happened when the 18th Street gang members asked him and fellow DVD vendors to pay them rent.

"We told them we wouldn't pay," Ortega said.

McCain said Ortega and several other vendors later got into a bloody fight with members of the gang. He said that a few days later on Maple Avenue, two gang members opened fire on two of the vendors involved in the brawl, wounding at least one of them.

The shooting marked a turning point. Vendors were shocked by the violence and worked with police to keep the gang at bay. Police officers began surveillance on gang members in the area, hoping the pressure would drive them away.

"We took their Polaroids, got their information, and told them, 'If any one of these vendors tells us they are being extorted, we're going to show them all of your pictures and if they pick you out, you're going to jail,' " McCain said. "We told them, 'That's not going to happen out here.' "

For police, the relationship is touchy. Many vendors are working without permits, including Ortega, making them subject to arrest.

"Even people that I've arrested, they're real comfortable with approaching me with things, because they know I'll be straight with them," McCain said.

As McCain drove around the Fashion District, street vendors ran up to his window to ask questions about specific regulations, a known gang member waved to him and smiled, and, with the windows rolled down, one could hear calls of "Hey Randy!" over the bustling street traffic.

The atmosphere is much different in the teeming neighborhoods of dense apartments and busy street shopping a few miles west of downtown.

Street vendors along 6th Street near MacArthur Park sell everything from Sunday dresses to fresh slices of watermelon and pineapple. They are quick to decry police enforcement of vending regulations and quicker to shut their mouths when asked about impuestos, or taxes, paid to gangs.

Police said gang extortion has produced an air of intimidation and fear for residents in those communities.

Getting someone who has been extorted to talk or be a witness against the gang is "so difficult," Riordan said.

He pointed to the four-year investigation of 18th Street gang kingpin Ruben "Nite Owl" Castro, who is a member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang and is accused of running a highly sophisticated extortion ring of drug dealers and other illegal street peddlers in areas near Shatto Park, northwest of MacArthur Park.

Because it was so hard to get those who were being extorted to talk, police used wiretaps, undercover surveillance and inside sources to try to prove the racket.

Castro was named in a federal indictment in September 2006 along with more than a dozen members of the 18th Street gang. The case has yet to be tried, but Riordan, who was working as an assistant U.S. attorney at the time of the indictment, said the gang made money hand-over-fist, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit from years of rent collection.

According to the indictment, "untimely payment of rent to [the] Ruben Castro Organization by a narcotics dealer often resulted in increased rent . . . [followed by] threatened and actual acts of violence."

Riordan called extortion an "insidious" crime that is grossly underreported, and UCLA professor Jorja Leap, an advisor on gang issues to City Hall, said there is scarcely any literature and few in-depth academic studies on the subject.

Riordan said street vendors and others who are extorted by gangs are "either too scared to report" the crime or often don't report the crime because "those who are paying rents and taxes to the gangs are involved in their own criminal activity."

The Rev. Howard Dotson, of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, said the problem may be underreported not only because vendors and peddlers fear the gangs, but also because they are illegal immigrants who fear deportation.

"The elephant in the room is that this community has a lot of people that are undocumented, and for them to interact with the LAPD, that's a scary proposition," said Dotson, who was a pallbearer at the infant's funeral.

"The fear of your documentation status, I can't imagine what it's like to be in that situation and to be vulnerable and a victim of crime. That fear can be immobilizing when you have it coming from so many facets," he said.

Robert Loosle, of the FBI's criminal division in Los Angeles, said fear makes it difficult for authorities to be proactive about gang extortion.

"That intimidation is what perpetuates the ability to extort," Loosle said. He speculated that if authorities had known about extortion involving the vendor shot on 6th Street, they might have been able to prevent the shooting.

"We don't want to just be reactive," he said.

[Shallow]

I skimmed through it. Did the guy who killed the baby get caught?


