LOCAL NEWS EMAILS -
Correspondence between City Manager Toby Futrell and Mike Levy

The following emails between City Manager Toby Futrell and Texas Monthly's Mike Levy. They are in the order which they were received.

04-02-06: LEVY EMAILS MEMBERS OF MAILING LIST CONCERNING city manager's mantra "no more money for public safety"
From: Michael R. Levy Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 4:54 PM
Subject: The new wave of gangs are organized, deadly criminal enterprises, specializing in drug dealing, illegal gun sales, extortion, and terrible violence ranging from home invasions, car hijackings, gang rape and murder.

"The Tipping Point" is a very well respected book by Malcolm Gladwell in which he describes how crime can spread like a virus unless it is quickly contained.

Austin is real close to going over that "tipping point" because of the current Austin city manager's mantra "no more money for public safety" and most especially the city manager's convenient refusal to recognize the increasing problem of gangs from the west coast and Central and South America. (The Austin city manager's mantra "no more money for public safety" is also impacting the Austin/Travis County EMS program, with not enough units on the streets to assure reasonable response times to medical emergencies and for enough paramedics from being fatigued and demoralized because of unrealistic call volumes they must bear, and with too little resources for adequate medical quality control .)

Austin police officers say that rather put their jobs and careers at risk because they have no support from City Hall, and especially from the manager, they get paid the same amount of money if they just sit in their cars all day rather than be aggressive against bad guys who hurt our neighborhoods .The area commanders, who fear retaliation and retribution from their management, say that they are 20 to 25% down in manpower for minimal patrol effectiveness and visible crime deterrence in the neighborhoods. That's why they are holding on to decentralized motorcycle units to chase routine calls instead of doing neighborhood traffic enforcement, especially in school zones. The community has been talking about neighborhood policing for years, and the officers themselves want neighborhood policing, but they know it's a myth because there are so few officers, all they can do is run from call to call. Neighborhood associations throughout the city (including exclusive enclaves like the Pemberton area in the 78703 zip code and most especially lower and middle class neighborhoods) are being hit with residential burglaries and juvenile vandalism and graffiti and kids speeding through their neighborhoods because their are not enough cops to be visible and have a deterrent effect. So many taxpayers say they "NEVER" see a cop patrolling in their neighborhoods. The manager sees the rank and file officers as undeserving of her support, yet compare these Austin officers cops to their counterparts in Los Angeles, Boston, Miami and other big cities., Austin officers are the best of the best, they are decent men and women (with the usual few bad apples thrown in as with any public or private sector organization) who want to serve the community and deserve the Council and the manager's support so they can do their jobs as they need to be done. Instead she routinely reacts and responds to a noisy few.

The problem has been compounded because a) the city manager chose to assign oversight responsibility for all three Austin public safety agencies (police, fire and EMS) to an assistant city manager out of the budget office who has limited if any experience in the public safety management arena; and b) the manager refuses to deal with what can politely be described as a "management and leadership deficit" at APD.

Senior federal, state and local law enforcement officials say that their intelligence indicates that Austin simply does not have the resources committed to deal with the escalating gang threat. Because of the city manager's low priority for public safety, Austin is basically alone in not taking the gang threat seriously.(Scroll down to last Saturday's Houston Chronicle story on the Houston Police Department's plan to double the number of its academy classes, while the manager has allowed to the Austin Police Department to have only one training academy class each year.)

Below is the manager's chart that she provided me which shows a significant shortfall in the authorized strength of the Austin Police Department even through she is actually, and hilariously, counting city marshals and park police and Bergstrom police as part of Austin's law enforcement mechanism. (If the manager wants to play this subterfuge game and count city marshalls, park and airport cops, who have not been trained through the APD academy, as fully trained and capable Austin police officers, she really needs to make them part of the Austin Police Department.) And keep in mind that Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Fort Worth have between 2.5 and 3.5 officers per 1000 population, which means that Austin is at least 400 cops short, especially given our city's size, both in terms of population and geographical size, and the increasing gang risk.

On March 18 there was a gang related murder in northwest Austin, as described in the American-Statesman article below. And recently, according to APD sources, there were also two gang related murders in south and southeast Austin, and another one near the UT campus.

Scroll down to articles on these gangs that have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Houston Chronicle.

The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Texas authorities say MS-13 now operates in Houston and Dallas, where it has been linked to murders, robberies, drive-by shootings, commercial break-ins and auto thefts. Federal, state and local authorities in Houston have formed a new task force to probe the gang's stepped-up activity. Twenty members of the group have been arrested in recent months. One is charged with killing an 18-month-old boy during an attack on a family.....In suburban Grand Prairie (the police chief said) two decades of police work hadn't exposed him to anything like MS-13. "I've never encountered a more dangerous or vicious street gang…. These guys do not hesitate to kill...."These people have no souls,"

The Los Angeles Times: "In the United States, the gang has spread from California into 33 other states and the District of Columbia. Investigators say members are involved in murder, extortion, drug dealing and witness intimidation. The expansion has come from migration as well as from calculated efforts by its Los Angeles leaders to tap new markets of criminal activity. In Seattle, for instance, gang members arrived from Los Angeles in 1997 to distribute marijuana, heroin and crack cocaine, according to investigators."

The Dallas Morning News article below: ""MS-13 is unfortunately becoming everybody's problem," a Justice Department official wrote..." "Of critical concern to law enforcement is the fact that members of MS-13, many with military training, are known to be violent and willing to kill their enemies, civilians and law enforcement....Authorities believe MS-13 has as many as tens of thousands of members in 32 states and the District of Columbia. Officials believe they are playing an increasingly prominent role in drug trafficking and human smuggling."

The new wave of gangs are organized, deadly criminal enterprises, specializing in drug dealing, illegal gun sales, extortion, and terrible violence ranging from home invasions, car hijackings, gang rape and murder. Their impact in Austin will most especially impact lower and ,middle income neighborhoods, for whom the manager has given "lip service" concern and which are already burdened by high taxes and unnecessarily huge energy, water and waste water bills inflated by the silly pork barrel rebate programs that reward people for doing what their common sense dictates they should be doing anyway. Because of a lack of even minimal police deterrent visibility, Austin citizens and their neighborhoods are already plagued by residential burglaries, unsafe streets with a significantly increasing number of fatal and serious accidents, and juvenile vandalism. The on-going short-fall of APD officers against authorized strength suggests that "authorized strength" has been a myth for a long time and that this number was funded on a "wink wink" basis in the budget process because the manager and her staff wanted these positions to stay unfilled so the bucks would be available for her own patronage projects as she continues to wrest political power away from elected officials in her efforts to become the City's chief policy maker.

There are very few guarantees in this most uncertain life we have, but the one certainty is that the people of Austin will pay a terrible price unless a minimally adequate commitment to public safety becomes a priority.

The e-mail addresses of the mayor and the members of the Austin city council, and city manager Toby Futrell and assistant city manager Rudy Garza (who oversees Austin's public safety agencies) are:

Will.Wynn@ci.austin.tx.us
raul.alvarez@ci.austin.tx.us
betty.dunkerley@ci.austin.tx.us
Jackie.Goodman@ci.austin.tx.us
brewster.mccracken@ci.austin.tx.us
Daryl.Slusher@ci.austin.tx.us
Danny.Thomas@ci.austin.tx.us
toby.futrell@ci.austin.tx.us
rudy.garza@ci.austin.tx.us

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ARTICLES LEVY REFERENCED IN ABOVE EMAIL:

March 25, 2006, 12:53AM

HPD RECRUITMENT
Academy classes may double
Plan spurred by police retirements, bigger population
By MÓNICA GUZMÁN
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

After rolling out a string of overtime programs and neighborhood initiatives to stave off concerns of rising violent crime and response times, Houston police officials now plan to double the number of academy classes to help replenish the department's dwindling ranks, still strained seven months after 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees settled into the city.

