The Daily Zeitgeist - Tradition Of Violence: Origins Of Evil

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

This is the first episode of Tradition Of Violence podcast with Cerise Castle:  In the 1960's, a group of deputies at the East Los Angeles Sheriff's station formed a gang called the Little Red Devils. It was the beginning of a 50 year history of deputy gangs that has led to brutal beatings, illegal detentions, and even death.  A Tradition of Violence is hosted and executive produced by Cerise Castle. She's an award winning journalist who wrote the first ever history of deputy gangs for Knock LA, available at lasdgangs.com Music by Yelohill and Steelz. For breaking news and updates on deputy gangs, follow @lasdgangs on social media. To support Cerise’s reporting, and for exclusive bonus content, subscribe to the patreon.com/lasdgangs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have

changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti

and I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,

then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, Zeit gang? I know it's Monday and you usually expect an episode, but we're actually taking a little bit longer of a break just to refresh going into the end of the year. But we didn't want to leave you hanging. We have uploaded the first episode of Cerise Castle's fantastic podcast, A Tradition of Violence, which is dealing with the issue of deputy gangs in the L.A. Sheriff's Department. This was brought to national attention. It's something we've talked about on the podcast before. And I personally believe without the work

of Cerise and her colleagues, this would not have been an issue that would eventually have led to the ouster of the LA Sheriff, Alex Villanueva. So this is a fantastic podcast. It's really, really important information just to understand what's at stake and the idea of policing in our modern world. And if you like it, we highly encourage you to go and subscribe to the entire thing because it's fantastic and you don't want to miss it. Enjoy. Warning, this podcast contains explicit language and details acts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. There is a longstanding urban legend in Los Angeles County. The Sheriff's Department is the biggest gang on the streets.

I'm not talking about a metaphor for police violence. I'm talking about a real gang. Members have matching tattoos. They get together and have meetings about the different crimes that they will get up to. They get together and have meetings about the different crimes that they will get up to, stealing from people, brutally beating them, and even killing them. But this gang is even worse. They've got a badge, unlimited resources paid for by taxpayers, and the blessing of the courts and local government. And it's all true.

My name is Cerise Castle, and I'm a local LA reporter. I grew up out here, and I've been curious about deputy gangs since I was a kid. I heard stories about them from my older brother, teachers, and kids at school. It never made sense to me that the people with badges who warned me about dangerous neighborhood gangs and went after people I knew for just associating with them were actually part of their own powerful criminal organization. A few journalists before me, like Sabrina Steele, Anne-Marie O'Connor, Tina Daunt, and Maya Lau, uncovered stories confirming that these gangs existed, but they only scratched the surface. I thought about deputy gangs for years. I wanted to know who they were, what exactly they got up to, and that never went away. After George Floyd was murdered on May 25th,

2020, the world had a lot of questions about police. While I was covering a protest in response to his death, I was shot by a police officer with a rubber bullet. Even though I was wearing a press badge, carrying a bunch of equipment, and yelling out to the officers that I was a member of the media, I watched a cop turn, make eye contact with me, and shoot me. The impact made me fall into the street. and shoot me. The impact made me fall into the street. I was hurt pretty badly. I was bruised up and my ankle was in a cast for the next few months. The doctors told me to stay on the couch, but I didn't feel right just sitting still. So I decided to use the time to finally investigate. And what I found deeply disturbed me. This is a tradition of violence, a history of deputy gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's L.A. is not safe. L.A. is for the gangsters.

L.A. is not safe. L.A. is for the gangsters. L.A. is for the gangsters. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has at least 20 gangs amongst its members. Officials at various government agencies, from the local level here in L.A. County, all the way up to the California state and federal agencies, have known about the presence of these gangs for at least 30 years. And the first ever investigation was opened after Knock LA published my 15-part series, Laying It All Out. In October 2022, the LA County Sheriff's Department is led by Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Here's one of his campaign videos. Los Angeles is my home and my community. is led by Sheriff Alex Villanueva. Here's one of his campaign videos. Los Angeles is my home and my community. As your sheriff, I'll use my experience both with the community and with the department to mend the relationships with our immigrant communities, increase resources for training our deputies, make the sheriff's department more effective, and make sure that every person in Los Angeles County

