Cops Addicted to Violence: According to Whistleblower, LA Sheriff's Deputy Killed Teen to Join Sheriff Department Murder Gang

Tattoo alleged to identify a murderous band of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who many in the community "see as a criminal gang within law enforcement" (source; photo: Sweeney Firm / Glickman & Glickman)

by Thomas Neuburger

It's not news that a subset of almost every police and sheriff's department in the country is not just racist, but more than that, addicted to violence against the marginalized, the "safely murderable," whichever group of citizens in their jurisdiction happens to fit that description. They murder the "safely murderable."

Yes, black citizens are killed at a greater rate proportionately than any other racial demographic. According to noted scholar Adolph Reed, Jr., "the evidence of gross racial disparity is clear: among victims of homicide by police blacks are represented at twice their rate of the population; whites are killed at somewhat less than theirs," while Hispanics are killed "at a rate roughly equivalent to their incidence in the general population."

Yet this statistic belies larger realities. For example, according to Dr. Reed, "ninety-five percent of police killings occurred in neighborhoods with median family income of less than $100,00." In addition, "the states with the highest rates of police homicide per million of population are among the whitest in the country: New Mexico averages 6.71 police killings per million; Alaska ... South Dakota ... Arizona ... Wyoming ... and Colorado".

All of this leads writer Benjamin Mateus to conclude (emphasis added):

Police violence is focused overwhelmingly on men lowest on the socio-economic ladder: in rural areas outside the South, predominately white men; in the Southwest, disproportionately Hispanic men; in mid-size and major cities, disproportionately black men. Significantly, in the rural South, where the population is racially mixed, white men and black men are killed by police at nearly identical rates. What unites these victims of police violence is not their race, but their class status (as well as, of course, their gender)

In major cities, cops kill black men; the Southwest, they kill Hispanic men; in the rural Midwest and West, they kill poor white men. The poor, the male, the least-cared-about in a given geographic setting — these are the most easily killed, the "safely murderable" — and these are the victims of most police violence in the U.S.

Andres Guardado, Shot in the Back Five Times by LA Sheriff's Deputy

Consider the case of 18-year-old Andres Guardado, a citizen of Compton, a city south of Los Angeles and policed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD). The Hispanic population of Compton is 65%.

According to local news reports, "Guardado was shot in the back five times by Deputy Miguel Vega on June 18 after authorities say they spotted him with a gun and he ran away. ... Family and others who knew Guardado said the teen was working as a security guard for a nearby auto body shop at the time but the LASD said he was not licensed to work as a security guard, was not wearing an identifiable uniform, and was carrying an unregistered weapon."

As another local report puts it: "Officers allegedly saw him with a gun; Guardado then ran away and officers chased him into an alley in the back of a building where he was killed, Capt. Kent Wegener, head of the homicide bureau, said in a press conference in June. While a 40-caliber semiautomatic pistol that hadn't been fired was found at the scene, authorities are unable to clarify whether Guardado ever aimed the gun at deputies."

 Andres Guardado in 2007 (source)

An LA County sheriff's deputy shot Guardado in the back five times after seeing him run away holding a gun that wasn't aimed at them and wasn't ever fired. He was chased into an alley and shot — I repeat, in the back — and killed by Deputy Miguel Vega, who is presumably also Hispanic.

Clearly Guardado is a person that fits the "safely murderable" profile — poor (he worked as an unregistered security guard in a neighborhood body shop in Compton is not a middle-class job); Hispanic in a majority-Hispanic city; male; and young.

Chasing Ink

So why was Guardado killed? It turns out that this is no ordinary police crime, not some random cop-on-the-loose violence, but a killing that acted, according to the sworn testimony of Sheriff's Department whistleblower Austreberto (Art) Gonzalez, like a gang initiation along the lines of the familiar mafia lines: "Kill someone to show us what you're made of."