"It's important because we are faced with an aging department and a growing population here in Houston — and with those two things together, it's just common sense," said Lt. Kenneth Miller, who oversees recruiting for the department.

If the city approves funding, HPD's 20 proposed academy classes could add up to 1,500 officers to the department between now and the end of fiscal year 2008 — nearly double the number initially planned.

Officials also will begin accepting applications year-round for seats in the department's modified entry academy class, a 13-week course designed to expedite training for peace officers from other departments. Classes will be scheduled to accommodate qualified candidates as they apply.

The low number of cadets enrolled in the first modified entry class this year highlights the difficulty in finding such candidates and the need for officials to do more to find them.

"We have 25 people in there. We didn't have as many as we had hoped for," Miller said. "But it's a part of the whole thing — it's difficult."

More than 200 peace officers applied for 75 seats in the modified entry class, which started Monday.

Some desirable candidates hesitated when the promise of a $7,000 signing bonus and scaled experience pay stalled in City Hall before it was approved, but most unsuccessful applicants were not up to HPD standards — at least not yet, Miller said.

"The majority were good folks but for whatever reason backed out or didn't qualify at the moment," he said. "Some of them had some minor issues that had to be cleared up, and they may be very well eligible for the next (class). We're calling them back, trying to get them to reapply."

Only eight of the 59 modified entry applicants from Harris County enrolled in the class. Though interest in transferring to HPD remains high for a sheriff's department whose deputies have voiced discontent with their salary and benefits, their entry into HPD has not been the onslaught that some had imagined.

"We weren't 'stealing' from Harris County. It was a small number," Miller said.

HPD is not the only department struggling to find qualified candidates to fill its ranks. Recent trends pushing young people away from law enforcement careers have strained police manpower nationwide, while standards regarding drug use and other misbehaviors keep many interested applicants off the badge.

Here in Houston, recruitment officials have stepped up their nationwide search for new applicants at job fairs, universities, and military installations nationwide — visiting 30 different sites since January — and have boosted national employment advertising, investing $9,000 in three ads in the widely circulated newspaper USA Today.

Despite the difficulties, the department wants 20 academy classes, including the modified classes, over the next two fiscal years. Last year, officials had planned four to five academy classes per year.

"At one time that was the goal, but the goal has changed," said Miller. "If I'm given the resources I need, I'm confident we can do it."

A standard trainee academy class of 70 cadets costs the city about $2.9 million, including training, salaries, and equipment expenses.

The additional classes would make for a tight schedule at the HPD police academy.

"We're going to definitely be busy, but I think we can do it," said Lt. Tad Pando, who oversees cadet training. Additional officers have come in to assist, he said, but it wouldn't be enough.

"If we're going to be putting that many classes through, then we're going to need more resources," he said.

In addition to general funding, police officials may be able to use part of $20 million the city recently received from the Department of Justice, the bulk of which will fund a $1 million-per-month HPD overtime program whose FEMA funding expires at the end of the month.

To speed things along even further, Miller plans toconduct the standard Police Officer Civil Service exam — the first step for non-peace officers to join HPD — more often.

"One's not scheduled yet and will likely be in May, but we will be having it once a month and at least once a month until the cows come home," Miller said.

That won't be until HPD's manpower meets the city's need — a goal that could still be years away.

"We're going to be doing this for some time," Miller said.

monica.guzman@chron.com

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New York Times
January 16, 2005
Guns and Jeers Used by Gangs to Buy Silence
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

OSTON, Jan. 15 - In Boston, a witness to a shooting by a member of a street gang recently found copies of his grand jury testimony taped to all the doors in the housing project where he lives.

In Baltimore, Rickey Prince, a 17-year-old who witnessed a gang murder and agreed to testify against the killer, was shot in the back of the head a few days after a prosecutor read Mr. Prince's name aloud in a packed courtroom.

And in each city, CD's and DVD's titled "Stop Snitching" have surfaced, naming some people street gangs suspect of being witnesses against them and warning that those who cooperate with the police will be killed. To underscore its message, the Baltimore DVD shows what appears to be three dead bodies on its back cover above the words "snitch prevention."

These are only a few examples of what the police, prosecutors and judges say is a growing national problem of witness intimidation by youth gangs that in some cities is jeopardizing the legal system and that bears striking similarities to the way organized crime has often silenced witnesses.

"Witness intimidation has become so pervasive that it is ruining the public's faith in the criminal justice system to protect them," said Judge John M. Glynn of Baltimore City Circuit Court. "We are not much better off than the legal system in Mexico or Colombia or some other sad places."

The intimidation has gone hand in hand with a sharp increase in the number of youth street gangs, not just in their traditional strongholds like Los Angeles and Chicago but also in affluent parts of Northern Virginia, as well as in Denver and in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. In New York City, hundreds of witnesses in court cases report being threatened every year, and at least 19 have been killed since 1980, according to law enforcement officials.

The latest F.B.I. Uniform Crime Report, for 2003, showed that while overall crime has stayed level or has fallen slightly in the past four years, juvenile gang homicides have jumped 25 percent since 2000.

The trend has led the bureau to make a major switch in the past six months, making combating street gangs its top criminal priority, said Chris Swecker, an assistant director of the F.B.I. who heads its criminal division. The change is particularly significant because since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the bureau has made counterterrorism its main job and has cut back on some of its domestic crime fighting.

Mr. Swecker said the bureau was now planning to go after youth gangs the way it went after the Mafia starting in the 1970's, trying to dismantle whole gangs in a coordinated nationwide effort. To accomplish this, the F.B.I. will create a national gang intelligence center, with a database on all gangs and members. The bureau is also ordering its 140 Safe Streets task forces to devote more effort to gangs.

And youth gangs have been reclassified, in bureau terminology, to "criminal organizations and enterprises" from "violent criminal offenders," placing them on a par with the Mafia. Mr. Swecker said the bureau would now also use tough federal racketeering laws and seek long federal sentences.

Police chiefs and prosecutors call the effort welcome. William Bratton, the Los Angeles police chief, said street gang killings made up more than half of the 515 homicides in the city last year, including a number of witnesses. Mr. Bratton said that over the past year he had had a number of talks with Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., urging him to make street gangs the bureau's top priority. "In this country, street gangs are a national problem and are taking more lives than all the civilians lost to Al Qaeda last year," Mr. Bratton said.

One of the obstacles to combating the Mafia, and to defeating youth gangs, is the "code of silence" they encourage, often by intimidating witnesses, Mr. Swecker said. One advantage the F.B.I. will have is that by bringing federal charges against street gang members, witnesses can be placed in the federal witness protection program and given new identities.

Prosecutors say the need for protection is critical. Daniel Conley, the district attorney for Suffolk County, Mass., which includes Boston, said his prosecutors had seen intimidation in more than 90 percent of cases in the past two years that involved guns, gangs or serious violence.

Wesley Adams, who prosecutes homicides for the state's attorney of Baltimore City, said virtually all of his cases that were not domestic homicides were hampered by witness intimidation. In 2003, Mr. Adams said, when he tried nine homicides, 23 of the 35 witnesses he managed to get to the stand either recanted or lied, and that was not counting many others who were too scared and simply disappeared.

Under a program started in August, two Baltimore City detectives have been assigned full time to try to find missing witnesses. They are currently looking for 77 people.

Jackie Davis, the mother of Rickey Prince, the teenage witness murdered in Baltimore, said in a telephone interview, "This witness intimidation makes a joke of the justice system, and it's not all on the criminals." Ms. Davis said the constitutional right granted defendants to learn the identity of witnesses against them in pretrial discovery is a built-in mechanism for gang members to make threats, often against poor people who live in the same neighborhoods and have nowhere to hide.