can live their lives safely. I'm Alex Villanueva, and on Election Day, I hope I can count on your vote for Los Angeles County can live their life safely. I'm Alex Villanueva, and on Election Day, I hope I can count on your vote for Los Angeles County Sheriff to reform, rebuild, and restore our Sheriff's Department. Alex Villanueva is about 5'7", with heavily lidded blue eyes and shortly cropped gray hair. He's usually wearing a gray suit with an official green Sheriff's Department name tag. If there was such a thing as a deputy gang, understanding the full knowledge of what a gang means, we'd fire him, plain and simple. I've yet to find one. In fact, if someone can find one or a gang member who wears tan and green, please let me know. And they just don't exist. Villanueva was elected in 2018 after campaigning

as a progressive Democrat. But as the years have gone on, he's overseen the resurrection of banned deputy gang logos. He's rehired deputies fired for violating department policy, defied subpoenas. This stuff didn't start out of nowhere. Alex Villanueva wasn't made in a vacuum. All of this is a symptom of a larger problem with the culture of the LA Sheriff's Department. So what evidence we have says that they founded the LA Sheriff's Department in 1850? That's Jessica Pishko, a lawyer and writer. She researches sheriff accountability and is currently working on a book about sheriffs. And so I want to caveat all the discussions about history with this sort of broad brush,

which is that everything we have about the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and most other early police departments are written by law enforcement officers. So either it's information from media of the time, which I think people are now more aware of how law enforcement skews media, but it was the same then. So it's either media at the time, it's either law enforcement or law enforcement fans who go back and write these histories. And then we have some contemporary accounts, but most of those contemporary accounts are also written by law enforcement. You know, the vast majority of these histories are written by white Anglo settlers who moved to California to establish various forms of government. And one of those forms of government was the sheriff's department.

The sheriff's department started out as a group of white male landowners. department started out as a group of white male landowners. The first LA Sheriff's department had Sheriff Burrell and then two deputies. So we really didn't have a lot of people working for him. Now, again, as Southern California's population began to grow, law enforcement sort of grew with it. So the LAPD and the LA Sheriff's department would both grow immensely. I think when you think about changes to the LA Sheriff's Department over sort of a long term, the two things to think about, one, the fact that a lot of law enforcement activity was still being done by vigilantes and vigilance committees, which in a sense, they were like parts of the sheriff's department. Just this expanded posse system in which folks volunteered their time,

did some of the work, and then would go back to whatever their regular job was. Those vigilantes would often commit crimes against people of color in the area. In October of 1871, the largest mass lynching in American history was carried out here in LA against 19 Chinese residents. Deputies stepped into action after the crime happened. The sheriff's department itself was responsible for carrying out racist practices, like renting out indigenous people to landowners for labor. Despite all of this, many people wanted to be part of the department. So Peter Pitches was appointed basically by his predecessor to take over the department. And until he became sheriff, the department was really still very, like, quote

unquote, Wild West. The sheriffs are very proud of being Wild West. Peter Pitches was a former FBI agent. He joined the Sheriff's Department under Sheriff Eugene Biskailous and eventually became undersheriff, the second in command. When Peter Pitches took over, this was also at the same time as the sort of, quote, war on crime ramped up, right? So we had a whole, you have to sort of also look at it, this whole backdrop of all these things passed by LBJ and Nixon to give money to police departments, to buy military

equipment, to equip people with uniforms and riot gear and helicopters and all sorts of goodies that they would use. And of course, a lot of the impetus for this and how it would culminate was because in the 1960s there were so many you know there were lots of street actions so you know especially in Los Angeles that was a time in which many groups of people held various actions so civil rights actions and gay and lesbian actions and Latino actions. So there was this idea that the L.A. Sheriff's Department was also going to serve as kind of like riot control because this was a big problem. The department got bigger, the weapons got more powerful, all on the dime of L.A. County residents. Deputies became increasingly physically violent, sometimes ending in death.

deputies became increasingly physically violent, sometimes ending in death. A local journalist started to pay attention, Ruben Salazar, and it may have just gotten him killed. Ruben Salazar was born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and immigrated to El Paso as an infant. I wanted to get a better sense of who Ruben was, so I took a trip out to northeast LA to meet Philip Rodriguez. Philip makes documentaries, and he directed a film looking into Ruben's life and his untimely, mysterious death. about things and believe that whiteness and affiliation with whiteness and imitation of whiteness was was the proper way to go about things. It would lend what would make your life easier certainly and was maybe a more respectable way to live and become an American. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that millions of people

