Turf battles waged in L.A. County
California Attorney General Jerry Brown discusses an investigation of Bell's city government in Los Angeles on Monday. Mr. Brown has ordered past and present officials of Bell to turn over their financial records in a widening probe of a salary scandal in the Los Angeles suburb. (Associated Press)BELL, Calif. | The gang graffiti that coats freeway overpasses, exit signs and the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River attests to a problem more alarming than the recent revelations of hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual salaries for public officials.
Street gangs, a powerful prison gang known as the Mexican Mafia and even more powerful drug-trafficking organizations based in Mexico and Colombia operate freely in this small city and the similarly sized cities surrounding it.
News reports in recent weeks have focused on three Bell city officials who resigned on July 26 amid revelations that they were being paid up to $800,000 per year in a city of 36,000 where the average annual household income is less than $40,000. California Attorney General Jerry Brown on Monday announced that he issued subpoenas to current and former members of Bell's city government, adding that his office also is investigating allegations of "possible illegal election conduct by Bell officials."
But a central feature of life in Bell, and in neighboring cities Maywood and Cudahy — where city officials have engaged in their own turf battles in recent years and the politics can be as dangerous as the streets — is the presence and influence of criminal gangs.
South and east about 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles, the scenery along Interstate 710 speaks to the density and roughness of this corner of the nation's most populous county. Power lines hover above shipping containers destined for the Port of Los Angeles, and beneath the freeway bungalows and mobile home parks are packed into a cluster of what are known as the Hub Cities.
The Hub Cities once thrived as centers of manufacturing jobs, but as the auto industry left Los Angeles County and the immigrant population grew, the demographic shift brought a change in leadership in cities that had been run for decades by white bureaucrats who no longer were representative of the communities.
Now most residents in these cities are working-class immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Many are in the United States illegally. Elected officials are second- or third-generation immigrants, often without much government or political experience.
Local law-enforcement officials say at least four prominent gangs operate out of this area, their members tagging everything from street signs to city property.
"Most of it gets cleaned, except for 18th Street," one detective wryly noted, referring to the markings of the 18th Street gang, the dominant gang in Cudahy.
The 18th Street gang operates in 27 states and claims more than 30,000 members nationwide, according to the FBI's 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment. In California, roughly 80 percent of its members are illegal immigrants, the report states. Gang members are known to commit auto theft, drive-by shootings, gun trafficking, extortion and murder-for-hire.
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