The Chicago Syndicate
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Friday, August 04, 2017

Chicago Violence Epidemic, Gangsters Rather Police Catch them with a Gun, than a Rival Catch them without One

Chicago faces an epidemic of gun violence. This year alone, more than 2,100 people have been shot, more than 400 killed. The Fourth of July weekend was especially violent. Around 100 people were shot in just over four days.

Adriana Diaz gained unique access to some of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods and crews that weekend for "CBSN: On Assignment."

Chicago police have already seized more than 5,000 guns from the streets this year.

Young men on the city's south and west sides told CBS News how easy it is to get illegal guns, and why many never leave their homes without one.

"I know people who can't walk from they house to the store without a gun," said Aaron Murph. "Because people getting killed left and right. It's sad."

"I got shot twice and I could have been gone but I'm still here so, that scar, that's with me, so," said Tyshaun Grant. "It's hell on earth."

The problem we heard – and saw – over and over again, was guns.

CBS News gained access to several crews on Chicago's south side.

The MAC-10 is a semi-automatic weapon originally designed for military use. It is illegal in Chicago.

Asked why anyone would need a gun with that much firepower, one man said, "Protection. It dangerous out here."

One South Side crew affiliated with the Titanic Stones told CBS News they actually hate guns. They obstructed their faces to conceal their identities on camera.

"I'm just doin' this s*** for survival, bro, until I can pull my family and myself in a better predicament to what I need to do," one member said. "We just trying to keep ourselves protected."

Many crews told us they would rather risk the police catching them with a gun than have their rival find them without one. Asked where he got his .40-caliber gun, he said, "Off the streets, people sell 'em."

"Just like that, that's how easy it is," another man said.

"It's worth it for you to keep these guns?" Diaz asked. "We felons. You know what I'm saying? Ain't nobody gonna give us no jobs. The cops don't give a f*** about us."

But when asked if innocent people dying by those bullets is worth it, they both said, "No."

"At the end of the day, it ain't worth it. But you got 'em motherf*****s wanna go through a drive by, you know what I'm saying? And some innocent, little sister get shot. Guess what? Them and them guys coming back in. That's how the confrontation is going to keep going."

"So why not just put the guns down?" Diaz asked.

"Put the guns down? Probably would happen. Maybe in the near future. No time right now. I don't want to put my gun down. Nine times out of ten the innocent ones get hurt, you know what I'm saying? If they come do a shooting right now we probably won't even get shot. And we got guns. You might get shot. That's how f****** up it is, you know? But it's survive or be killed."

Thanks to Adriana Diaz.

Monday, July 31, 2017

How the Mexican Mafia Wields Power beyond Prison #LaEme

Mexican Mafia, God, family — in that order.

That’s how one expert described the power and influence the notorious prison gang, also known as “La Eme,” holds over people in prison or county jail, as well as those on the outside.

In a 2007 article published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, writer Tony Rafael — who spent years researching the Mexican Mafia — explained in an interview how the gang’s leaders give orders to members of Hispanic or Latino street gangs that could include harassing, assaulting or killing others on its behalf.

Failure to follow orders is usually punished, often violently.

“When you click up with a gang that’s loyal to the Mexican Mafia, the Mexican Mafia comes before God, your family, and your friends going all the way back to childhood,” said Rafael, who published a book on the subject in 2009 (The Mexican Mafia). “When they tell you to do something, you gotta do it.”

It will be interesting to see how that notion plays in San Diego Superior Court, where 20 people are facing charges related to their alleged association with the prison gang.

Twelve men and eight women stand accused of various felonies after a three-year investigation, dubbed “Operation Emero,” conducted by a multi-agency gang task force. The investigation was led by the Sheriff’s Department, FBI and a special services unit of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Some of the defendants pleaded not guilty this week in San Diego Superior Court to charges including extortion, kidnapping, assault likely to produce great bodily injury, drug possession for sale and conspiracy to commit assault, arson, robbery and torture.

Others, including defendants now in prison on other convictions, are expected to be arraigned over the next few weeks.

Felix Aguirre, a retired San Diego police detective who conducts training and information sessions on gangs, said the Mexican Mafia is one of several prison gangs that thrive in correctional institutions in California and across the country.

“It basically controls everything from prostitution to drugs — a lot of the criminal activities within the institutions,” he said.

When someone is sent to prison, it’s typical for that person to seek out a group of inmates he can identify with — usually other members of the same race — for protection and safety, Aguirre said. Those who associate with the Mexican Mafia may eventually be told to “put in work” for the gang, either inside a prison or jail, or out on the streets.

