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http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/34/features-pelisek.php

Avenues of Death
How Highland Park’s Latino gang targets African-Americans
by CHRISTINE PELISEK

................. On a cool November night in 2000, just a five-minute walk from Tacos el Michoacano, members of the Avenues gang awakened Anthony in the basement room he rented for $200 a month on a quiet, tree-lined street overlooking the hills of Highland Park and executed him because of the color of his skin. “The detective told me that if my son was Latino he would be alive today,� said the mother, who wears a silver chain with a photo of her son in a heart-shaped pendant. “I had no idea how dangerous it was for blacks to live in Highland Park. His father lives in South Central. I was more worried about that.� .................. Today, the continuing carnage on the streets of Highland Park and neighboring Glassell Park, Cypress Park and parts of Eagle Rock are cruel testimony to the mixed results of that campaign. Federal indictments, a gang injunction and one of the more ambitious series of gang trials in Los Angeles history, which began in 2003 and has so far produced three convictions for seven killings, hit the Avenues hard, but violence has continued by the gang and its rivals. Police blame the Avenues alone for more than half of the 200-plus homicides in the northeast L.A. neighborhoods since the early 1990s. What makes Highland Park’s gang wars particularly disturbing is the way victims are struck down in broad daylight on busy streets, sometimes involving people without gang ties. Since January, nine gang-related killings have hit the neighborhood, including 19-year-old Cynthia Portillo, a pregnant woman. ..................... It has been nearly 10 years since Avenues boss and Mexican Mafia member Alex "Pee Wee" Aguirre was sentenced to a life term. He turned over partial control of the gang to his brother, Richard “Little Pee Wee� Aguirre, who was only 14 when he assumed the role of shot-caller in 1995. His reign lasted until 2001, when he was charged in a string of murders. It wasn't until this May that Little Pee Wee was convicted, a delay caused by the "difficult" task of getting gang members to cooperate with police. During the trial, two ex-Avenues members told shocking tales of robberies, assaults and murders. They gave details of life as tax collectors for the Mexican Mafia’s drug business and the penalties doled out to those who defied its will.
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http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/34/featu ... korian.php

War and Peace in Watts
A gang treaty implodes and the killing resumes
by MICHAEL KRIKORIAN