Gangs

The city's neon lights vibrated in the polished hood of the black BMW as it cruised up Las Vegas Boulevard. The man in the passenger seat was instantly recognizable. Fans lined the streets, waving, snapping photos, begging Tupac Shakur for his autograph. Cops were everywhere, smiling. The BMW 750 sedan, with rap magnate Marion "Suge" Knight at the wheel, was leading a procession of luxury vehicles past the MGM Grand Hotel and Caesars Palace, on their way to a hot new nightclub.

COALCOMAN, Mexico - Rafael Garcia slaps the oversize wooden desk where he sits, one of the last mayors still in office in this region of Mexican farm country known as Tierra Caliente - hot land. Mayors from a couple of the nearest towns fled with their drug-cartel pals, people here say, when locals took up arms against them. But at Garcia's City Hall, the facade is festooned with hand-lettered signs supporting local gunmen who challenged the cartel, loosely referred to as community "self-defense" guards, comunitarios . Several cities in Tierra Caliente are now patrolled by such groups, whose members, often masked, man checkpoints and pull over passing vehicles for inspection.

Tennis star Serena Williams addressed the man who killed her half sister Thursday, as he was sentenced to 15 years in state prison in the woman's 2003 shooting death. Robert Edward Maxfield, 25, a reputed Southside Crips gang member, pleaded no contest in a Compton courthouse to the voluntary manslaughter of Yetunde Price, 31. The sentencing marked the end of a marathon prosecution that spanned 2 1/2 years, and featured two trials that ended in hung juries.

The so-called Gang of Eight immigration plan now being considered by the Senate fails to live up to every major promise made by its sponsors. Far from improving the immigration system, their 1,000-page proposal would exacerbate many of its flaws. It would dangerously undermine future enforcement while imposing substantial burdens on taxpayers and taking jobs and pay from U.S. workers. Indeed, the two unions representing our nation's immigration and customs officers and those who process immigration applications have strongly urged opposition.

Pancho Real was at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church with his wife and daughter one Sunday in October 2006 when his cellphone rang. He was summoned to a park near his home on Drew Street, a drug and gang haven in Northeast Los Angeles, to kill a man he didn't know. The Mexican Mafia wanted a paroled Avenues gang member named Frank "Kiko" Cordova dead. Real left church with his family and called another gang member, Carlos Renteria. At the park that afternoon, they figured out who Cordova was but saw he was among children.

Their name, the Businessmen, was derived from the slang term "taking care of business." They were among several dominant African American gangs -- the Slausons, the Gladiators, the Del Vikings -- in the early 1960s in the neighborhood then known as South-Central: the precursors to the Bloods and the Crips. Now, the Businessmen of South Park have traded their fedoras for bifocals, and their whiskers are gray.

Oxnard gang member Julio Cesar Chavez testified Friday that he kept silent during his recent murder trial to avoid answering questions about who participated in the fatal beating and stabbing of a man during a back-alley fight two years ago. Chavez broke his silence at his sentencing hearing and denied any role in the slaying for which he was convicted two months ago. He suggested that unnamed gang associates acted in self-defense after being approached by rivals from an El Rio neighborhood.

Circling above Orange County in a helicopter, Anaheim Police Sgt. Bryan Santy spied the green Ford Taurus fishtailing toward a run-down apartment complex. On the ground, a pair of undercover officers were chasing the car, which had been reported stolen. Through binoculars, Santy saw the Taurus slow to a crawl and two skinheads, Michael Lamb and Jacob Rump, jump out, trailed closely on foot by Sgt. Michael Helmick and Det. Danny Allen.

A 23-year-old Los Angeles street gang member was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder in the 1998 ambush-style slaying of LAPD Officer Filbert H. Cuesta Jr. The Los Angeles County Superior Court jury that convicted Catarino Gonzalez Jr. will begin hearing evidence Monday on whether Gonzalez, who shot Cuesta outside a Crenshaw-area wedding celebration, should be sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Federal authorities Thursday accused a south Los Angeles County street gang of a litany of crimes, including the murder of a sheriff's deputy and racially motivated attacks designed to drive African Americans from their town.