All this gang shit seems so stupid to me. Bunch of low lifes ruining their own community, or lack of community I should say. In real communities people know each other. Where I live in Toronto in the early 90s a few Greek-Canadian gangs were starting up. Nothing dangerous. Just a bunch of punks getting together to fight and shit. I remember one altercation in particular when I was a kid in '91. One the gangs was walking around my neighborhood and they were trying to rob this teenage greek kid from across the street. He refused and they pushed him down and started beating on him. My 85 year old grandfather walks out of the house and sternly yells out for them to stop. They laughed at him and approached like they were going to attack him too. Then he realized they were Greek. The gang member that was getting in my grandfather's face took one open hand swat across the face. Then my grandfather started the usual Greek "you should be ashamed of yourselves" lines as he grabbed the kid by the ear and pulled him into my house. Told him to call his father at work. My grandfather explained to the father what happened. The kid's father rushed down from work to the street and the kid was whining about how my grandfather hit him. Then his father looks at my grandfather says "sorry uncle" (in greek) and slaps the fucking shit out of his son. I'll always remember that vividly. Then my grandfather scolded the kid's father in my house as they drank greek coffee. In Greek he says to him "If we're here in this country just so we can run around and fight each other like stupid Canadians then we might as well just get back on the next boat to Greece". The kid's father left in shame apologizing. Over the next week every father of every gang member there that day came to our house to personally apologize for shaming the community.

You see the kids knew if they put their hands on an old Greek man they'd get fucking mutilated by their own fathers. And the fathers now knew what their kids were up to and quickly put an end to it. Those few gangs of the early 90s disappeared soon after because of incidents like that involving Greek-Canadian elders putting their foot down.

No police officer, no poltician, no government funded centre was going to stop anything. Community and respect for that community stopped it and that's the only thing in my mind that can stop it. With out that community, stemming fromn the 60s when the Greeks came here, who knows what rut I'd be living in right now.

Unfortunately I feel too many US street gangs are too far gone in tradition and shit to be stopped like that.

[LooN3y]

* Placing surveillance cameras in the crowded shopping districts in the MacArthur Park and Pico-Union areas to better understand how the extortion schemes work and build better cases against gangs.


isnt that what their doin in england? placing cameras in every street corner, becoming a police state?

[Shallow]

* Placing surveillance cameras in the crowded shopping districts in the MacArthur Park and Pico-Union areas to better understand how the extortion schemes work and build better cases against gangs.


isnt that what their doin in england? placing cameras in every street corner, becoming a police state?

But that only gets rid of the few thugs out there collecting the money and only gets rid of them for a few years at best. People need assurance of no retaliation and that can only come from with in the home of the gang member.

The best way to remedy this is not to stop the thugs from partaking by law but to provide another path for them to go on. If the best and brightest minds onthe black streets end up all going on to real jobs contributing to society then only the complete morons end up staying on the street and they'll mostly crumble. Look at the Italian Mob. The reason it did so well in the first half of the century was because there was nowhere to go for a young Italian man. All the current Italian doctors, lawyers, businessmen would be in the mob 50 years ago because getting real jobs wasn't always an option. Now that Italian men have options only losers enter the mob and that's why the mob is a fraction of what it was.

[Elano]

* Placing surveillance cameras in the crowded shopping districts in the MacArthur Park and Pico-Union areas to better understand how the extortion schemes work and build better cases against gangs.


isnt that what their doin in england? placing cameras in every street corner, becoming a police state?

CCTV for use outside government special facilities was developed as a means of increasing security in banks. Today it has developed to the point where it is simple and inexpensive enough to be used in home security systems, and for surveillance. Surveillance of public areas in the United Kingdom by CCTV was developed partly in response to IRA bombings. Experiments in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s (including outdoor CCTV in Bournemouth in 1985), led to several larger trial programs in the early 1990s. These were deemed successful in the government report "CCTV: Looking Out For You", issued by the Home Office in 1994, and paved the way for a massive increase in the number of CCTV systems installed. Today, systems cover most town and city centres, and many stations, car-parks and estates. The exact number of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known but a 2002 working paper by Michael McCahill and Clive Norris of UrbanEye,based on a small sample in Putney High Street, estimated the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in London is around 500,000 and the total number of cameras in the UK is around 4,200,000. The UK has one camera for every 14 people.

Claims that they reduce or deter crime have not been clearly borne out by independent studies,though the government claims that when properly used they do result in deterrence, rather than displacement. One clear effect that has been noted is a reduction of car crime when used in car parks. Cameras have also been installed in taxis to deter violence against drivers,and also in mobile police surveillance vans.In some cases CCTV cameras have become a target of attacks themselves.Middlesbrough council have recently installed "Talking CCTV" cameras in their busy town-centre.It is a system pioneered in Wiltshire which allows CCTV operators to communicate directly with the offenders they spot.
This idea is first known to have appeared in George Orwell's famous cautionary tale Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The use of CCTV in the United States is less common, though increasing, and generally meets stronger opposition. In 1998 3,000 CCTV systems were found in New York City.There are 2,200 CCTV systems in Chicago.