This time, however, the gang was a subgroup within the LASD — a subset of sheriff's deputies — who called themselves the "Executioners." Membership in this "gang" (I think it's safe to call them that) even sport a gang tattoo, pictured above. According to this LA Times report, that "clique" that "dominates every aspect of life" at the Compton station.

Spectrum News obtained a copy of Gonzales' sworn testimony on this and other gangs within police departments and wrote this in a report of the Guardado shooting:

The deputy who shot and killed 18-year-old Andres Guardado outside a car shop in Gardena was a prospective member of a violent clique inside the Compton Sheriff’s station, according to the sworn testimony of a whistleblower. ...

More than a dozen deputies have matching tattoos and belong to a violent clique called the Executioners at the station, according to Deputy Art Gonzalez, who filed a whistleblower complaint regarding the Executioners in June.

“I now call them a gang because that’s what gangs do – they beat up other people,” Gonzalez said.

His sworn testimony obtained by Spectrum News is for a separate excessive force case filed against Los Angeles County. The deputies in the lawsuit are accused of “chasing ink” – slang for trying to impress the Executioners to join their group.

“There are parties after shootings. They call them ‘998 parties.’ Some people say it’s to celebrate the deputy is alive. Others say it’s to celebrate that they’re going to be ‘inking’ somebody.”

Gonzalez, testifying for nearly six hours under oath, said the existence of the clique was “common knowledge” at the station and that the gang’s so-called shot caller controlled the work schedule and their actions boosted arrest numbers.

It's pretty clear from the name how you get into a gang of sheriff's deputies called the "Executioners" — you need a killing to your name. Gonzales, from the LA Times report noted above:

“Nearly all the CPT [Compton] Deputies who have been involved in high-profile shootings and out-of-policy beatings at CPT in recent years have been ‘inked’ members of The Executioners,” the claim alleges. “‘Inking’ refers to the act of each newly made member of The Executioners receiving a matching tattoo indicating membership in the organization. …

Members become inked as ‘Executioners’ after executing members of the public, or otherwise committing acts of violence in furtherance of the gang.”

Spectrum News says Gonzalez is now on leave from the department and claims to be, correctly I assume, "in fear for his life." Since Gonzales has testified, two more deputies have come forward with similar information.

The Times report is also filled with allegations of other gangs within other policing departments, groups carrying names like the Vikings, Spartans, Regulators, Grim Reapers and Banditos. "Executioners" is a much more on-the-nose name, But Grim Reapers is close.

There's even this gruesome detail: "A top jail official had described exclusive gangs of deputies in Men’s Central Jail who would “earn their ink” by breaking inmates’ bones."

All this we permit in the name of "keeping the peace." The only peace that's kept is that of the safely "unmurderable" — the affluent, the connected, the well-intergrated into society's higher reaches.

The Tale Behind the Tale

There is clearly a larger story, of course, in the encouragement and celebration of violence within America's police and sheriff's departments, a story that our peace-promoting press doesn't report. It's better, in their minds, to "keep the peace" by keeping the violence one-sided — by not reporting the story in a way that would incite retaliation — than by reporting the whole truth, that there are death squads inside many of our policing agencies that are never punished or brought to heel.

But the tale behind the tale is being told by the few, but buried, reports like those from the LA Times and Spectrum News, and by the evidence of our eyes as we watch citizen videos of appalling acts of violence and murder by police — each one unpunished.

That evidence is clear — police, formed to deliver violence to the unwashed and unruly of the 19th century, deliver that same violence to the unwashed and unruly of ours. The worst among them live and love to do it. It's why they get up in the morning. The best among them ... they let the worst run free.

Will this be the year, in our Covid-destroyed economy, when civil unrest tips itself over the edge, no matter which candidate becomes the (violently contested) president in the end?

Are we seeing the start of a "rolling civil war" between our nation's out-of-control police and a citizenry broken by the rich and their absolute refusal to free us from a destruction we cannot ourselves escape?