Jurors decided Monday that a gang member should be executed for the slaying of four people, including a 10-year-old boy gunned down from close range as he rode his bicycle along a quiet South Los Angeles street. Charles Ray Smith, 44, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as the verdict was read in a downtown courtroom. Smith was convicted during a previous trial of taking part in two deadly shootings in 2006, including one that became known as the "49th Street Massacre" in which two men wielding AK-47s opened fire on children and adults enjoying a Friday summer afternoon.

They milled around the room aimlessly, their faces painted - some ghost white, others in different colors like a tribal mask - and they followed the instructions: They glided when they were told to walk as if they were filled with air, then slowed to a deliberate shuffle when told to act like they'd been shackled. "How does that feel?" said their instructor, Sabra Williams, of the Actors' Gang. "What emotions does that trigger?" The group of about a dozen were grown men, prisoners at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, a place where they don't typically let themselves be seen acting foolishly or displaying the kind of emotion that could make them seem vulnerable.

When battling street gangs across Los Angeles County, sheriff's deputies rely too heavily on suppression and not enough on gang intervention, according to a study released Monday. By not doing more to connect with the communities they police, the report found, sheriff's deputies are missing an opportunity to gain the public's trust. However, the report - put out by Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors - acknowledged that crime rates inside sheriff's jurisdictions have fallen dramatically, and comparably to the areas patrolled by the LAPD, which more commonly uses gang interventionists.

The Senate Judiciary Committee continued its markup of a bipartisan immigration reform bill Monday, rejecting an amendment by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have barred undocumented immigrants who are merely suspected of belonging to a gang, but not convicted of a crime, from legalizing their status. Deporting immigrants who have serious criminal records makes sense as a matter of public safety. The Times' editorial page has supported such policies. But Grassley's amendment wouldn't have furthered that goal.

A man was stabbed to death early Sunday on an Echo Park street in an attack that appeared to be gang-related, police said. About 2:40 a.m., two men got into an argument at Clinton and Waterloo streets when one of them pulled a knife, stabbed the other several times and ran away, said Officer Bruce Borihanh of the Los Angeles Police Department. The victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, Borihanh said. Police did not release his name. The suspect is believed to be in his 20s; no other description was available, said Borihanh.

Seven reputed Montebello-area gang members have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in at least half a dozen killings stemming from ongoing rivalries over drugs and turf, authorities said Wednesday. The arrests made by Montebello police and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, coupled with several dozen federal and state indictments, are part of a bid to clear a backlog of unsolved gang homicides. The operation targeted Southside Montebello, a gang rooted in the community for half a century.

As the story goes, the East Coast Crips robbed a Florencia 13 drug connection of a large quantity of dope nearly a decade ago. Since then, the tale of how a black street gang ripped off a Latino rival has taken on mythic proportions. But to this day police are uncertain if the fabled heist ever occurred. "You hear so many different variations of this crime," said Terry Burgin, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department gang detective. "Who knows what really happened?

A murder suspect facing his third strike under California's penal code barricaded himself inside a friend's apartment and killed himself Wednesday morning after Los Angeles police cornered him and evacuated the neighborhood, including a preschool. Police had an arrest warrant for 23-year-old Ronald Figueroa, wanted in connection with a May drive-by shooting of a 20-year-old woman who was riding in a car with rival gang members in Montecito Heights.

Seven reputed Montebello-area gang members have been arrested for their alleged involvement in at least half a dozen murders stemming from ongoing rivalries over drugs and turf, authorities said Wednesday. The arrests by Montebello police and agents with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, coupled with several dozen federal and state indictments, are part of a bid to clear a backlog of unsolved gang homicides. Officials from those agencies, as well as the U.S. attorney's office and the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, were expected to hold a news conference Wednesday to release more details about the crimes and the suspects.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is just beginning its markup of the bipartisan immigration bill, but already opponents and supporters of the sweeping legislation are fighting over which immigrants should be allowed to legalize their status and which should be deported. Clearly it makes sense to refuse legal status to immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes. But some lawmakers, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), are backing a provision that goes too far, excluding immigrants who have no criminal history simply because their names appear in a database of gang members or on a gang injunction.