who previously identified themselves as Hispanic changed their racial identity to white. Some researchers are concerned that some people treat whiteness as the ideal and social baseline of American life. His mother was strongly discouraged any affiliation of Ruben from kind of ruffians or maybe even dark-skinned indigenous kind of Mexicans and suggested and had him aspire to again being an assimilated mainstream get-along American boy. Ruben, a medium-billed guy with dark hair,

went to high school at El Paso High, started college at the University of Texas at El Paso, which was then called Texas Western College. He started writing for his campus newspaper, The Prospector, but left school after his sophomore year to work with his father. After two years, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1952, then came home to Texas. He returned to school and the prospector as the managing editor and landed a job at the El Paso Herald Post. For one of his first assignments, he pretended to be drunk and

was arrested in order to report on jail conditions. Because he's good at his job and because he's passionate, he ends up at the biggest newspaper on the West Coast at the time, Los Angeles Times, and becomes a reporter and becomes a columnist, and eventually ends up as as news director of the fled pie that usually don't meet up, don't have every little in common, even to this day. The Spanish language Latino and the Los Angeles time reading non-Latino are living in two different realities. At some point, amidst this kind of ideological shift that occurs in his mid-career, he starts to move away from the assimilated idea of himself that he had embraced and take to the

ideas that the young people had been pushing, exposing of Chicano nationalism. And in doing that, becomes kind of intimate and becomes ultimately the chronicler of the Chicano revolution, rebellion that occurs in that period. What was his relationship with police like? I think that the relationship with cops was a rather fluid one.

And I think as he became more critical, or as he became more fearless, and as his power grew, I think he received pushback from law enforcement. Rubin developed a wariness, At the very least about cops And how cops Interpret reality And how Complicit the press Would tend to be with cops

Rubin's friends Say that attitude made him a target For police violence Here's Phil Montez, a friend of Rubin's And a member of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights. Rubin said, I have a problem with the LAPD. I said, what's the problem? He says, well, they came to see me and they said that Mexicans aren't ready for my kind of reporting and they want me to stop. Bill Drummond, a former Los Angeles Times reporter. He had a right to be alarmed.

And that's part of the price you pay. You know, when you stick your head out of the foxhole, there's somebody that's going to take a shot at you. Verbally, certainly. Maybe they might even do it for real. Deputies started to create their own systems of policing and rewarded other deputies who went along with those violent tactics. I'm Roger Clark. I'm a retired LA County Sheriff. I did 27 and a half

years of service, active service on the department. I came on during the Peter J. Pitchess era. I came on after they completed my background, December of 66. Is there a culture of violence inside the Sheriff's Department? Well, these guys are violent. I mean, they'll kill you. Roger started out in the county jail in downtown LA. So my first night, I had reported in. They gave me my keys and my badge. I put on my uniform, appeared at main control. Here's your badge, Clark. And I reported to a module. Roger was there as relief for the deputies already working on that floor. They can't leave and go to chow unless they have somebody watching these guys. They're asleep.

We did count and we did breakfast, fed them and broke them out for court. The deputy in charge of the module or unit told Roger to follow his lead. So he says, go in there, go sit down, watch us, watch me. My dad's a captain on the department. He just, you know, I was low life, you know, a new guy. And they treated me as such. I didn't care. You know, I was happy as a clam. So this goes on for about two days, and I see these guys show up, about four of them, and Clark watched the module, we'll be back later. And they disappear, and they come back. This happened again and again.

So about third night in, they say, come with us. So I go to a day room, and they've got two guys braced against the wall, and they just beat the poo out of them. And we're walking back. I just stood there. I was stunned. But I was convinced of two things at that point. The sergeant and the lieutenant absolutely knew this was going on

and that this was the way they run the jail. I mean, just assumed it. Of course, this is the way they run the jail. I mean, just assumed it. Of course, this is the way they run the jail. Roger was disgusted. So I go back and they say, what do you think? I said, you know, I guess this is my last day here. Why? Because I can't do this.

You know, I'm talking from this is the way you guys run this place. I can't do it. I won't do it. And there's a mumble, mumble. Go home. Tell the wife. They're going to call me in the lieutenant's office tonight when I report for duty. Tell me they can't use me and thank me very much. And I'm going back to the phone company.

And, you know, that was it. So I show up. They give me my badge. No one says a word. Not a word. But word eventually got out. January 28th, I report to the Academy. Across the front page of the LA Times are all 11 of these guys.

The entire shift, almost. They've all been arrested and fired for cruelty to inmates. So I'm sitting at the academy in my desk, waiting for the tap on my shoulder. Obviously, they're going to come and talk to me because I was on the shift. Never said it, never touched me. And the only conclusion is when they ask who does this, Clark would not do it.