The “carnales,” loosely translated from Spanish as “brothers,” are the leaders of the organization, the “shot-callers,” Aguirre said. Below them are the “comrades,” the second-tier leaders, and then the crew members or associates who carry out their orders. They also tend to rely on women — perhaps wives or girlfriends of the carnales — to communicate their directives on the street.

The gang is known to take a “tax” from anyone carrying out other criminal activities in areas claimed by the prison gang. In other words, if dealers are selling drugs in Mexican Mafia territory, they have to pay a percentage to the gang. If they don’t, the gang will still find a way to collect.

“The consequences are assault, violent robberies … They take what they want,” Aguirre said.

Prosecutors in San Diego County haven’t revealed many details about the new case, but have said the defendants operated in two groups, one of which was led by federal prisoner Jose Alberto “Bat” Marquez, the other by California death row inmate Ronaldo Ayala.

Neither is charged in the San Diego case, presumably because both men are expected to spend the rest of their lives locked away from the rest of society. But their names appear multiple times throughout the 40-page complaint in a long list of “overt acts” prosecutors included to support the charges.

Among them, Marquez is accused of directing a female defendant to give an inmate “knuckles” over a drug debt. On another occasion, Marquez told the same defendant to slap a woman and collect the money she owed him, according to prosecutors.

They say Ayala used a contraband cellphone to make calls from death row, including one in which he authorized the stabbing of an inmate at Centinela state prison in Imperial County in April.

Thanks to Dana Littlefield.

Friday, July 28, 2017

The @realDonaldTrump to Liberate our Towns and Destroy the Murderous MS-13 Gang Animals

President Trump sounded the alarm Friday over the violence being inflicted on American neighborhoods by MS-13, vowing to “liberate our towns” from the murderous gang's grip as part of an escalating crackdown by his administration.

The defeat of the latest ObamaCare repeal bill in his rear-view, Trump traveled to Long Island to talk about the gang's atrocities and rally support for his immigration enforcement policies.

“[MS-13 has] transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood stained killing fields. They’re animals. We cannot tolerate as a society the spilling of innocent, young, wonderful vibrant people,” Trump said.

The president spoke in plain language to describe the brutality of MS-13 gang members, who have murdered 17 people in Long Island since Jan. 16. The gang, which has Central American ties, is also active in the Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles areas.

"We cannot accept this violence one day more," Trump said.

As he did throughout the 2016 political campaign, Trump also railed against timid politicians who have failed to enforce immigration laws and looked the other way as violent gangs crossed the border. “They are there right now because of weak political leadership ... and in many cases police who are not allowed to do their job because they have a pathetic mayor or a mayor who does not know what’s going on,” Trump said.

After noting the gang members prefer knives over guns because victims experience more suffering, Trump delivered a message to members. “We will find you, we will arrest you, we will jail you and we will deport you,” Trump said to applause from the audience of law enforcement officials. He vowed to "destroy the vile criminal cartel, MS-13, and many other gangs."

The visit came after the Senate early Friday morning narrowly defeated the latest ObamaCare replacement bill, in a blow to one of Trump's top campaign promises. But the president brushed off the loss and called on Congress to meet his spending demands to hire as many as 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 5,000 new Customs and Border Patrol officers.

The administration also is pushing to boosting funding for more administrative law judges and to begin building the border wall.

The House this week voted to allocate $1.6 billion for a border wall.

Trump’s speech coincided with an announcement on Friday that two MS-13 gang members had been arrested in connection with the May murder of a man in Queens.

In June, New York State and federal law enforcement officials disclosed that as part of Operation Matador -- a joint federal-state initiative -- a total of 45 individuals with confirmed gang affiliations were arrested, including 39 affiliated with MS-13.

With Trump in MS-13’s domestic epicenter, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was delivering the administration’s message in El Salvador, where the violent gang is rooted.

“MS-13 is based here in El Salvador, but its tentacles reach across Central America, Europe, and through 40 U.S. states, and to within yards of the U.S. Capitol,” he said in remarks to graduates of the International Law Enforcement Academy.

The administration has taken an aggressive approach toward combating gangs, including establishing a Department of Justice Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety in February. A month later, Sessions issued a memo to all federal prosecutors placing a priority on prosecuting violent criminals.

Sessions was in the country to highlight joint efforts that have contributed to the arrest of 113 suspected MS-13 gang members. According to the Justice Department, an additional 593 gang members were charged Thursday, including many MS-13 members.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit’s Biggest Frame Job

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit's Biggest Frame Job.