Are we seeing the start of an era when the "safely murderable" — not just by police, but by the whole of society as it's currently led and run — will rise and say "no more"?

There are worse bets in the world.
 

You Know In Your Heart That the Day of Real Resistance Is Coming

You know in your hearts that only a #SixtiesStyleMovement will address this situation.

You know in your hearts that electeds are impotent or bought, and elections alone will never be enough.

You know in your hearts that the day of Real Resistance is coming.

How about now? https://t.co/eRo0V3Nnna

— Thomas Neuburger's errant politics (@Gaius_Publius) August 26, 2020

by Thomas Neuburger

A general strike counts as real resistance.
—Yours truly

The next horrific murders are upon us. In the bland reporting of the New York Times:

Arrest in Overnight Shooting During Unrest in Kenosha, Wis.

An Illinois resident was arrested in violence that occurred during a confrontation between demonstrators and a group of men armed with guns as protests continued over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

KENOSHA, Wis. — An Illinois resident has been arrested in connection to a shooting that left two people dead and another person wounded during a chaotic night of demonstrations over the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., officials said on Wednesday.

A court document from Lake County, Ill., shows that Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested in Antioch, Ill., on Wednesday morning after being charged with first degree intentional homicide in the fatal shooting that took place only hours earlier. (emphasis added)

The Times report portrays the event as "chaotic," and it's filled with details like this: "Tuesday evening was spent in a shifting, hourslong standoff between the police and protesters. Protesters assembled outside a newly erected metal barrier protecting the courthouse and threw water bottles, rocks and fireworks at the police."

As we'll see, the event was a lot less chaotic than it was reported to be. The order behind the chaos was cops appearing to work with the right-wing thugs to suppress the actual protesters.

Kyle Rittenhouse

This brings us to the shooter, Kyle Rittenhouse.

According to the Huffington Post report of the incident, "Police are investigating a group of men with guns who were lined up outside businesses a few blocks down the road from the courthouse, according to The New York Times. Ostensibly, the vigilantes were there to “protect” businesses from fires that had been set during previous nights of demonstrations. Though Rittenhouse’s connection to vigilante groups is unclear, he was quoted before the shooting saying that he considers himself a militiaman and was willing to use his rifle to “protect” people and property."

And Rittenhouse was very pro-cop. "A now-deleted Facebook page that appears to belong to Rittenhouse featured almost exclusively pro-police imagery and photos of the suspect carrying guns. At some point, he changed his profile image to a “Blue Lives Matter” sign and held a fundraiser for a police nonprofit called “Humanizing The Badge." 

Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha (source)

"We're going to push them down by you, 'cause you can deal with them, and then we're going to leave"

What's missing from these reports, both of which whitewash police actions, are details like these:

Cell phone video shows Kenosha Wisconsin police officers in an military vehicle telling armed White militia members they "appreciate them being there" and giving them bottled water; while in the background cops can be heard ordering protestors to disperse. pic.twitter.com/73SsfCUYWj

— Rebecca Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) August 26, 2020

and these (click through to the video to hear, "cops told us, we're going to push them down by you, 'cause you can deal with them"):

Here, a militia member says cops told them they would "push" the protestors towards them because they knew they could handle them. pic.twitter.com/S6lzmJfOJe

— Rebecca Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) August 26, 2020

and these:

Heard with my own ears on the scanner in Kenosha last night: "I can't tell if those are protestors or our guys" - says a cop as a group of 100 or so people was moving from one area to another. He was referring to the armed vigilantes "our guys" of course. #DefundThePolice

— The Bern Report (@TheBernReport) August 26, 2020

Even Rashida Tlaib understands what happened:

Look at him roaming freely while protestors are met with military war like equipment and tear gas. https://t.co/Va7wkf9X8l

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) August 26, 2020

There are more reports like these, which, of course, will either go viral, or go unreported by the media most people read and listen to.