And they never came to me. From then on, regardless of rank, regardless of where I was or what I was doing, never allowed it. Never. And I should have at that point said, you're not going to do this. I'm here. Got to do it through me because you're not going to do it while I'm here. How did that incident affect you and your outlook? Well, it was profound because the fact that they did not try to recruit me or pressure me

because I was pretty blunt. I was 25 years old. I wasn't a babe in the woods like a lot of these guys. So, I mean, it was clear. I mean, I didn't leave any wiggle room there. I'm not going to do this. But I always assumed it was an anomaly. Were those officers part of a deputy gang? They were the beginnings. They didn't tattoo, at least, well, I don't know if they had a tattoo or not. When I went to the academy, I was only aware of one type of a problem, and that was in East LA, a tattooed group called the Little Red Devils. And they made a big deal of it in the academy to tell me and everybody else. And the academy was rigorous in those days. I mean, we started with 70, we ended with 20. That in East LA, there's a problem. The sheriff does not sanction it,

does not allow it, is critical of it. And they are called the Red Devils. And if you're smart, you'll not be part of it. I mean, I knew that right from the time I was in the academy. The Red Devils appeared to be the first ever gang inside the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. On August 29, 1970, the deputy gang took their tactics to the streets of East Los Angeles in an incident that would change the relationship between L.A. residents and the department forever,

the Chicano moratorium. And Ruben Salazar was there watching. More after the break. By the mid-1970s, the Vietnam War had been raging for several years. Wealthy Americans could afford to not think about it, but the draft was responsible for the decimation of the population of young men in communities of color. A study from Cal State LA found that Latinos made up 20% of U.S. troops killed in Vietnam. Chicanos in Los Angeles were one community seeing an astronomical loss.

Dr. David Sanchez is a civil rights activist and founding member of the Brown Berets, a pro-Chicano political organization. The Brown Berets organized around many issues. One issue was the war in Vietnam. We wanted to bring an end to the war in Vietnam, and we did bring an end to the war in Vietnam. We wanted to bring an end to the war in Vietnam, and we did. We did bring an end to the war in Vietnam by these demonstrations. But also, because of police brutality, we were organizing, demonstrating against the police brutality in East Los Angeles and other places. Dr. Sanchez was one of the organizers of the Chicano Moratorium,

a march through East LA calling for an end to the war. We were trying to organize a peaceful march, a peaceful rally. We were trying to organize a peaceful demonstration. About 22,000 people marched through East L.A. that day. About 7,000 people stayed in Belvedere Park to listen to speakers. Some witnesses say around this time, people left a liquor store without paying for their stuff. The sheriff's deputies nearby responded and began making their way into the park. Then the scene exploded.

Most people tried to get away. Some fought back. Dr. Sanchez was nearby watching. And then all of a sudden the gangs got into a fight with the sheriff. What happened was at the park where we had our rally, it resulted in about 2,000 people going out in the middle of the park and fighting with 500 policemen hand-to-hand combat, fist-to-fist. And the police were hitting everybody with batons, and people were throwing rocks and stones,

and it was just a big, big physical fight. The deputies brought in reinforcements from around the county into the East L.A. area. Suddenly, the community was under occupation. Deputies made their way through the streets, beating people. Fires erupted from buildings. People were shot down in the street. Then after they finally broke up the fight in the middle of the park,

it went into the streets and turned into riots. And there was like about three riots going on at one time. And I was Ruben Salazar facing one of the riots. Ruben was at the Chicano moratorium with his KMX colleague, Guillermo Restrepo. It was getting very dangerous. Ruben and I started walking down Nueri Boulevard. We started on the left-hand side of the street going down, and he suddenly says, let's go back to the other side.

He did it twice. He says, more than once, somebody is following us. Ruben and Guillermo ducked into a bar called the Silver Dollar to try to get away from the melee outside. They pulled up some bar stools and ordered beer. Outside, witnesses report seeing a man in a red vest talking to sheriff's deputies nearby. The man has never been publicly identified. Philip Rodriguez interviewed the man for his documentary on Ruben Salazar. Neighborhood dude, I think he was a former CB, World War II. He had some patriotic notions in the most kind of underdeveloped way.