When beat cop Don Herion and his partner responded to shots fired on December 16, 1959, they didn’t know that they had heard the final, fatal salvo in one of the most contorted conflicts in the history of organized crime. A canny bootlegger, Roger Touhy had survived a gang war with Al Capone, false imprisonment for a faked kidnapping, a prison break and recapture. His story dragged in all the notorious men of his day: Frank Nitti, John “Jake the Barber” Factor, Mayor Cermak, Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, Baby Face Nelson, Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, FDR and JFK. As Touhy’s life was ending on his sister’s front porch, Herion’s quest to unravel the tangle of events that led to his assassination had just begun.

A native of the Windy City, Don Herion joined the Chicago Police Department in 1955. On a cold winter night in 1959, he was called to the scene of Roger Touhy’s murder. Herion retired after forty-eight years on the job, including two years of undercover work for the Chicago Crime Commission. He is the author of Pay, Quit, or Die: Chicago Mob Ultimatum, and The Chicago Way.

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit's Biggest Frame Job.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Using Witness Protection Programs to Break the Mob

It must be one of the worst choices to have to makeWitsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program ; to choose between decades behind bars or a life in hiding. But that is what confronts accused drug mule Cassie Sainsbury, now languishing in a Colombian prison. She has been asked to either inform on the people who supplied the cocaine found in her luggage at an airport back in April this year and go into witness protection, or spend 30 years in a Colombian jail.

Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program.

If she takes the deal to turn informant she will be joining a long list of people who testified against organised criminals only to lose their identity and liberty under witness protection. Programs to protect people who testify against organised criminals only came into existence in the 1960s and ’70s, even though the need for such a program goes back centuries.

Intimidation of witnesses is at least as old as courts, but it was only in the 19th and early 20th centuries that laws were passed against tampering with witnesses or that witnesses were detained so that they couldn’t be intimidated or killed.

In the US in the late 19th and early 20th century the Black Hand gangs, formed among Italian migrants, often scared away people from reporting crimes or testifying against gang members. In Chicago between 1910 and 1920, police were able to secure prosecutions in 21 per cent of homicides, but in cases relating to Black Hand killings they could only secure convictions in 4 per cent of cases.

The Black Hand: Terror by Letter in Chicago.

In the 1920s and ’30s people such as Chicago mob boss Al Capone were able to literally get away with murder by threatening or killing witnesses. But when authorities found bookkeeping ledgers meticulously detailing Capone’s ill-gotten profits, Leslie (some sources say Louis) Shumway, one of the men responsible for keeping the ledgers, was hidden away and brought to court under police guard. He became a material witness in a case for tax evasion. Capone was convicted in 1931 and sent to prison, after which police broke his control of his crime organisation, freeing Shumway of any fear of retribution. Shumway lived the rest of his life in seclusion but by the ’40s Capone was losing his mind due to late stage syphilis. Capone died in 1947 in Florida and Shumway died in 1964, also in Florida.

In 1963, mobster Joe Valachi testified at a US senate hearing about the dealings and structure of the mob. Valachi, who was already in prison, had organised his own protection. (In 1962 he beat to death an inmate he thought had been sent to collect a $100,000 bounty put out by mob boss Vito Genovese.) Valachi died in prison of a heart attack in 1971. Valachi Papers by Peter Maas.

The US Justice Department’s Gerald Shur, frustrated by not being able to get people to testify in big organised crime cases pushed for a more formal system of looking after witnesses.

In 1970 the Organised Crime Control Act provided for the relocation and protection of witnesses, a role that was taken on by the US Marshals Service under the orders of the US Attorney-General.

Since then thousands of people have entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, or Witness Security Program (WITSEC for short).

Some of the more notorious people given protection include New York City mobster Henry Hill, who was arrested in 1980 on a narcotics charge but turned informant and his testimony helped secure 50 convictions. His story was told in the book Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family, by Nicholas Pileggi and later turned into the award-winning Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas (4K Ultra HD) [Blu-ray].



Hill was thrown out of witness protection after he repeatedly revealed his true identity to neighbours. He died in 2012 from heart problems.

Sicilian-born mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta also made headlines in 1992 when he became the first major crime boss to turn informant. He testified into links between organised crime and politicians in Italy. He died while in WITSEC in the US in 2000.

A national witness protection program was also established Australia in 1990 under the Australian Federal Police. It gained notoriety when Reginald “Mick” O’Brien, a small-time criminal with links to crime boss Robert Trimbole, became a protected witness.

O’Brien had been arrested in relation to the importation of cannabis resin, but had made a deal with the National Crime Authority to give evidence against Trimbole. When the NCA became dissatisfied with the quality of his evidence he was dropped from witness protection. O’Brien was shot dead in Granville in January 1992. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.

Thanks to Troy Lennon.

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