Systemic Change by Non-Systemic Means

It's more than obvious by now that cops are siding with right-wing thugs, using them even, against whoever stands with the protesters. When will this end?

It will never end by ordinary, electoral means...

...until those elections are backed by the kind of organized, 1960s-style movement... 

Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, speaks to assembled students on December 7, 1964. (AP Photo / Robert W. Klein)

...that adds the critical mass of the people, chaotic and unruly, to the orderly exercise of power by elected officials who, frankly, with cops, also want the real left to lose.

The nation may not be to that point yet, but it's not far away. That's why big-media outlets like the New York Times want to paint these protests, all of them, as either "chaotic" or left-wing-violent only, and why they hide the state violence that incites and encourages those violent responses. A real left-wing movement — a 1960s-style revolt, a real rising of the people — is the stuff of nightmares for editors at the Times, and many of its readers as well.

Yet ... what will make a change that makes real change? Electing more Democrats? If they're the right ones, yes, that's needed but not enough.

Will the eighteenth protest after the thirtieth police murder of the hundredth or two-hundredth victim, black, brown or poor, of state-enforced austerity and racism — will that finally make a difference?

We've seen this movie. Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012. How are things different today? What has America done since that sad day to make lives better and safer for the victims of our police — and the victims of the economic system that creates police victims?

I'll say it again:

You know in your hearts that the day of Real Resistance is coming.

How about now? 

A strike counts as resistance; AOC understands that. A general strike counts as real resistance. Will it take a general strike to make real change? If so, when should that start?
  

Forty Percent of Police Families Experience Domestic Violence, Compared to 10% in the General Population

Police protecting the down-trodden from violence

by Thomas Neuburger

"If there's any job that domestic abuse should disqualify a person from holding, it's the one job that gives you a lethal weapon, trains you to stalk people without their noticing, and relies on your judgment and discretion to protect the abused from abusers."
—Conor Friedersdorf here, slightly paraphrased

Protecting the abused from abusers is an important role in any society — or at least a sane society. It's the role, in fact, of government itself, especially in an exploitive economic system like our own.

Capturing the organs of protection by the abusers themselves is therefore a high priority of the abusing class. This is why Reagan staffed his administration with people who hate the protective role government played, why he put anti-environmentalist James Watt in charge of Interior and the National Parks, and anti-regulationist Ann Gorsuch Burford in charge of the EPA. (Yes, she's related to that other Gorsuch.)

And apparently why we put cops, domestic abusers at a very high rate, in charge of protecting victims of abuse.

Cops being in charge of abuse — delivering it — is a commonplace these days. Putting cops in charge of protecting people from abuse is like putting pedophiles in charge of public safety at a grade school, or pedophile priests in charge of youth ministry (we had one of those in a parish I once lived in).

Pedophiles love those jobs, just as cops love the jobs they've been given. How better to commit violence than to be the only sanctioned dealers of state violence, to be licensed to kill in the name of "protecting" the abused? You even get to parade around as "heroes" for doing it.

Conor Friedorsdorf, in an Atlantic article entitled "Police Have a Much Bigger Domestic-Abuse Problem Than the NFL Does," quotes a heavily footnoted National Center for Women and Policing fact sheet: "Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24 percent, indicating that domestic violence is two to four times more common among police families than American families in general [emphasis added]." Friedersdorf's piece is well worth reading in full.

I have anecdotal evidence of this connection. Some years ago a friend of mine was a psychiatric counselor specializing in troubled families. The bulk of her clients were cop families, where the cop was the abuser. She attributes the problem to the pathological (my word) need for control by the cop — reinforced, no doubt, by a job in which "gaining and keeping control" was both an absolute requirement of every cop-involved situation, and by supervisors who encouraged or allowed the worse abuses of that requirement.

We don't hire pedophiles to guard grade school kids. Why do we hire violent cops to keep the peace? Is there something in us that's perpetuating this?