The most measurable effect of CCTV is not on crime prevention, but on detection and prosecution. Several notable murder cases have been solved with the use of CCTV evidence, notably the Jamie Bulger case, and catching David Copeland, the Soho nail bomber. The use of CCTV to track the movements of missing children is now routine.

After the bombings of London on 7 July 2005, CCTV footage was used to identify the bombers. The media was surprised that few tube trains actually had CCTV cameras, and there were some calls for this to be increased.

On July 22, 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station. CCTV footage has debunked some police claims.
Because of the bombing attempts the previous day, some of the tapes had been supposedly removed from CCTV cameras for study, and they were not functional.The use of DVR technology may solve this problem.

[King Tech Quadafi]

Unfortunately I feel too many US street gangs are too far gone in tradition and shit to be stopped like that.

you hit it on the head, and sadly this applies to some toronto gangs as well

greeks, theyre soft so they can be squashed easily like this

but hwo do you deal with those niggers? they dont even have a father 80% of the time, and their culture IS machismo, shotta culture that advocates and glorifies violence

and the tamils, those animals are just savage

every other ethnic group though can be tamed by their elders, if theyre willing to and are cognizant enough of what the fuck their kids are doing (which most of em are not)

[Shallow]

Unfortunately I feel too many US street gangs are too far gone in tradition and shit to be stopped like that.

you hit it on the head, and sadly this applies to some toronto gangs as well

greeks, theyre soft so they can be squashed easily like this

but hwo do you deal with those niggers? they dont even have a father 80% of the time, and their culture IS machismo, shotta culture that advocates and glorifies violence

and the tamils, those animals are just savage

every other ethnic group though can be tamed by their elders, if theyre willing to and are cognizant enough of what the fuck their kids are doing (which most of em are not)

I wouldn't say soft. The street toughs aren't all over the place but the Greek organized crime as far as shipping is concerned is a large entity. Of course that's a whole different kind of gang. That show The Wire on HBO wasn't spreading lies. Greek organized crime is a lot smarter and more low key than Italian. All the drugs and shit over the past 50 years that went through the Onasis and Latsis shipping ocean liners makes most sicilians look like black teenagers.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. The reason the greek street gangs were so easy to squash was the same reason the vast majority of Greeks in Toronto stayed out of trouble in the first place. There is a culture of self worth and ego that teaches that they aren't equal to the white Canadians, but that they are a whole lot better. As a kid if someone that wasn't Greek did better than me on a test I got this look from my father like Plato would be ashamed of me. You're dealing with a people that went through nearly 400 years of occupation. And while Islam was forced on them they never lost their religion or their language. Their history stayed strong with in them. They came here because the Western King of Greece (who was dutch or something) pushed them out of Greece and they came here not trusting Canadians or Americans. They came from a culture that had women raped by German soldiers and were forced by their fathers to marry some man from another village that was also forced because the future of the child and your face in the community mattered most. As opposed to the Jamaicans that immigrated from a culture where it was odd to have a family with no outside children and baby mothers. If a married man got a girl pregnant in the Greek community here it wasn't his kid. She'd marry someone else and that kid never knew that the man he called father wasn't his father. (and I'm not trying to imply only Greeks hae this community. Many immigrants move forward here because of their culture).

The Jamaican culture here was doomed to fail from day one. Tamils aren't so bad after 25 or so. Most grow up and get jobs and get married. Many don't but it's nothing like the Jamaican community. I know a lot of tamils. I don't see too many repping the streets in their 30s. And how many teenage Tamil girls do you see with baby strollers and no husbands? I don't think I've seen one on the East side.

on a side note, you aren't voting MMP are you?

[LooN3y]

Unfortunately I feel too many US street gangs are too far gone in tradition and shit to be stopped like that.

you hit it on the head, and sadly this applies to some toronto gangs as well

greeks, theyre soft so they can be squashed easily like this

but hwo do you deal with those niggers? they dont even have a father 80% of the time, and their culture IS machismo, shotta culture that advocates and glorifies violence

and the tamils, those animals are just savage

every other ethnic group though can be tamed by their elders, if theyre willing to and are cognizant enough of what the fuck their kids are doing (which most of em are not)

lol its worse in LA , every1 wants to be a gangbanger at a time in their childhood