Tom Carter<\/p>\n
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca pled guilty on Wednesday to allegations that he lied during a federal investigation into the abuse of inmates in the massive Los Angeles jail system. Under the plea agreement he may be sentenced to no more than six months in custody.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Sheriff\u2019s Department (LASD) is the largest in a country. Bloated with \u201cwar on terror\u201d funding, it enjoys a $2.5 billion budget and employs 18,000 officers and other personnel. The Los Angeles jail system has a reputation for being one of most brutal and overcrowded in the country.<\/p>\n
The ongoing federal investigation into conditions in the jails reveals levels of corruption and gangsterism that would make an old-fashioned mafia don blush. While the media promotes the police as \u201cAmerica\u2019s finest,\u201d in reality the country\u2019s law enforcement agencies function essentially as organized criminal enterprises, where murder, mayhem and perjury are standard operating procedure.<\/p>\n
The federal investigation has its origins in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1975, which documented inhuman conditions in the jails and resulted in closer federal oversight. In September 2011, the ACLU submitted 70 sworn declarations in court, which described an ongoing \u201creign of terror,\u201d with guards beating, torturing and humiliating inmates with impunity.<\/p>\n
Subsequently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recruited a prisoner to be a confidential informant. This informant was able to bribe a prison guard with $1,500 to obtain a cell phone, which he used to provide information to the FBI. When prison guards discovered the cellphone, they caused the inmate to \u201cdisappear\u201d in order to prevent the FBI from meeting with him. A sordid game of hide-and-seek followed, during which the LASD secretly moved the inmate from place to place while the FBI tried to locate him.<\/p>\n
In one of the most outrageous moments of the investigation, LASD deputies turned up at the home of an FBI agent and tried to intimidate and threaten her. The FBI responded by arresting the deputies.<\/p>\n
Baca\u2019s guilty plea \u201cdemonstrates that the illegal behavior in the Sheriff\u2019s Department went to the very top of this organization,\u201d federal prosecutor Eileen Decker said. \u201cMore importantly, it illustrates that those who foster and then try to hide a corrupt culture will be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring this interview, Sheriff Baca lied,\u201d Decker continued. \u201cHe lied when he stated that he did not know that members of the Sheriff\u2019s Department had approached an FBI agent outside her home, and he lied when he stated he was unaware of efforts within the Sheriff\u2019s Department to keep the FBI informant away from the FBI.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the final analysis, the prosecution of Baca likely had more to do with a turf war between the FBI and the LASD than the decades of LASD corruption and brutality. However, the episode provides a rare glimpse into the real conditions inside American law enforcement agencies, behind the puffed-up image promoted by Hollywood television dramas and the establishment media.<\/p>\n
Hailed as a \u201creformer\u201d and champion of progressive \u201ccommunity policing,\u201d Baca held the position of sheriff from 1998 to 2014. In 2013, he was named \u201cSheriff of the Year\u201d by the National Sheriffs\u2019 Association, which represents about 2,700 sheriffs\u2019 departments throughout the country.<\/p>\n
In naming Baca \u201cSheriff of the Year,\u201d Fred Wilson, the director of operations for the National Association of Sheriffs, said the award \u201clooks at what the sheriff has done in their community but also what the sheriff has done to advance the office of sheriff nationally. Sheriff Baca certainly embodies that. He is an exemplary sheriff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baca was elected in 1998 when his opponent, the incumbent Sheriff Sherman Block, died shortly before the election. Under Block\u2019s administration, violent criminal gangs flourished within the Los Angeles Sheriff\u2019s Department, including, in perhaps the most infamous case, the \u201cLynwood Vikings,\u201d which a federal district judge labeled a \u201cneo-Nazi, white-supremacist gang.\u201d Baca failed to curtail the gangs, and even promoted Paul Tanaka, who founded the Vikings as a watch lieutenant in Lynwood, to the rank of Undersheriff.<\/p>\n
Tanaka is presently under federal indictment, and Baca may be called as a witness to testify against his former second in command.<\/p>\n
