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"I developed a saying over the years: it's almost impossible to kill a gang member."
Assigned to the hard-core gang division of L.A. County District Attorney's Office, Deputy D.A. Tom O'Brien has tried 35 gang murder trials in the course of his career. As he explains, these cases are often intertwined with the narcotics trade.
"There are over a thousand street gangs in Los Angeles County. It's a changing enterprise; it's got its own pulse, its own heartbeat. Gangs do die out occasionally because of members being killed or imprisoned. They also crop up. We've seen kids who start out as graffiti taggers, carrying weapons for protection against rival tagging crews, develop into full-fledged gangs."
Drugs and Gangs
"Gangs battle back and forth over their neighborhoods in an attempt to lay claim to larger and larger and swatches. A gang's turf can be anything from a lousy alley behind a home to an area of several blocks or larger, depending on the size of the gang. And when gangs talk about Controlling these areas, what they mean is Controlling the narcotics sales in those areas.
"Gangs can sell the drugs themselves, or they can charge local drug dealers rent for the privilege of conducting transactions on their street corners. They go up to the local drug dealer and they say, 'If you want to sell on the corner of Fifth and Main, we're going to come by every day or every week and collect our rent, and if you don't pay taxes, we'll rough you up or kill you."
"The more street corners you Control, the more transactions you can do. This results in turf wars, which are often the cause of drive-by shootings. I developed a saying over the years: It's almost impossible to kill a gang member. These guys will come into court and they'll take off their T-shirts and proudly show you their nine bullet holes, the scars on their bodies. These guys somehow seem to get shot up to heck and back and they survive, but the poor guy who lives down the street, sitting in his living room watching TV gets hit by a stray round that kills him."
The Mexican Mafia
"Drive-bys are bad for business. The Mexican Mafia, which Controls much of the drug trade, essentially wants to run their business and collect their money in a quiet way. So the Mexican Mafia said that they were going to green-light--or put out a hit on--any gang that persists in doing drive-by shootings. That's the reason that drive-bys have lately been supplanted by "walk-up" shootings. Because the gangs carry automatic weapons, very often the intended target of the drive-by is not the person who gets killed. If you walk up on someone, however, your shooting is likely to be a lot more accurate. And the thought is, if gangsters are killing gangsters, the public isn't all that concerned, and the pressure is off the politicians and the police to turn up the heat in the neighborhoods."
"In my opinion, what you're dealing with when you prosecute gang killers are the most evil, hardened individuals in Los Angeles County. These are people who sometimes start at the age of 10 or 11 years old, and they feel their role in life is to kill other human beings. And unlike your domestic violence cases, and I don't mean to downplay those cases, these gang members will go out and kill not just once, but again and again. If you're able to get a jury to understand why a witness might recant on the stand, and then get a guilty verdict anyway, it's a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. The neighborhood this gang member used to terrorize is going to be just a little bit safer once he's in prison."
Real Life vs. Television
"On TV, the prosecutors tend to be wooden individuals representing the state who don't seem to care. The producers don't show that prosecutors come in as many sizes, colors, shapes, and sexual orientation as everyone else. There are really good prosecutors and there are lousy prosecutors. There are folks who are petrified to go on trial unless it's a slam-dunk confession case, and there are folks who walk on the edge of the ethics line. Then are the shows where the excitement comes from seeing a guy who's truly innocent narrowly escape conviction. That's not the reality of the system. In the gang culture, these guys are truly guilty."
"TV doesn't show it, but these cases really matter to us. It's not, 'Oh, well. You lost your murder case? What time's golf today?' You were the one person who society looks at to keep this killer from killing somebody else. That is your job. And regardless of the crappy witnesses and victims' families who don't show up, who don't help, who are afraid to do anything, regardless of all the defendant's homeboys out there, harassing your witnesses, you really have to care to do it right and to put these guilty guys away."
To learn more about drugs and crime, click here.
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