And a cop ass kisser. I think he had some alcohol issues, abuse, allegations, a bit of a record. And he was, you know know like a lot of scoundrels trying to be helpful to to to the guys with the guns and misinformed them about it suggests that there were three men with rifles over their shoulder, kind of marched militantly into the Silver Dollar Bar. And the cops followed up on that allegation and then did what they did. Why would you say something like that?

People tell kinds of stories to get attention, to feel important, to rectify and wash away their own sins, their own personal shame. Why do people grandstand? Maybe he was mad. Maybe he had drunk too much. Maybe, I can't, I can't know why he made that allegation, but it was completely false. Sergeant Tom Wilson was standing nearby the Silver Dollar when a deputy ran up to him and said three men had just entered the bar with guns. Wilson and a group of deputies started to make their way towards it as a crowd of protesters and journalists gathered to watch. crowd of protesters and journalists gathered to watch. Wilson was armed with a projectile gun, loaded with a federal flight right projectile capable of punching through a wall,

and explicitly labeled not to be used against crowds. Witnesses did not hear a warning before Wilson fired. The canister rocketed into the bar, spreading smoke everywhere. People poured out of the back entrance. Guillermo made it outside and looked around for Ruben. He never came out. He had been hit in the head with the canister and was lying dead on the bar floor. L.A.'s Chicano community

was devastated by Ruben's death. The line for his wake was so long, it stretched throughout the streets of East L.A. People wanted to know why he had been killed. The Los Angeles County coroner launched an inquest into the shooting. An inquest is a fact-finding court procedure that looks and sounds a lot like a trial, but the verdict is for the manner of death, natural, accidental, suicide, or murder. There might be a criminal prosecution, but it isn't guaranteed. Dozens of people were called to testify, including Tom Wilson, the sergeant who killed Reuben. I testified in the morning. A man jumped up and started screaming.

And he had pointed directly at me like that. Wilson almost shot another unarmed man with the same projectile gun right there at the inquest. Looked like a.45. I had the tear gas gun, and I loaded the weapon because I figured if he was going to shoot me, I was going to get him at least once, you know. Somebody hit him and turned him sideways, and I could tell that he had a magazine rolled up instead of a gun. That's how quick I usually react to things. Wilson testified that he did not know

and was not concerned about the type of projectile he fired into the bar. The jury eventually returned with a split verdict between murder and accidental. No charges were ever filed against Wilson. Salazar's family eventually settled a legal claim against LA County for $700,000, about $5.3 million today, which was paid for by taxpayers. Wilson and the Sheriff's Department were off the hook. Sheriff Pitches said there

was absolutely no misconduct on the part of deputies involved or the procedures they followed. Deputies working at the East Los Angeles station appeared to take pride in the terror they inflicted on the community during the Chicano moratorium. They created the so-called Fort Apache logo to commemorate that day. And you can see it on pins, hats, and other swag deputies rock in the streets of East LA today. The logo is named after a 1948 John Ford Western centered on a remote U.S. Cavalry outpost

surrounded by enemies, whom the white officers regard as dangerous savages. And that is said to be the attitude harbored by many deputies working at the East Los Angeles station. The image shows a 1970s-style police riot helmet over a boot. It sits inside a circle of models that say, Siempre una patada en los pantalones, which translates to always a kick in the ass. The other motto, low profile, is a tongue-in-cheek reference

to Sheriff Pichis' instructions to the deputies at the Chicano moratorium. The logo was banned by Sheriff Jim McDonald in 2016 because he found it to be disrespectful to the East L.A. community. Current Sheriff Alex Villanueva, revived the logo shortly after he took office in 2018, but declined to comment on why. At one point, he kept a model of the logo in his office. He worked at the East Los Angeles station earlier in his career,

and even met his wife there. The Little Red Devils and the Fort Apache logo were cemented into LASD lore. Deputies with tattoos were celebrated by the department and went on to choice positions. Other stations wanted to form their own gangs, too. Here's retired Lieutenant Roger Clark. I did not consider that the department was going through this metamorphosis and that it was spreading so wildly.

But once it took off, every station wanted to do one-upsmanship. And that's it. We're tougher than you guys. That's just one-upsmanship. And that's it. We're tougher than you guys. That's just god-awful. Roger Clark was right. And a lot of those deputies got away with it. I know a lot of cops that have gotten away with

out-and-out murder that are in their retirement right now, drawing their retirement checks and living in Idaho and Arizona and living the life. That's David Lin. He's an intriguing guy with a resume out of a superhero movie. He's a former Marine tank commander who served in the Vietnam War. He worked for the United Nations as a homicide investigator looking into death squad murders. He went undercover in apartheid South Africa to document horrific working and living conditions of Black South Africans.