New deputy gangs emerged during Baca\u2019s tenure, including the Jump Out Boys, exposed in 2012 as a secret society of deputy sheriffs who awarded themselves morbid tattoos to \u201ccelebrate\u201d shooting civilians.<\/p>\n
A recruiting pamphlet for the Jump Out Boys reads, \u201cWe are alpha dogs who think and act like the wolf, but never become the wolf,\u201d and \u201cWe are not afraid to get our hands dirty without any disgrace, dishonor or hesitation … sometimes (members) need to do the things they don\u2019t want to in order to get where they want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frederick Engels described the police as belonging to the category of \u201cspecial bodies of armed men\u201d that constitute the coercive power of the state, the essential function of which are to uphold the capitalist system by force. \u201cThis public power exists in every state,\u201d Engels explained; \u201cit consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds.\u201d The essential function of the police in capitalist society remains the same in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
As social tensions rise, the police in American cities\u2014armed to the teeth, militarized, dehumanized, and steeped in a thuggish culture that celebrates brutality\u2014are poised to unleash violence against the population at the slightest provocation. This is why the capitalist political establishment, behind public displays of handwringing, is unwilling and unable to undertake any substantial measures to stem the tide of police violence.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County kill an average of one person per week. A 2014 report by the Los Angeles Youth Justice Coalition documented the deaths of at least 589 people since the year 2000.<\/p>\n
One of those deaths, by way of example, was Carlos Oliva Sola, who was shot by LASD deputies Nicolas Castellanos and Anthony Forlano in September 2013. It subsequently emerged that this represented Forlano\u2019s seventh shooting. The 23-year-old\u2019s family alleged that the police planted a gun at the scene in order to try to cover up the shooting. An eyewitness reported that the youth had said, \u201cNo! No!\u201d in a tearful voice before he was shot in the back.<\/p>\n
A well-known phrase employed by LASD when an unarmed person is shot is that the person was \u201creaching for his waistband,\u201d as if reaching for a gun, thus supposedly justifying the shooting. According to a 2011 study, almost half the people LASD sheriff\u2019s deputies shot at after they allegedly \u201creached toward their waistbands\u201d were unarmed.<\/p>\n
Baca is a prominent and well-connected figure in the military-intelligence-political apparatus. In 2010, he testified before the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, And Terrorism Risk Assessment of the Committee on Homeland Security in the House of Representatives, then controlled by the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
Most of Baca\u2019s testimony was dedicated to the importance of establishing networks of informants to detect \u201cradicalization,\u201d a subject in which he claimed to be an expert. \u201cTo maintain a safe and free society of terrorist attacks, police need to establish public-trust policing techniques that lead to appropriate channels of communication and participation by the public,\u201d Baca said.<\/p>\n
Baca returned to the theme in a statement in 2011. \u201cAll of these agencies recognize that you cannot arrest or enforce your way out of the radicalization issue. Outreach to community members and the building of relationships will lead to a trusted network for sharing of information and contacts. These relationships are crucial to mitigate a threat, or more importantly, recognize the threat at a stage where a person, or a group, on the wrong path can be righted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sheriff in neighboring Orange County, Mike Carona, was indicted on corruption charges in 2007, together with his wife and his alleged longtime mistress. He resigned in 2008 and was convicted on one count of witness tampering. He was sentenced to 66 months in prison, but actually served four years.<\/p>\n
Baca resigned as Sheriff in January 2014. According to The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, Baca\u2019s guilty plea will not affect his $328,000 annual pension.<\/p>\n Via WSWS<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tom Carter Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca pled guilty on Wednesday to allegations that he lied during a federal investigation into the abuse of inmates in the massive Los Angeles jail system. Under the plea agreement he may be sentenced to no more than six months in custody. The Los Angeles Sheriff\u2019s Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}