The Gangs of L.A.

L os Angeles’s most dangerous criminal gangs have different names — the Banditos, the Executioners, the Wayside Whities — they occupy different turfs, they sport distinctive identifying tattoos, and they carry on intense rivalries with one another. But their members all have one thing in common.

They are all Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

A new report on deputy gangs from the RAND Corporation is, in spite of its antiseptic language, one of those rare things that simply must be read to be believed. It is a document that should be studied and preserved.

Like the mafias of old and the Folk Nation/People Nation mobs that evolved during Chicago’s golden age of street gangs, the gangs of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) serve a variety of social and criminal purposes. They have their roots in the bonding experience of men (and women, but — who are we trying to kid? — mostly men) who have been through difficult and dangerous experiences together. They are partly social in character, providing a sense of belonging and status to their members. They act as mutual-aid societies, exchanging favors and help ranging from the commonplace to the criminal.

As with the old street gangs, there are two very good ways to get an invitation to join: commit a crime or shoot somebody.

These gangs — the RAND report, honoring the sociological pretense, calls them only “subgroups” — are involved in a variety of crimes, from covering up police misconduct to extortion, including extortion targeting lower-ranking deputies, who are forced into “paying rent to work at a station” in the pursuit of a desirable posting. LASD staff told researchers that violence against prisoners in custody is used as a test to “get your ink,” which is to say, as part of a gang-initiation ritual.

RAND reports:

These subgroups are associated with varying forms of misconduct in the community and within the department, including the violation of constitutional rights, use of excessive force, a glorification of shootings committed by deputies, and fostering a code of silence, as well as bullying, harassment, intimidation of and retaliation toward other department members, resistance to supervision, and establishment of subgroup symbols and tattoos.

Los Angeles County has paid out tens of millions of dollars in settlements related to the misbehavior of members of these groups, which have long been a problem. In fact, there is not much new in the RAND report; a similar report was issued by the Kolts Commission all the way back in 1992.

One way to think about these gangs is as the equivalent of mafia “families” within the context of a larger organized-crime operation — which is what LASD is, at least to some extent. In February 2020, former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca reported to prison for his role in a conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation into abuse and misconduct in the jail system he managed. But he was involved in all kinds of other shenanigans, too, including a scheme to make reserve deputies out of political supporters and helpful celebrities, rewarding them with a badge and the ability to carry a gun legally, a right that is very difficult to acquire in Los Angeles County and most of the rest of California. People who gave the sheriff personal gifts or made donations to his campaign were rewarded with concealed-carry permits.

(Shaquille O’Neal, who is a sworn law-enforcement officer in Georgia and in Florida, is a graduate of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Reserve Academy, having undergone the required training during his time with the Lakers. Lou Ferrigno was a reserve deputy in Los Angeles County and then in New Mexico. Steven Seagal, who claims to have completed police training in California but probably didn’t, has served as a deputy in Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana. There are many others, though they tend to be smaller names such as Harry Morton, the late founder of Pink Taco and owner of the Viper Room, a multimillionaire businessman who served as a West Hollywood sheriff’s reserve deputy.)

The current sheriff of Los Angeles County, Alex Villanueva, appears to be from the same mold as Baca. He is currently under scrutiny for forming an investigative unit whose main purpose is harassing and investigating his critics and political rivals, from L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman to a nonprofit associated with County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. According to the Los Angeles Times, the union representing sheriff’s deputies has warned about the “unconventional tactics” employed by members of this unit.

The county’s civilian-oversight board has subpoenaed Villanueva to answer questions about the — prepare yourselves for some irony — Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, but the sheriff has refused to appear before the commission, saying that he is too busy.

This sort of thing appears to be endemic to law enforcement in Los Angeles. For years in the 1990s, the single most dangerous crime syndicate in Southern California was the LAPD, where members of the Rampart Division created a blue crime wave involving everything from falsifying evidence to bank robbery to selling huge quantities of cocaine stolen from evidence rooms to murder.

On one end of California, you have politicos such as San Francisco mayor London Breed and Governor Gavin Newsom blowing off COVID-19 rules as obligatory for the little people but optional for the high and mighty. On the other end of the state, you have a sheriff’s department acting as the goon squad for the elected official at the head of the agency, while deputies mob up like Crips and Bloods. Political enlightenment comes when you begin to understand that, in spite of the superficial differences between Nancy Pelosi’s beauty-parlor antics and the deeds of the East Los Angeles Banditos, they are two manifestations of the same phenomenon.

To the extent that this sort of thing is tolerated — and it is a considerable extent — the people of California have ceased to be citizens and have become subjects. And California is a national bellwether: What happens in Los Angeles today will happen in Tulsa tomorrow.