He was in Iraq during the first U.S. invasion in March of 2003. He worked in UNICEF's refugee camps in Darfur. I met up with David in Baja, California, Mexico, where he had been living for the past few years. The day before we met was actually his last day there. He was moving to Ukraine to volunteer with humanitarian efforts against the Russian invasion. He says that no matter where he goes, there is brutal state violence against citizens. It was all the same thing. Whether you go to Iraq or South Africa, I had it right here in my hometown in Los Angeles, South Central. I don't need to travel the world to see this kind of stuff

undocumented. It's right here in my home state. So I became a private investigator and made a career out of documenting police misconduct, police abuse cases, and doing criminal defense as well. In the 1980s, David was living in LA and working for an organization of attorneys called the Police Misconduct Lawyers Referral Service, or PMLRS. It's no longer around today, but the group was behind several big civil rights cases in the 1980s and 90s. Carol Watson was one of the lawyers there. At the time, PMLRS was run by a civil rights attorney named Humanus. Humanus was an amazing individual.

He basically trained a cadre of civil rights lawyers. a cadre of civil rights lawyers. He took on cases that were impossible and just kept at it and at it. He worked for the ACLU for a while. He took a case to the Supreme Court. He has numerous cases that he won on appeal that are now still precedent and important cases in civil rights litigation. Back in the 1980s, it was really hard to find someone to represent police misconduct cases. Juries in those days didn't believe that the police did anything wrong. in those days, didn't believe that the police did anything wrong. The police are the most adept perjurers that exist. They come into court and they look like Boy Scouts and they look you right in the eye and lie to you.

I think there is a huge amount of corruption, not in the form of bribe-taking, but a culture of violence and thuggery. The lack of oversight by the sheriff for generations has been drastic to the community. I think there is a culture of violence and the gang problem, the deputy gang problem is a big part of it. After Carroll started working with Hugh, PMLRS started to grow. More people began to call the office looking for help and more attorneys wanted to lend a hand. Carroll hired an executive director for the organization, David Lynn.

And when I took the job, it was just in a box. There was no staffing. It was just a box of files and names of attorneys. And that was it. I started separating it by department and by type of complaint and to see which departments had the biggest problems. And of course, it was the sheriff's department. Carol got a huge tip about the sheriff's department from the inside. There was an insider in the county who took Hugh and me to lunch and told us that he had information about the Vikings and that he had seen their tattoo

and he told us where it was. And that was the first we heard about the Vikings. What's going through your head while you're sitting at this lunch hearing this? Pretty shocked. I had never heard this before. Shocked in one way that they would be as organized as affiliating themselves with a gang, but not surprised that the person who was the source for our source was a violent person and involved with other violent people.

Carol didn't know it yet, but she and the team at PMLRS were about to begin a years-long fight against the gang. At that point, no one knew about them except for other people inside of the sheriff's department. Who were the Vikings? They were primarily, I'd say, 95% white. They were, a lot of them veterans, a lot of them Vietnam veterans, a lot of them Marines. A few token minority deputies, so nobody could say that they were a racist gang. How did someone become a member of the Vikings?

To prove yourself, you've got to kill somebody. And you've got to kill somebody of your own race if you're a minority. In 1988, a Viking of color may have killed someone to prove themselves worthy of a tattoo. In the early morning of March 8th, before sunrise, 21-year-old Hongpyo Lee was driving his white Audi through the Compton area. Hongpyo was about to start auto mechanic classes at an LA area trade school and was balancing that with a 50 to 60 hour work week at his parents' liquor store in Anaheim. Some LA Sheriff's deputies claim that they saw Hong Pyo run a stop sign as he drove. They got behind him and started to pursue his car.

Hong Pyo stayed on surface streets and never got above 45 miles per hour. Yeah, it was a slow pursuit. They said he, like, I can't remember, California stop or something, you know, didn't come to a police, had something petty. And he didn't pull over because he had a hash pipe in the car, so he was scared to death. So he just kept driving, didn't know what to do. Two officers from the Long Beach Police Department joined in the pursuit. Hung Pyo came to a stop in a rail yard in Long Beach. And he wound up in a dead-end industrial area, turned in, and it was another dead end. He was trapped. So four deputy cars and a Long Beach PD car, and they all lined up like a firing squad, car and they all lined up like a firing squad and two were vikings deputies robert pepini daniel mcleod brian lee and sergeant paul tanaka who would eventually become number two in the