Although the two men who shot her son have subsequently been tried and convicted, Ms. Davis said, "I got no closure." She said she was threatened herself for testifying against the killers and has had to give up her job and move out of state at her own expense.

Only a handful of states have witness protection programs, including Rhode Island, Ohio, Colorado and California. But prosecutors and the police say that they tend to have only a small amount of money to pay for temporarily moving witnesses to another part of a city before a trial and that the protection ends when the trial is completed.

Mr. Conley, the Suffolk County district attorney, is working with Massachusetts officials to create a state witness protection program here and to try to pass legislation that would make it a crime for anyone to distribute grand jury testimony, as happened with the witness who saw his testimony taped to the doors in the Franklin Hill housing project where he lived.

In Maryland, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Patricia C. Jessamy, the state's attorney for Baltimore City, are supporting a bill that would reclassify witness intimidation as a felony, instead of a misdemeanor, and raise the maximum punishment to 20 years in prison, from 5 years.

The bill would also create a "hearsay exception" that would allow past statements by witnesses to be admitted at a trial if the witness disappeared or was unwilling to testify.

Mr. Conley said, "We have always had witness intimidation, but it has gotten much worse in the past couple of years."

Some of the problem, he said, results from the tight-knit geography of poor neighborhoods where witnesses and gang members often know one another. So threats are easy to make and hard for law enforcement to stop.

But gang members have become more brazen, too, Mr. Conley said. In Boston last month, at a trial of two gang members accused of killing a 10-year-old girl, some spectators came to the courtroom wearing T-shirts that said "Stop Snitching."

Judge Glynn in Baltimore said he had seen spectators in courtrooms using their cellphones to send text messages to friends reporting on who had testified as witnesses and what they had said.

Judge Glynn recalled that one witness, a middle-aged woman who had seen the killing of a bail bondsman by a drug gang leader, was so scared she could not open her mouth on the stand. When the defendant's lawyer questioned her, she said nothing and even after the judge interceded, she remained silent for minutes.

Finally, Judge Glynn said, out of earshot of the lawyer and prosecutor, he asked her if she was afraid to tell her story. "Yes," she said.

Last month, the Baltimore police found that a two-hour DVD titled "Stop Snitching" was being sold on the street. It features young men smoking marijuana, flashing wads of $100 bills, waving guns and making violent threats, some against specific witnesses. "He's a rat, a snitch," one man sings, continuing with obscenities. "He's dead because I don't believe he's from the 'hood."

The maker of the DVD has said he was only documenting the attitudes and concerns of people in West Baltimore.

The DVD has drawn particular attention because of the appearance on it of Carmelo Anthony, 20, a National Basketball Association star with the Denver Nuggets who grew up in Baltimore. Mr. Anthony does not make any threats in the DVD.

Calvin Andrews, Mr. Anthony's agent, said, "He was not aware a DVD was being produced. He was just hanging out with some guys from the neighborhood who had a video camera." Mr. Andrews added of Mr. Anthony: "He doesn't condone the message about intimidation." The case of Mr. Prince, the Maryland teenager murdered after his name was read in court, illustrates the difficulty of protecting witnesses.

Mr. Prince had seen the killing of a gang member in suburban Baltimore County, outside the city of Baltimore, and at the urging of his mother had given a statement to the police. Ms. Davis, his mother, said that he soon began receiving threats.

Ms. Davis said she believed that her son's name was revealed through pretrial discovery and that the defendant, Jerrard Bazemore, 18, tipped his fellow gang members.

Ms. Davis said she appealed to the Baltimore County assistant state's attorney handling the case for help in relocating her family. "They blew me off," Ms. Davis said, "They said they didn't have any money." Steve Bailey, the deputy state's attorney for Baltimore County, disputed that. "An offer was made," Mr. Bailey said. "Rickey Prince refused."

The day the trial was to begin, April 15, 2003, Mr. Prince received a call saying he would not need to testify, Ms. Davis said.

She said that he was not told by prosecutors that Mr. Bazemore had agreed to plead guilty, and that in a courtroom packed with the defendant's friends, a prosecutor had read out Mr. Prince's name, saying, "Rickey Prince would testify that he saw the defendant shoot at the victim's group."

At that, the courtroom erupted, according to later testimony.

"But Rickey didn't know, and he continued going to school and working at a restaurant," his mother said.

Mr. Bazemore's friends in court that day included Christopher Mann, 20. Several days later, Mr. Mann and another gang member seized Mr. Prince, drove him to a landfill and shot him, according to later testimony. Mr. Mann and his accomplice, Tayvon Whetstone, 19, were convicted of murdering Mr. Prince.

"The motive for the killing was based on his name being read out in open court; it was retaliation," said Lisa Goldberg, the assistant state's attorney for Baltimore City who prosecuted the two men.

Mr. Bailey, the deputy state's attorney for Baltimore County, said Maryland law required that Mr. Prince's name be read out. Other prosecutors disagreed, saying the law requires only that the judge be told of the existence of a witness and what he would say. "I don't know why his name was read out," Ms. Goldberg said. "In Baltimore City, in a plea bargain, we would just tell the judge we have a witness who would testify, to show there is a factual basis for the plea."

Ms. Davis said simply, "They've got to find a better way to handle witnesses."

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DallasMorning News:
Recent arrests, federal initiative put police on alert

12:03 PM CDT on Friday, May 20, 2005

By ERNESTO LONDOÑO / The Dallas Morning News

The arrests of several suspected members of a vicious Central American gang have heightened fears among Dallas-area law enforcement officials about the growing influence and might of MS-13 in North Texas.

A suspected member of the gang was arrested in Dallas on Wednesday night in connection with the March death of a teenager who was shot in the head.

Federal authorities say Juan Delacruz Gomez, 21, is the 17th MS-13 member arrested in North Texas since immigration authorities launched a nationwide initiative in March to dismantle the gang.

"Most all of them have a violent criminal history, everything from sexual assault of a child, theft, burglary, homicide, aggravated assault with a weapon," said Thomas Homan, assistant special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas. "ICE has made them priority No. 1 in our gang enforcement."

Agent Homan said law enforcement officials have been able to identify roughly 140 MS-13 members in North Texas since they launched Operation Community Shield two months ago.

In addition to the March slaying, Dallas police gang-unit officers have linked an MS-13 member to the shooting of a 14-year-old boy in the face. He survived.

Last week, immigration agents and Dallas police officers detained four gang members in connection with that shooting, which occurred in the 3300 block of Chapel Creek Drive in northwest Dallas.

Eduardo Galisia was the victim in the March homicide, which happened in the 3100 block of Oradell Lane. A gunman approached the 19-year-old as he was playing soccer.

"What gang are you down with?" the gunman asked the victim, according to the police report.

Mr. Galisia replied that he was not a gang member and turned to walk away. He was shot in the back of the head and was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

Also charged

Officials also charged suspected MS-13 member Melvin Duarte, 18, in connection with Mr. Galisia's death because they believe he drove the vehicle in which Mr. Delacruz Gomez fled the scene. Mr. Duarte was arrested last week and was being held on probation violations. Suspected gang member Johnny Gomez, 17, is being held in connection with the Chapel Creek Drive aggravated assault.

Dallas police officials recovered a gun when they arrested four suspected gang members earlier this month. They are analyzing the weapon to see if they can link it to other cases.

"We're hoping that this weapon that we've recovered gets tied to numerous other aggravated assaults," Dallas police gang unit Sgt. Michael Marshall said. "We have great hopes for this little revolver."

Investigators say they will need some time to determine the motive for the two shootings. They also say it's too early to tell how many members of the gang live in or frequently pass through Dallas.

