Later, Gonzalez was herself put in charge of a trainee. Pretending to be flattered, she demurred. Gonzalez knew that the early shift, a crew of wee-hours hunters who roamed the streets looking for troublemakers, was dominated by Banditos. Gonzalez managed to evade the Banditos again, when Valdez and another alleged member, Manny Navarro, summoned her to meet at a doughnut shop and asked her to join them on the early shift. The department had fired him but, after he was found not guilty, brought him back on. Years earlier, Munoz had been arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon-accused of pointing a gun at his wife, while kneeling on the hood of the car she was in. She said he warned her about another training officer, an alleged Bandito named Rafael Munoz. indicated that she wasn’t necessarily safe from harassment. The county settled for $1.5 million.īecause Gonzalez was older-in her thirties, with kids-she was known affectionately around the station as Mama G. When she refused, her suit alleged, the Banditos began a campaign of physical intimidation, and after she complained they left a dead rat by her car. She was told that female deputies performed oral sex on Banditos and was cautioned to “submit” if she wanted to complete her training. (Valdez could not be reached for comment.) She filed a lawsuit in 2014, claiming that his cronies had subjected her to relentless sexual harassment and innuendo. While Gonzalez was at the station, a woman named Guadalupe Lopez was training under Eric Valdez, an alleged Bandito known as the Godfather of East L.A. “I talked to a female who got hit across the head during training. “I was never forced to do any type of sexual activity to get off training, but you would hear that rumor,” she said. Gonzalez’s connection to a Bandito offered a measure of protection. Don’t do it.’ If I’d say certain names, ‘O.K., yeah.’ You learn real quick that the tail wags the dog at the station.” “He’d say, ‘Who asked you?’ I would tell him the name and he’d say, ‘O.K., no. “When somebody would ask me to do something- anything, a menial task or favor-I would first have to run it by my T.O.,” Gonzalez said. (Lopez did not respond to requests for comment.) As her T.O.-her “daddy,” in station lingo-he was meant to scrutinize her every decision, to make sure that she internalized protocols. Gonzalez was assigned a training officer, Noel Lopez, who went by “Crook” and who, she understood, was a Bandito. Station said, “If you get in a shooting, that’s a definite brownie point” with the Banditos. In a recent exposé on CBS News, anonymous whistle-blowers at East L.A. (Deputy-gang tattoos are typically on the leg or the ankle.) Families of those killed by deputies allege that the deputies were “chasing ink”-trying to earn a tattoo. ![]() The mark of a Bandito is a secret numbered tattoo: a skeleton wearing a thick mustache, a bandolier, and a sombrero, and brandishing a smoking gun. so unique is it’s embedded within the Hispanic machismo culture and the Hispanic street gangs.” Gonzalez said that they perpetuated “the code of silence, the culture of the ghetto gunslinger.” She added, “What makes East L.A. On patrol, they operated in the gray areas of law enforcement. deputies and the A.C.L.U., the Banditos gang “controls the East Los Angeles station like inmates running a prison yard.” Leaders, known as “shot-callers,” determined deputies’ hours, promotions, even days off. Members have been accused of serious breaches of department policy and violations of constitutional rights, of terrorizing the public and harassing their fellow-deputies, and of retaliating against whistle-blowers.Īccording to a lawsuit filed by eight East L.A. At East L.A., Gonzalez discovered, there was a shadow government: a secretive group of sheriff’s deputies known as the Banditos.ĭeputy gangs, or “subgroups,” with names like the Grim Reapers, the Regulators, and the Vikings, have plagued the sheriff’s department for fifty years. You’ll find out who’s really in charge.” Officially, stations are run by captains, with the help of an operations staff. But a detective told her, “Just pay attention.
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