department stopped their patrol vehicles about 15 feet behind hongyo's car. Chapman claims to have approached and ordered him to surrender. Then, out of nowhere, all the deputies opened fire. Hong Pyo was hit nine times in the back. He only shot once, which means he knew it was wrong, but he wanted to be part of it, so he shot once. But they claimed that he was backing up into them so they opened up on him to protect themselves but we proved where his car wound up it wound up forward he wasn't backing up he was going forward away from and uh nine to the back yeah so you saw that it just uh as a long beach training officer who witnessed it and said to his partner, his trainee, we just witnessed an execution. And that's what it was. So we sued them, like we always do, and they settled, like they always do.

Settlements are approved by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors and historically come out of the county's general fund. And Tanaka got promoted like the sheriff's department always does. It's just business as usual. And this kid who was guilty of having a hash pipe in his car paid the ultimate price for it. At the hands of the Vikings. Two Vikings and then Tanaka became one, so technically three Vikings involved.

After Hong Pyo's death, the LA County District Attorney, Ira Reiner, decided the deputies acted in self-defense. Two years later, in April of 1990, Lee's family accepted a $999,999 settlement. That didn't come from the Sheriff's department, though. That was paid for by LA County taxpayers. Lee's father, Sung-Kyu Lee, said at a press conference, I hope now my son's name has been cleared. Now it's time to take care of the rest of the family. More after the break. White supremacist displays were becoming more frequent inside of the LA County Sheriff's Department. Several operated inside of the jails. In 1990, a criminal defense attorney and member

of the PMLRS decided to take them on, with the help of David Lynn. Well, George Denny, God bless him. Incredible, incredible human being and lawyer, former DA. You'd never know it once you met him and worked with him. Yeah, he was one of those guys. But so he knew all the ins and outs. He knew how everything works. He was good. By 1990, George had uncovered Deputy's burning crosses in the style of the Ku Klux Klan inside of the downtown men's central jail. Later, he was contacted by the family of a young man who had been horribly beaten by deputies gangbanging for the Wayside Whiteys gang. On December 2nd, 1989, 21-year-old Clyde L. Crawford was incarcerated at the Wayside Honor Rancho,

or the Pitch's Detention Center, as it's known today. He had a pretty idyllic childhood. His parents were preachers who raised him and his siblings in West Covina, a fast-growing suburb in the 1970s. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a police officer. He took criminal justice classes in college, even though his uncle, who was a policeman, told him that it was not a good working environment for Black men. After he was pulled over by a cop as a teenager, his relationship with the police shifted and started off 30 years worth of negative interactions with the police. This incident at the Honor Ranch, though, would change his life forever. I spoke to Clydell about the incident a few months ago in a local park.

They put me in a place back then, it was called the Honor Ranch. He put me in a place back then, it was called the Honor Ranch. And you could, it was a place where lower custody inmates would be. He got into an argument with another inmate, who was white. The man didn't pay Clyde for some cigarettes he sold him. Then, a fight started. So he stands up and swings. And I got the better of him. I hit him twice and he fell.

So when he fell, he was shaking and he was bouncing around and I run over to him because I didn't mean to hurt the guy that bad. So I'm trying to get him stable, you know. And when that happened, an officer passed by. And the officer sees everyone around him and he looked and he looked and he hits the button he says everyone on your box on your box so they finally the guy comes to and we're all sitting at our box and so now they're investigating they bring about four officers and they're all walking around

talking to everyone so when I came up to my bunk, they said, yeah, you, stand up, put your hands behind your back. So someone had told them it was me, right? So I thought, so I put my hands behind my back, he handcuffs me. Clyde was escorted by an officer, not unusual in county jail, but something was off. He tells me to walk to the back door. And I walked to the back door, and I thought maybe I was going. That's the wrong way to walk, first of all. I never did. You know, I'm nervous about that one from the very beginning, because the way to wherever you're going to see the sergeant,

the whole wherever you're going, it's out the front door. The back door is, you know, there's nowhere, really no way to get to. The places, they still haven't taken me. So he kind of like pushes me against the wall. And I remember he pushes me and my head hits. And he says, I'm going to teach you about beating up some white guys. Then he was brutally beaten. I remember he takes me and he hits my face against the window.