Dallas-area law enforcement officers recently received an e-mail from the Justice Department warning them about the growing might and threat of the gang.

"MS-13 is unfortunately becoming everybody's problem," a Justice Department official wrote in the early April 7 message. "Of critical concern to law enforcement is the fact that members of MS-13, many with military training, are known to be violent and willing to kill their enemies, civilians and law enforcement."

Authorities believe MS-13 has as many as tens of thousands of members in 32 states and the District of Columbia. Officials believe they are playing an increasingly prominent role in drug trafficking and human smuggling.

The gang was born out of the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s, when members of paramilitary groups headed north to flee the war-torn region. They established a home base in Los Angeles, where they were actively pursued during the mid-1990s. Many returned to the United States after being deported.

"MS" is taken from Mara Salvatrucha, a combination of La Mara, a violent El Salvadoran street gang, and Salvatrucha, a term for members of paramilitary groups in the Salvadoran civil war.

Deportation possible

Immigration officials say most MS-13 members are illegal immigrants. Those convicted of violent crimes are placed in deportation proceedings after serving their sentence. Authorities say deported members will find it harder to rebuild lives in the United States after deportation because an increasing number of deported immigrants are being prosecuted for illegal reentry.

For the first time in its history, the FBI is creating a gang-specific task force to crack down on the MS-13.

"Because of their size, they fall into what we used to call a criminal enterprise," said Guadalupe Gonzalez, special agent in charge of the Dallas FBI field office, adding that agents in North Texas will likely play a key role in the task force. "Dallas is one of the entry points into the country where we have numerous immigrants coming in from Mexico and Central America."

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LA TIMES:
L.A. Violence Crosses the Line
A brutal band born near MacArthur Park has spread to 33 other states and five countries. For the first time, the FBI forms a nationwide task force to go after a single gang.
By Chris Kraul, Robert J. Lopez and Rich Connell
Times Staff Writers

May 15, 2005

The gruesome murders were each more than 1,000 miles apart, an arc of bloodshed that spanned much of the North American continent.

On a rutty street near a crowded slum in Honduras, gunmen sprayed automatic weapons fire at a bus filled with Christmastime shoppers. Twenty-eight people, including six children, were killed.

In the woods near Dallas, an innocent 21-year-old man was shot in the head, his remains eaten by animals. His pants were pulled down, and police suspect that he may have been sodomized.

And near the banks of a quiet river in Virginia, a 17-year-old informant was hacked to death. She was four months pregnant and stabbed 16 times in the chest and neck.

The killings were similar not only in their brutality but also in their lineage: Authorities say all three incidents are tied to a single Los Angeles branch of Mara Salvatrucha, a street gang formed 20 years ago in the immigrant neighborhoods west of the downtown skyline.

Today, the gang's extreme violence, vast reach and increasing sophistication have made it a top priority at the highest levels of law enforcement and political leadership from Washington to San Salvador.

In recent months, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security have launched a series of initiatives to confront the threat posed by the gang, also known as MS-13, which has between 30,000 and 50,000 members in half a dozen countries, including up to 10,000 members in the U.S., according to federal law enforcement estimates.

The FBI's creation of an MS-13 task force, the first nationwide effort targeting a single street gang, was ordered by Director Robert Mueller after several high-profile murders blamed on MS-13 in the suburbs of Washington. On Tuesday, Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for the first time placed an MS-13 member on its most-wanted fugitive list. The Los Angeles gang member is suspected in a string of violent crimes.

In Honduras, four Central American presidents gathered last month to address the gang crisis. Citing the destabilizing influence of groups like MS-13, they appealed for economic aid to curb the poverty and joblessness fueling the growth of gangs.

Authorities are scrambling to contain forces unleashed in part by past U.S. policies. Refugees formed the gang in the 1980s near MacArthur Park, just west of downtown Los Angeles, after fleeing a U.S.-backed civil war against insurgents in El Salvador. As the gang grew, immigration officials began a decade-long campaign to deport members, including ex-convicts and hardened leaders who helped spread MS-13 across Central America and solidify its structure.

In the United States, the gang has spread from California into 33 other states and the District of Columbia. Investigators say members are involved in murder, extortion, drug dealing and witness intimidation. The expansion has come from migration as well as from calculated efforts by its Los Angeles leaders to tap new markets of criminal activity. In Seattle, for instance, gang members arrived from Los Angeles in 1997 to distribute marijuana, heroin and crack cocaine, according to investigators.

"Everywhere you turn these days, you're hearing about MS-13," said Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker, who is overseeing the nationwide task force targeting the group.

Traditionally, the gang's loosely structured leadership has been dispersed among a vast federation of cells that often act independently.

Although it remains unclear how well organized the gang's leadership is, Swecker recently told Congress that there were signs of greater cohesiveness within MS-13.

Times interviews with law enforcement officials in four countries and reviews of intelligence reports, letters between MS-13 members, transcripts of phone conversations and surveillance videos show that gang members communicate and coordinate criminal activity across state and international borders.

Gang leaders in the U.S. and El Salvador have shared information on informants, discussed punishing rivals and plotted an ambush to free an accused murderer, these records show. In one instance, dozens of MS-13 members from several East Coast states were videotaped meeting in a Virginia park.

In Central America, the gang allegedly targeted top government officials and law enforcement leaders.

"If these criminals are capable of killing 28 innocent people," Honduran President Ricardo Maduro said in an interview, "they are capable of anything."

Now, law enforcement crackdowns in Honduras and El Salvador are helping reverse the flow. MS-13 gang members recruited in those countries are making their way to the U.S. and bolstering the gang's ranks from California to Maryland.

This north-south recycling of gang members has put intense pressure on Mexico, where MS-13 is involved in robbing immigrants and human trafficking, according to officials. "It has to be treated as a regional phenomenon because in Central America the borders are fading," said Magdalena Carral Cuevas, Mexico's top immigration official.

Mexico recently launched its own campaign against MS-13, particularly in the southern state of Chiapas, a roiling crossroads where the gang preys on stowaways trying to jump freight trains headed north.

One result of the stepped-up enforcement is that jails in Chiapas are filling up. At a federal lockup, a new wing has been devoted solely to MS-13 to prevent attacks on rival gang members.

About 30 members of the gang recently gathered in a dirt courtyard at the prison. One, who is doing five years on a drug charge and gave his name as Oscar, said he left his native El Salvador because there was no work. He wore a Dallas Cowboy jersey with the blue and white colors favored by MS-13. Gang tattoos covered his thick neck and muscular arms.

Oscar complained that authorities unfairly single out his group.

"Despite our reputation, we aren't what they think," he said in Spanish. "They have satanized us."

He cut off the conversation when an apparent MS-13 leader demanded money from a reporter for the interview to continue.

Refugees Pour into L.A.

Central American refugees were pouring into the brick hotels and old Victorian homes in the Pico-Union and Westlake areas of Los Angeles, among the nation's most crowded neighborhoods.

It was the mid-1980s, and they were transforming entire blocks, opening Salvadoran restaurants, or pupusarias, and markets stocked with plantains and black beans from back home.

Many of the new arrivals, including children, were veterans of the civil war in El Salvador, which displaced nearly a million people. About half came to the United States. Some had fought with leftist guerrillas. Many others had been hardened by the bloodletting they witnessed.

Partly out of self-defense against established Mexican American gangs, Salvadoran youths formed the first cells of Mara Salvatrucha. "Mara" is a Salvadoran word for gang, and "Salvatrucha" means Salvadoran guy. They also adopted the number 13, just as local Mexican American street gangs had for years.

MS-13 opened its arms to other Central Americans, who also faced hostility from entrenched gangs, as crack cocaine flooded the streets and violence exploded.

