Thread: A Familial Mean Street...Networks of relatives have bred cri

This story could serve as a textbook style indictment against illegal immigration! These people came for jobs...originally! But as the story unfolds, they lapsed into poverty....and, voila...they turned to violent drugs and crime! This story is as common as a house fly...all across the country!!! This is what happens when we let them stay!!!! DEPORT ALL OF THEM...NOW!.
A familial mean street


Networks of relatives have bred crime on once-peaceful Drew Street, police say.
By Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2008

The brick house with the enormous black satellite dish in the driveway sits empty now, the tenants evicted. The building is fenced, its windows are boarded and a For Sale sign hangs outside.

Last year, the Los Angeles city attorney's office sued to close the house at 3304 Drew St. in Glassell Park as a public nuisance. Authorities are now seeking to demolish it.




For more than a decade, the Satellite House, as it's known in the neighborhood, was the center of the drug trade on two-block Drew Street, where dealers and gang members have operated with near-impunity for years, police said.

During at least two raids at the house since 2002, according to court documents, officers found guns and drugs as well as surveillance cameras, laser trip wires and a shrine to Jesus Malverde, the Mexican folk hero who has become drug smugglers' unofficial patron saint.

Occupying the house until recently was Maria "Chata" Leon and her family.

An illegal immigrant and mother of 13, Leon has a lengthy arrest record and three convictions for drug-related crimes -- for which she's served no prison time, according to court documents. She declined to be interviewed for this story.

Police said Leon, 44, and her extended family were deeply involved in the drug trade that has made Drew Street among L.A.'s most notorious.

The neighborhood came to the attention of most people only after undercover police officers got into a shootout there last month with gang members who had allegedly killed a man in another Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood. But police had long had Drew Street on their radar.

It is "hands down the worst area of Northeast Division," said LAPD Officer Steve Aguilar, who has patrolled the street for five years. "I've worked two other divisions and even in South-Central. This is worse."

The Leons -- and members of several other immigrant families on Drew Street whom authorities have charged with criminal acts -- hail from the town of Tlalchapa in the state of Guerrero, which has a reputation as one of Mexico's most violent regions. Police estimate that dozens of members of these extended families belong to the Avenues gang.

"It's been a safety net for them to rely on each other -- brothers, cousins and all," said LAPD Lt. Robert Lopez. "The likelihood of someone within your family ratting you out is really low."

Drew Street's Tlalchapa contingent began arriving in the 1970s, some of them lured by the promise of jobs at the Van de Kamp canned-food factory a few blocks away, residents and former factory workers said.

"We created a little Guerrero up there," said Robesbier Aguirre, who worked as foreman at the now-shuttered plant. Aguirre and others said his family was not part of the criminal activity on Drew Street and left when it got bad.

Poverty sent many Tlalchapans to the U.S. looking for work. But so did the violence stemming from the local drug trade and deadly family feuds, authorities and former residents said.

One place people from Tlalchapa landed was Drew Street. The early arrivals lived mostly in peace, said Epifanio Serrato, Tlalchapa's mayor, who met his wife on Drew Street when he lived there in the early 1970s before returning to Mexico.

"The first of us there had no problems," Serrato said. But as their numbers grew, the area's white residents began selling to developers, he said.

The number of apartment buildings doubled. City records show that from 1984 to 1992, builders razed 30 houses and erected apartment complexes in their place -- adding 480 units to the tiny neighborhood, which sits between the Glendale Freeway and Forest Lawn Memorial-Park.
Living conditions began to resemble those of many public housing projects, as poor people crowded in. The long, tall apartment buildings were hard for police to patrol and easy for criminals to hide in.

Tlalchapans moved into many of the new apartments, said former Drew Street residents. As they did, neighbors said, fights, parties and heavy drinking became more common. Minor disputes escalated into gunplay.
"There wasn't a weekend you didn't hear gunshots in the air," said one neighbor, who bought a house on the block more than 20 years ago.




http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 6478.story

An illegal immigrant and mother of 13, Leon has a lengthy arrest record and three convictions for drug-related crimes -- for which she's served no prison time, according to court documents. She declined to be interviewed for this story.

Uh, this sounds to me like this woman is still in this country! If so, why has she not been deported. Would it have anything to do with her 13 anchors.

I have to tell you, i'm surprised the LA Times would even run a story that portrays their beloved illegal invaders in a negative light. I hope this is a new trend for the Times to actually begin to report this issue, instead of hiding from it or running their SOB pieces.

An illegal immigrant and mother of 13, Leon has a lengthy arrest record and three convictions for drug-related crimes -- for which she's served no prison time, according to court documents. She declined to be interviewed for this story.

Why in the hell isn't she locked up or served time? What about the 3 strikes rule? She was convicted so why wasn't she deported? Did they let her user her anchor babies as shields?

The "family values" Bush holds in high esteem.

Dixie

Actually, the LAT has been running some strong anti-illegal stories lately, NoBueno. I have been pleasantly surprised! They're very anti-Villaraigosa...which is shocking! Of course, they are still some old-time reporters who still spew the garbage, but overall...they are changing. They're probably trying to get the English speakers back so they can start operating in the black, lol!

wow.. this breeder needs to go back to Mexico and over throw the corrupt Mexican government with her kids bankrupting that country instead of this one... wonder how much welfare she gets to subsidize the drug running

Originally Posted by AirborneSapper7

wow.. this breeder needs to go back to Mexico and over throw the corrupt Mexican government with her kids bankrupting that country instead of this one... wonder how much welfare she gets to subsidize the drug running

I don't know Airborne, but according to this story it looks like she had a home at one time. I guess between welfare collected on behalf of her anchors, her supplemental income from her drug business, she probably did pretty well.

I would think the government might be interested in seeing her tax returns for the past ten years.

Uh, this sounds to me like this woman is still in this country!

She is. The article is 3 pages long. Click on the link at the bottom to see the whole story, and on pg 3 you'll see this: Maria Leon and her family have moved to a two-story house in a new subdivision in Victorville. But police believe the family remains a force in the street's drug trade.

It didn't mention how she afforded a 2 story house in a new subdivision.

Can't they be reported to ICE? Or to Child Protective Services?