And I'm like, oh, man, what in the world is going on? And he takes the handcuffs. And I remember he took the handcuffs and he grabbed my arm and he pushed it up as high as he can push it. And I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing now? I remember two more officers come and they run around the car and they're white officers

and they they don't say nothing they just pull their flashlights out and one hit me in the shoulder first I remember and the other one hit me in the back of the leg and I knew I was going down because the other one was swinging at the back of the leg and I knew I was going down

because the other one swinging at me and hit me. I'll fall and while I'm like on the ground, I see a couple more running around the corner and they had their minds made up. They had no idea what happened. They didn't care and I remember hearing wayside whiteys and I didn't understand what that meant at that time and he understand who he must not know about the wayside whiteys there was little things they were saying and they said it more than a dozen times and I was like there's a black guy standing there and there was probably three more came so there's a total of I think eight and the black guy but

the black guy he didn't jump in there was another white guy he didn't do nothing and they were just standing there I looked at the black guy and asked him to help me the black. And he shook his head. You know, kind of like shrugged his shoulders. And they just took me. And if you've seen Rodney King's video, I think it was way worse. I mean, I've never seen it. I just said they broke my jaw, injured my ribs, really messed up all the scars on my face.

The officers continued to humiliate and punish Clyde. I'm yelling and screaming for my life. And I could see inmates out in the windows. And some of the inmates were yelling, let them go, but they couldn't do too much. Stop. And they're yelling, trying to help the best way they can. They couldn't do much.

So I remember feeling my leg snap. I was really bleeding bad. But they tell me to stand up. I still had the handcuffs on, and they told me to hop up this hill. So I stood up and I fell down. I'm like, something's wrong. He said, you better get up.

I'm like, my leg's broke. He said, I don't care. Hop. So I'm like, huh? And he hits me again. So I'm hopping up the hill on one leg, and I can't make it. I think maybe 10 hops.

And I'm like, I can't do it. And I fall, you know, on the side. And I'm telling him, I can't do this, man. I thought they were going to kill me. I thought that was my last day on earth. Once inside a treatment area, the officers left Clyde laying in a gurney underneath a row of payphones. He took a chance, reached up, and called his parents.

He told them where he was, and they came the following morning. The family hired attorney George V. Denny III and investigator David Lynn. Clyde's case never made it to trial. That's usually what happens with deputy gang cases. The lawyers like settlement because they don't have to go to trial and it's kind of easy money.

They throw a million dollars at you and the clients are thinking and this happens a lot, that lawyers sometimes talk the clients into taking a settlement when they don't want to. And it's just all part of the game that's played with these lawsuits. And the reason why on the sheriff's side, the county side, why they settled them is because they do not want to go to trial they do not want these deputies sworn in on the witness stand in front of juries and the press

and everybody else lying or exposing what they did to avoid all of that and get all this on the record and all this evidence in on the record they set them and it just goes away

and everybody goes away and the next day there's another one. There's another million-dollar, two-million-dollar, $13 million settlement. And the supervisors keep signing the checks, and the deputies keep doing their thing, and I don't know what other word to use except that it's institutionalized. Clyde settled for just $60,000 and signed an affidavit saying he wouldn't pursue any action on residual injuries. He says he settled because his dad was gravely ill with colon cancer, and with no insurance, the family would lose their home.

and with no insurance, the family would lose their home. He never considered that over 30 years later, he'd still suffer from splitting headaches and a never-ending aching pain in his leg, which makes it incredibly difficult to find work. He didn't know how long this experience would reverberate inside of him. I made mistakes, but I think we all did. And to be so cruel to people, you know, they don't know what they do with each other inside.

And they wonder why people rebel against them and don't like them. They don't like us. You know, it's like, why take the bad if you're going to do something wrong with it? Make room for those who want to do the right thing, you know. And it's so corrupt. And it's so, everything's hidden and covered up so much.

Till, you know, if they would have killed me, they wouldn't even care. You know, because they didn't care. It was a joke to them. All the injuries, I have injuries that's following me today. 30 years later, I'm still going through pain for nothing. But the deputy gangs were just getting started. Next week... Robert takes his leg, rolls up his... points to the tattoo. So that was the one and only time I thought I was going to throw up in my entire career. The rise of the Linwood Vikings.

you've been listening to a tradition of violence the history of deputy gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Hosted and executive produced by Cerise Castle, music by Yellow Hill and Steeles. For breaking news and updates on deputy gangs, follow at LASDGangs on social media. To support Cerise's reporting and her exclusive bonus content, subscribe to the LASDGangs Patreon. Subscribe to the LASD Gang's Patreon. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.