In one of the first federal assaults on the gang, 20 members were deported from Los Angeles in 1989. A federal immigration official announced that his agency had decimated MS-13's leadership. But three years later, as the gang continued to grow, new waves of deportations began.

The Los Angeles city attorney's office, which says about 1,400 MS-13 members operate in the county, last year obtained a civil injunction restricting the gang's activities in the Rampart and East Hollywood areas.

In Los Angeles and other cities, more than 200 members of the gang have been arrested by Homeland Security agents in recent months, said Michael J. Garcia, assistant Homeland Security secretary for immigration and customs enforcement. Most are suspected illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Slaughter in Honduras

The yellow transit bus rumbled between two slums on a muddy road lined by rusting warehouses and sugar cane fields in San Pedro Sula, an industrial city about 100 miles from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

It was late evening last December, and among the Christmas shoppers on board were warehouse worker Emilio Lopez and his 10-year-old son.

Half a dozen men in a van raked the bus with automatic weapons fire. As passengers screamed and ducked, a gunman climbed aboard and methodically fired away, authorities said.

When the shooting stopped, 28 people were fatally wounded. One was Lopez. He died apparently shielding his son, Emilio, who was found wounded and hiding under a seat, the boy's mother, Maria Lopez, recalled.

"These people have no souls," she said of MS-13.

Maduro, the Honduran president, has blamed the group for the slaughter, saying it was a response to his administration's "zero tolerance" campaign, which has resulted in the arrest of more than 1,800 gang members since 2002.

An accused mastermind of the bus attack is Lester Rivera-Paz, who is tied to an original MS-13 cell in Los Angeles, the Normandie Locos. He had been deported from the U.S. four times.

Known as El Culiche, or the Tapeworm, Rivera-Paz had a lengthy criminal record in California, including an armed robbery in the LAPD's Rampart Division in 2000. The case was dropped when prosecutors could not find the victim, court records and interviews show.

San Pedro Sula, where Rivera-Paz emerged as a leader, has one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America. A weak national economy, family violence and social disintegration caused by massive out-migration are fueling the violence, a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank found.

Maduro has framed the struggle against MS-13 and other gangs as a fight for the life of his nation. Authorities say the gang plotted last year to assassinate Maduro and kill the president of Honduras' Congress with a grenade.

Human rights groups have accused the Honduran government of unjustified arrests and of tolerating death squads that have killed hundreds of gang members. Honduran Public Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said gang members may have been targeted. But he added that people are fed up with the violence.

Tough anti-gang measures have not always worked as planned. A month after his arrest, Rivera-Paz, the suspected bus massacre mastermind, broke out of a Honduran prison. Earlier this year, he was found hiding in the trunk of a Dodge Intrepid loaded with illegal immigrants as it raced north through Texas before dawn.

He has pleaded guilty to illegally reentering the country and is likely to serve two years in a U.S. prison. Honduran officials have agreed to let him serve out his prison term in the U.S. and say he will face charges in their country after he is deported a fifth time.

Preying on Migrants

On an open Mexican plain dotted with mango and banana trees outside the city of Tapachula, 20 miles from the Guatemalan border, the knot of men waited for the northbound train, which they knew would sway and slow to a crawl on the uneven track later that night.

The men scattered as police swooped in. Officers went to the spot because MS-13 gang members often hop aboard the boxcars to terrorize migrants clinging to the train's roofs and sides.

"The gang's technique is to blend in, get to know the undocumented ones," said Cmdr. Jorge Enrique Murillo of the Chiapas state police. "Then they attack them."

The migrants are easy targets because nearly all have money and most are defenseless.

Murillo's men arrested two suspects, both tattooed and carrying 18-inch machetes. One, Omar Suarez Osorio, a 22-year-old Honduran, had a large MS inked into his chest and three triangular dots on the web of his thumb, a sign the gang member had killed someone, police said.

For years, Mexico's southernmost state has been plagued by MS-13 and other gangs. At any given time, officials say, up to 3,000 MS-13 members are operating in Chiapas.

Gang members have also leapfrogged north along the rail lines through central Mexico. The gang has established strongholds in Mexican border cities near Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, according to interviews and law enforcement intelligence reports.

Mexican officials have found evidence that MS-13 members are working as low-level gunmen for warring drug cartels. In northern Mexico, MS-13 members roam the banks of the milky brown Rio Grande in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. They force migrants to pay them tribute before crossing, according to officials and community workers on both sides of the border.

Last month, the Chiapas attorney general, Mariano Herran Salvatti, and the FBI announced a plan to share intelligence on the gang, particularly regarding its purported use of the rail lines to smuggle people north to the border. MS-13 members act as guides for some migrants, authorities say, charging as much as $1,500 to move them to the U.S. border.

At the police station in Chiapas, the two MS-13 members arrested with the machetes said the weapons were for self-defense. They were among more than 300 MS-13 members arrested since the Chiapas state government launched an anti-gang campaign in November. Appearing in public with tattoos and gang clothing means months in jail. Being found with weapons or drugs adds up to five years of prison time.

Horacio Schroeder Bejarano, Chiapas secretary for public security, said enforcement efforts in Central America and now Mexico are pushing MS-13 members toward the U.S.

'Horror Movie'

Sgt. Alan Patton had never heard of Mara Salvatrucha when he was called to a gory scene in Grand Prairie, Texas.

In a dense woods, off an interstate stretching west from Dallas, fishermen had found the partly clothed remains of 21-year-old Javier Calzada.

His T-shirt was pulled around his neck, his pants down around his ankles. Exposed sections of his torso were gnawed away by animals. And there were suspicions he had been sodomized, records and interviews show.

"It was like something out of a horror movie," Patton recalled.

Calzada had been shot in the head. His car was missing, and he was robbed of jewelry, cash and tennis shoes, records show.

He lived with his parents, worked at an auto detail shop and drove a shiny 2000 Chevrolet Malibu with large chrome wheels. Police said Calzada was an innocent victim befriended at a shopping mall by girls associated with MS-13. According to court testimony, he was later lured into a deadly trap. In mid-December 2001, the girls called Calzada and asked for a lift to a friend's house.

"He was just a nice guy who a couple of girls asked for a ride," Patton said.

One of the girls, Brenda "Smiley" Paz, then 15, was a member of the Los Angeles-based Normandie Locos clique. She had moved to Texas to live with an uncle after her parents separated, relatives said.

Paz was running with a crew of MS-13 members, including Livis "Junior" Flores, 29, a leader of the Normandie Locos, records show.

As Calzada picked up Paz and another girl, Flores got in the rear seat, told Calzada to drive to a wooded area and put a gun to his head, according to court records and interviews. Other MS-13 members helped march Calzada into the woods where he was shot by Flores, court records show.

Back in the car, Flores made a sign of the cross, according to an affidavit Paz gave to police.

"God forgive me for my sins," she recalled Flores saying. He then turned on the radio, flashed gang signs and laughed, Paz told police. She said she suspected the young man was raped because MS-13 members had done the same thing to other victims.

Flores, who has MS tattooed across his forehead, was arrested and convicted in a separate armed robbery after the killing. After his conviction in that case, Flores admitted murdering Calzada and is serving two concurrent life sentences.

Paz told investigators that she and Flores traveled to meet MS-13 leaders in Seattle; San Diego; Tijuana; Eagle County, Colo.; and Meridian, Idaho, often collecting and transferring money from drug dealing and auto thefts, said attorney Greg Hunter, appointed as Paz's legal guardian because she was an unsupervised minor.

In Virginia, Flores and three other men were suspected of attacking students near a high school with baseball bats and metal tubing, records show.

Texas authorities say MS-13 now operates in Houston and Dallas, where it has been linked to murders, robberies, drive-by shootings, commercial break-ins and auto thefts.

Federal, state and local authorities in Houston have formed a new task force to probe the gang's stepped-up activity. Twenty members of the group have been arrested in recent months. One is charged with killing an 18-month-old boy during an attack on a family.

In suburban Grand Prairie, Patton said, two decades of police work hadn't exposed him to anything like MS-13. "I've never encountered a more dangerous or vicious street gang…. These guys do not hesitate to kill."

Violence in Virginia

Dozens of MS-13 members, many with blue bandanas on their heads, gathered under a picnic shelter in the tree-lined Virginia park by the banks of the Potomac River.

They came from Maryland, Washington and Virginia and greeted each other by touching thumbs and pinkie fingers, the gang's handshake.

Meting out discipline was apparently on the agenda, according to a law enforcement surveillance video of the meeting reviewed by The Times. Gang members jumped two attendees, knocking them to the ground and kicking them repeatedly in the head and ribs. One target of the beating had failed to back up a fellow MS-13 member in a fight and the other refused to attack a jail inmate who challenged him, investigators believe.

Such sessions, known as "misas," or masses, occur regularly in Virginia, where MS-13 has more than 1,500 members and is the largest, most violent gang in the state.

One of the first indications of MS-13 organizing efforts in the state came in early 1994. Arlington County police caught a Los Angeles member handing out business cards on a street corner. The black card bore the man's gang moniker, "Crazy Snoopy," and linked him to one of the oldest MS-13 branches operating along Western Boulevard. The card gave his Virginia pager number, according to a copy obtained by The Times.

MS-13's involvement in a recent series of high-profile murders in Virginia has thrust it into the headlines in the nation's capital and onto the agenda of top policymakers.

The most sensational crime involved Brenda Paz, the Normandie Locos member. She arrived after the murder near Dallas, was arrested by Virginia police and became an informant. "She knew if she stayed with the gang, she was going to end up locked up or dead," said Hunter, the attorney appointed as Paz's legal guardian.

She was placed in a federal witness protection program, records show, but the pull of the gang proved too strong. In June 2003, she rejoined MS-13 after voluntarily leaving the program. A month later, her tattoo-covered body, slashed with knife wounds, was found on the banks of the Shenandoah River. She was 16 weeks pregnant.

The slaying was ordered because Paz was working with authorities, prosecutors allege. Four MS-13 members are on trial in federal court in Alexandria, Va., charged with her murder. All have pleaded not guilty.

The trial, and hundreds of pages of federal court records in a related murder case, offer a rare inside look at the gang. In one instance, Flores, the Normandie Locos leader imprisoned in Texas, wrote to an MS-13 member jailed in Virginia. He told Denis Rivera, a local gang leader charged in Paz's death, that she was "singing" to authorities, according to a copy of the letter.

In another letter to Rivera, an MS-13 member in El Salvador mentioned a possible "green light," or a murder plan, of a rival and passed on a phone number for a Virginia gang member.

Other communications underscored the defiance of some MS-13 leaders in the face of law enforcement crackdowns. In a letter to yet another gang leader, Rivera boasted about the gang's legacy of fear and violence.

"Wherever the Mara Salvatrucha is, [we are] going to kill, control and rape again," he wrote. "We are super crazy."

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April 2, 2006, 1:40AM
Houston Chronicle
City's homicides up nearly 25% in 2006
With 90 so far, year is on pace to be deadliest in more than a decade
By ROMA KHANNA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The number of homicides in Houston rose nearly 25 percent during the first three months of 2006, compared with the same period last year, despite a multimillion-dollar police effort in the city's most crime-ridden areas.

The Houston Police Department investigated 90 homicides through Friday, compared with 73 in the first quarter of 2005, police say. That puts the city on track for the deadliest year in more than a decade and would erase the last of the gains made in the 1990s, when the city's homicide tally was cut in half.

The carnage this year reflects the same trends that police publicized in 2005 after a bloody Thanksgiving weekend and a spate of homicides involving Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans. Police late in the year increased officer overtime pay to focus on the danger, primarily, in southwest Houston apartment complexes and the increased menace of gang violence.

But a Houston Chronicle analysis of 326 homicides that occurred in the city last year shows that those trends were obvious long before the first evacuee-related slaying and the year-end spike that prompted Police Chief Harold Hurtt to direct resources and public attention to these problem areas.

Hurtt last week admitted that HPD was slow to identify the patterns. But he blamed a staffing shortage that grew worse over the last year and outmoded tools for crime analysis.

"We were behind the curve as far as resources," he said. "We need to do a better job of continuously identifying and even forecasting trends. But you need (technology) and you need personnel to be able to respond."

One in three Houston homicides last year occurred in apartment complexes, the leading location for killings in each month of 2005, according to the newspaper's findings.

Specifically in southwest Houston, the Chronicle found, two police patrol districts were the most violent in the city, accounting for one in five homicides last year.

Yet those districts had the lowest police presence of any in the city, according to an internal HPD study of manpower distribution. It was not until last month that Hurtt, who has been grappling with a manpower shortage throughout the department because of a large number of retirements, added 20 officers to patrol the southwest's Fondren area.

The already high rate of homicides there grew in the final months of last year, at the same time the population in southwest Houston was swelling with Katrina evacuees. The spike in apartment crime helped double the number of homicides in December, compared with 2004. By year's end, police had investigated 336 killings, a 22 percent increase over the previous year.

Ten of those homicides occurred prior to 2005, but because they were investigated last year, 336 is the figure reported to the FBI as the city's official homicide total.

Evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, who began arriving in Houston after the Aug. 29 landfall, were the victims or suspects in 18 homicides. That was 13 percent of the slayings that occurred between September and December.

Yet Houston City Councilman Adrian Garcia, a former HPD officer, noted that HPD would have seen an increase in homicides without the evacuees.

"We would still have 700 to 1,000 officers less than what we should have, would still be dealing with homicide increases, and gangs and apartment complexes would still be issues," he said.

'I lost them both'
Those affected by the grim tally, either from living amid the violence or losing someone to it, question why police did not see it coming.

Jessie Coleman, a 70-year-old woman who raised seven children on the city's southeast side, lost her grandson and son in unrelated slayings that occurred within a 12-hour period in early October.

Her grandson, 22-year-old Jermon Lynch, argued with gang members and was shot in the parking lot of a southwest Houston apartment complex where two other people, including a police officer, were killed last year. The family was grieving Lynch's death at Coleman's home when a 16-year-old neighbor pulled a gun during an argument in the street and killed her son, 42-year-old Robert Coleman.

"I lost them both and for no reason," Coleman said. "I got to feeling that no one is safe. When you see that the violence is continuing — something must be done."

The Chronicle reviewed records including offense reports, public statements, court documents and property records, to identify trends among the 326 killings that occurred in 2005. The analysis revealed patterns that, according to police, hold true in this year's homicides:

•Gang violence increased early in 2005 and contributed to 47 homicides, more than 14 percent of the total killings.
•Arguments, ranging from conflicts over drugs to petty fights, were the leading cause of homicides.
•Men between the ages of 19 and 28 were the most likely to be killed.
•Blacks and Hispanics were the victims in 85 percent of homicides.
•Guns were used in more than 80 percent of the slayings.
After the homicide rate surged in November and December, Hurtt launched a series of initiatives, including two overtime programs, estimated to cost $10.5 million, to target crime hot spots and a program to increase apartment complex security. But residents and community activists, familiar with the tendency for violence in apartments and other pockets of southwest Houston, questioned why the problems did not prompt action sooner.

"For some reason, our area has been a stepchild for a long time," said Jim Myers, a Fondren-area community leader.

The president of the Houston Police Officers' Union said the department, with ranks depleted by the retirement of some 700 officers, could not have acted sooner.

"Some of these trends have been flying under the radar," Hans Marticiuc said. "It certainly is a problem for those that were victims, but even if they had been recognized, we could not have done anything because of manpower."

Hurtt added that a lack of crime analysis capabilities meant that HPD did not identify patterns among the homicides "in a timely enough manner to be proactive."

To meet that need, Hurtt for the first time has appointed a captain to oversee the analysis of crime statistics. The chief receives updates on crime in the city's police divisions every five days — up from 45-day intervals between such briefings when he joined the department.

Hurtt said the initiatives and reassigned officers have not had time to have full impact.

"There have been too many (homicides)," he said, "but it will take some time for us to see results."

Myers, a Fondren-area homeowner for 38 years, knows well the problems in the sprawling apartment complexes that line major thoroughfares in southwest Houston. He has witnessed poor security, gang and drug turf battles and a historic lack of proactive efforts by the city and police.

"We have more of these groups of apartments concentrated in our area than any other area of Houston, and their problems are not new," Myers said. "Someone should have seen this coming."

Fewer officers

Residents for years have protested inadequate police presence in southwest Houston.

An HPD study completed last year showed that the southwest and Fondren patrol divisions have fewer than one officer per 1,000 people. In contrast, the south central division, which is south and east of downtown, has nearly two officers per 1,000 people.

Citywide, Houston averages 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents. Other major U.S. cities have between 2.4 and 4.7 officers per 1,000 people, according to a recent New York Times article.

Long before HPD began its publicity campaign, apartments were already the most violent places in the city. For example, 45 percent of the homicides in February 2005 occurred in apartment complexes.

Among those killed was 27-year-old Kofi Appiah, the stepson of a Ghanaian immigrant who helped run his stepmother's grocery store and planned to follow his cousins into the Navy. On Feb. 7, 2005, Appiah was visiting his girlfriend in a southwest Houston complex when he argued with another man, possibly over her.

The suspect, Marvin O'Brien Pierre, has not been captured. He allegedly gained access to the complex, although he did not live there.

"There was nothing to stop him, and he has been running away ever since," said Joan Sauceda, who raised Appiah. "That man took Kofi's life and was able to flee with no consequences."

After launching two overtime programs to increase patrol in high-crime areas last year, Hurtt on March 15 announced the reassignment of 20 officers to the Fondren division.

The division still needs more than 10 officers to bring it up to the city's average for officers per resident, noted City Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck, who worked to secure the additional officers.

HPD also restarted a program known as Blue Star that offers security training to apartment managers. The program, first launched by former Police Chief C.O. Bradford, was suspended because of cutbacks until this year.

"We are thankful for the efforts," Myers said. "But the question is, 'Why didn't it happen earlier?' Especially with (Hurricane) Katrina."

The evacuee effect

The September arrival of tens of thousands of evacuees, and their settlement into vacant apartments in southwest Houston, amplified tensions and violence in the high-crime complexes.

The largest concentration of evacuees — some 5,991 people, according to city housing voucher records — landed in ZIP code 77036. The area is at the heart of the Fondren division, which recorded 12 homicides in the first six months of 2005, most in the city. Ten more homicides were recorded there in the second half of the year.

After their arrival, evacuees were suspected in the deaths of eight fellow New Orleanians. They were the victims of unknown or non-evacuee suspects in six killings and they are suspected in the killings of four people who were not evacuees.

Police attributed a significant portion of the violence to rivalries between groups from different public housing projects in New Orleans and also found that several killings occurred during robberies.

"We saw a rise in incidents around the time that people were receiving FEMA money," homicide Sgt. Brian Harris said. "Among the evacuees are a group of very dangerous people who have been in and out of the Louisiana justice system and who now are our problem. We are sending the message that you do go to jail in Houston and stay in jail."

Three of the five homicides recorded last year in Pasadena, Harris County's second-largest city, involved Katrina evacuees. Two were killed during an apparent robbery while others are suspects in the slaying of a Pasadena woman who police said had befriended them.

"It's hard to say where our homicide rate went last year," said Pasadena Police Department spokesman Vance Mitchell. "Without the Katrina factor it would have been down."

The Harris County Sheriff's Department has reported no killings involving evacuees and recorded a 10 percent increase in homicides in 2005, when it investigated 67 killings.

Another factor driving the homicide increase in Houston was gang violence, which began its spike in the first quarter of 2005, when homicide investigators tallied 13 homicides, compared with four in the first quarter of the previous year.

Increase in gang activity
The numbers represent an increase in activity by gangs concentrated in southwest Houston. By year's end, police considered 47 homicides to be gang-related — they occurred primarily in apartment complexes.

In 2004, HPD identified 29 homicides as gang-related, while 21 were counted in 2003, according to Dale Brown, HPD's homicide captain.

"Some of those numbers are low because we have not historically asked the gang question," Brown said. "But even so, it was apparent in 2005 that these groups of people were becoming increasingly violent."

Through March 21 this year, HPD had investigated eight homicides that appear to be gang related.

Police have identified MS-13 and La Tercera Crips, both of which have been the targets of large-scale investigations, as major contributors to the rise in gang violence. But other organizations, such as Southwest Cholos and La Primera, also have played a role, police said.

Hurtt and Brown responded in December by creating the homicide gang squad, a group of officers within HPD's homicide division who focus on tracking and linking gang violence.

At the same time, though, HPD's homicide and other investigative divisions have been hard hit by retirements. Homicide has lost 18 detectives in the past two years.

"When your investigative divisions are as thin as your street ranks, or more, then your ability to spot and react to trends is diminished," Garcia said.

Arguments were by far the leading cause of Houston homicides last year, and the trend continues this year. While some arguments stemmed from gang clashes or drug turf wars, a notable number were prompted by arguments that could be considered petty — a trend that police departments across the country also have cited.

In January, a man was beaten to death with a tire iron after he threw a beer can at someone in the parking lot of a southwest Houston apartment complex. In April, two people were shot to death during an argument about an overturned bicycle at a northside burger stand. In July, a bar manager was slain when he could not pay the promised $125 reward for the return of his lost cell phone.

"People seem to be resorting to violence in increasing numbers to solve some of their disputes," Brown said. "The idea that disputes could not be resolved in another manner is occurring at a higher rate over previous years and it's continuing this year."

Sauceda, whose stepson was fatally shot, possibly over a girl, feels the nature of violence in Houston has changed during her 30 years here.

"How can you kill someone over something so small?" she asked. "When people are willing to kill over such things, of course there is going to be terrible violence."

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AAS:
Search warrant: Victim had been warned by Bandidos motorcycle gang members
Anthony Benesh, 44, was trying to form rival gang, police sayAUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, March 24, 2006
By Tony Plohetski

A Travis County man killed Saturday in a sniper-style shooting outside a Northwest Austin restaurant had been warned by members of the Bandidos motorcycle gang to stop wearing the insignia of a rival group, according to a search warrant.

Austin police homicide detectives wrote in the search warrant that Anthony Benesh III, 44, was a self-proclaimed member of Hells Angels and had received several warnings from Bandidos via cell phone messages. Police said Benesh preserved some of the messages.

The document said investigators have learned through interviews that Benesh "was attempting to start a chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Austin and that (he) had been warned by the Bandidos gang."

The search warrant, filed Wednesday, seeks to obtain the voice mail and text messages in the cell phone, as well as a list of telephone numbers that have placed calls to the phone. The cell phone was among the evidence police obtained outside Saccone's, the restaurant on U.S. 183 where Benesh was killed by a single gun shot to the head in front of his girlfriend and his two children as they walked toward their vehicle. He died at the scene.

Austin police have said that they think he was shot by someone from a car parked along 183 and that they are still looking for a suspect.

Public records show Benesh was the owner of a Harley-Davidson and an ASVE motorcycle. According to an autopsy report obtained Thursday, Benesh had a large tattoo of wings around a red diamond that said, "1%er."

Motorcycle gang experts said the tattoo grew in popularity after the American Motorcyclist Association declared that 99 percent of motorcycle enthusiasts are law-abiding. People who consider themselves outside that group call themselves "one percenters," experts said.

Motorcycle gang experts said the California-based Hells Angels and the Bandidos, who formed in Texas and consider the state their turf, are longtime rivals.

"The last thing on earth they (Bandidos) would want would be a Hells Angels club there," said Edward Winterhalder, a former high-ranking Bandidos member who has since left the group and written a book about it.

Experts said that the Bandidos have about 2,500 members nationwide and that about 2,000 people belong to the Hells Angels.

The Bandidos have about 10 known members in Austin, said Lt. Max Westbrook, who works in the department's organized crime division. The department documents and tracks gang members when they are arrested or have other interactions with police.

Several Bandidos members in Austin have been convicted of what Westbrook described as "relatively minor offenses," including drug possession.

Westbrook said he is not aware of Hells Angels members in Austin.

"Gangs in general will have competition for certain areas, for what they consider the right to sell illegal narcotics or to support prostitution, things like that," Westbrook said. "There is no love lost."

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LA TIMES
L.A. Gets Federal Grant to Fight Gang Violence
The U.S. attorney general visits to say $2.5million will boost prevention efforts and prosecutions in the city's southeastern corner.
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer

April 1, 2006

The nation's top law enforcement official awarded Los Angeles $2.5 million Friday to combat gang violence in the city's southeast corner, an area that contains three public housing projects notorious for their gang activity.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales and federal prosecutors said the money would pay for gang prevention programs as well as stepped-up prosecutions in a section of South Los Angeles that includes the Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs housing projects.

"There is no future in being a member of a gang," said Gonzales, who made the announcement during a national gang summit attended by mayors from around the country. "Gangs are shattering the hopes of young people who succumb to their false promises."

The initiative comes at a time when the federal government has invested heavily in homeland security programs, which some critics say have shortchanged traditional anti-crime efforts.

Though city and state officials applauded the money, privately some grumbled about the relatively small amount and pointed out that it comes as the federal government is slashing other crime-fighting funds.

Los Angeles is home to 463 gangs — up from 300 in 1990, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The city has an estimated 40,000 gang members.

Some of the deadliest episodes of gang violence have occurred at the housing projects targeted by the new federal program.

Police, for example, reported 19 gang-related shootings and seven homicides around the Jordan Downs project from Dec. 31 to Jan. 31.

LAPD officials and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled a program this week to install a dozen cameras at Jordan Downs that will feed live images around the clock to patrol cars, allowing units to respond to crimes more quickly.

The Los Angeles mayor said he hoped the new crime-fighting dollars would bring more calm to housing projects where unemployment is rampant and residents say they must protect their children from bullets whizzing through the walls of their apartments.

"We believe there is a way to reduce gang and gun violence in America," said Villaraigosa, who planned the gang summit and announced the new money during an appearance with Gonzales. "This city and cities across the nation need to grapple with this issue."

The Department of Justice awarded five grants of the same amount to Cleveland; Milwaukee; Tampa, Fla.; the Dallas-Fort Worth area; and a corridor stretching from Easton to Lancaster, Pa., near Philadelphia.

In each city, $1 million in federal funds is earmarked for prevention — addressing personal, family and community factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency.

Another $1 million would be devoted to law enforcement efforts targeting violent gang members "who terrorize our communities," the Department of Justice said in a statement.

The final $500,000 will be used to provide transitional housing, job placement help, and substance abuse and mental health treatment for released convicts.

During the gang meeting, held in a ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel downtown, mayors and police chiefs talked about ways to end gang violence.

They discussed curfews and expanded recreation programs, among other efforts. One group of speakers debated the usefulness of more prosecutions versus the need to address underlying causes of gang activity.

Police and federal prosecutors touted injunctions and federal racketeering laws to crack down on criminal gang activity, while one civil rights lawyer said the answer lies in creating more jobs and stabilizing impoverished families.

"This isn't a law enforcement problem," said attorney Constance L. Rice, a panelist.

"This is a broken children problem. This is a broken cities problem."

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FUTRELL RESPONDS
From: Futrell, Toby Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 6:10 PM
EMAIL:
What Mike did not send all of you on this list serve from my responses to his many emails on this issue is the corresponding crime rates of the cities he is touting with a better public safety response than Austin__all of whom have significantly higher violent crime rates than Austin.

Austin is not ignoring crime trends or crime rates and, in fact, has a better track record than any of the cities Mike is referencing.

The reason to include other certified police officers as a subset of our officer count is that many other cities include one or more of those same policing functions in their ratio of officers per 1000 population. I listed our APD officers alone and then showed what our numbers looked like with overtime backfill (which some other cities also count in their ratio) and other policing functions we provide in the city (such as parks and airport police).

That facts are that Austin spends more than two-thirds of it's total general fund budget on public safety and that is growing annually, with most of all the annual increases in our budget each year going to public safety departments.

For Police, we fall in the lower middle of major Texas cities for the number of officers per 1000 population, but our officers are the highest paid in the State and we have correspondingly, the lowest violent crime rate in the State. Austin is the third safest major city in the country, despite being the 16th largest city in the United States. I am very proud of our Police Department and each of you should be also.

For Emergency Medical Services (EMS), we are investing heavily in pay and staffing initiatives to keep up the demands on this systems, including market compensation, the public safety premium to match their civil service counterparts, and moving to 12 hour shifts from 24 hour shifts this year. Recruitment of paramedics is a challenge in EMS, but that is a national recruitment issue, not an Austin issue. EMS continues to be one of the top ranked services in the State, if not the country.

For Fire, we have the highest paid firefighters in the State and we have moved to Enhanced Task Force staffing, a step that brings up very close to four-person staffing in the fire service. Fire continues to be one of the top ranked fire services in the State, if not the country, bringing Austin homeowners lower insurance rates.

Toby Futrell
City Manager

04-02-06: LEVY Responds back to Futrell
From: Michael R. Levy
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 6:16 PM

On this issue, it's critical to be prospective, not retrospective.

You cannot ignore what other cities are doing in commiting significant resources against the emerging gang challenge. They ain't stupid, Toby.

If Austin gets hit hard with gang activity, and we go over the "tipping point" because our collective pants are down, nobody is going to care about percentages or what our cops make.

04-02-06: LEVY Responds to Futrell again
From: Michael R. Levy
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 6:44 PM

And thanks for your e-mail.

Word for word, you just support my argument.

What's really interesting are the issues in my e-mail you choose not to address.

And hitting "reply" doesn't reach a bcc list.

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04-02-06: FUTRELL RESPONDS
From: Futrell, Toby
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 6:38 PM


If it's true that you are controlling responses, then you are simply now proving that you are afraid of a real debate.

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04-02-06: LEVY gives final response to Futrell
From: Michael R. Levy
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 7:03 PM

Me afrraid?

Yougottabekidding!

What bothers me is that you understand and appreciate the concepts and theories of "The Tipping Point" and "Broken Windows".

Why you refuse to apply them to a community you love and care passionately about is a mystery to me.

Please take the time to re-read the articles I sent from the LA Times, the NY Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle. They are serious responsible newspapers. They get their facts right. When they say the gang problem is huge, and will hit all cities, you refuse to address the issue at all in your responses. Why, Toby? Why?

Re: the Casper brothers. Compare them to their counterparts in other cities. I will accept your assertion that they are "good". But the citizens of Austin deserve "great", and not just "good". (Yes, I'm sure you also read the book, "From Good to Great".) And our public safety agencies need strong leaders, not just managers, a concept I really don't think Rudy or you grasp and understand.

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