War of a Different Color
Latino gang members killed Anthony Prudhomme, Cheryl Greene, and a number of other Angelenos because they were black. Many now say it’s a racial campaign spearheaded by the Mexican Mafia.

~ By ANNETTE STARK ~


Photo by TED SOQUI
~ Our town: The killing of 14-year-old Cheryl Greene forced the city to confront a spreading hate-crime problem ~



he dirty little secret was a decade old already when escalating racial brawls between African-American and Latino students in Los Angeles high schools finally attracted mainstream media attention. But by April 2005, with two black-versus-brown melees involving at least 100 students at Jefferson High School in the same week, at least school administrators reluctantly admitted that they did indeed have a serious racial situation on their hands.

Media jumped on the situation with big headlines, but to city officials, members of the public, and even some of those same students, the bigger picture was still fuzzy months later in September 2005, when Reverend Al Sharpton came to Los Angeles to meet with students of Jefferson High. In a press conference held outside the school following the meeting, Sharpton joined Christine Chavez and Najee Ali, all co-founders of the Latino/African American Leadership Alliance, all of whom had the foresight to suggest that mounting black-brown tensions in this city could lead to an all-out race war.

On that day, however, the kids were on their best behavior. They assured Sharpton – who then assured the press – that there really wasn’t a problem. The kids didn’t want to make too much out of it. Neither, apparently, did the city administration, as few of them decided to look into the problem apart from Councilwoman Jan Perry, who attended the first Alliance meeting and helped Ali get the room they used at City Hall.

Chavez agreed with Sharpton; the media was overdoing it. Chavez quoted the students, saying, “The problem is that the media doesn’t talk about all the ‘good things we do.’” It was then announced that the Latino and African-American students of Jefferson High would be joining together to help young victims of Hurricane Katrina.

On that same day, however, the effects of racial hatred were not fuzzy for Luisa Prudhomme. She was probably driving the streets of Highland Park, which she had done often since 2000, talking to residents and posting flyers about the award for information leading to the arrest of the Avenues gang member who shot her 21-year-old son in the face because of the color of his skin.

The shooting of Anthony Prudhomme and Christopher Bowser in Highland -Park, like the recent shooting of 14-year-old Cheryl Greene in Harbor Gateway, the shooting of another black man on his way to pick up his kids in Harbor Gateway and other violent episodes (on Sunday, the L.A. Times listed three more – previously unpublished – Harbor Gateway murders of blacks since 1997) represent one aspect of the widespread racial campaign that black leaders feared. These attacks are only recently being treated not just as shootings, but also as hate crimes in which Latino gangs purposely killed black residents because of their race, not because of competition over drug sales or any other interpretation of “turf wars.” None of the victims mentioned here were members of a gang.

U.S. Attorneys in Prudhomme’s case painted a chilling picture of a widespread ethnic cleansing plot against African Americans and their Latino friends and supporters. According to some law enforcement officials, attorneys who have represented these gangs, and the testimony of gangsters themselves, at least some of these shootings are believed to have originated with orders from the Mexican Mafia prison gang. As to whether or not that’s meant to be a warning to black gangs, no one knows, because these killings have happened in areas where black gangs have no presence.

Two months after Sharpton’s appearance at Jefferson High, Porfino “Dreamer” Avila was indicted as one of five Avenues gang members accused of hate crimes against black residents of Highland Park. Avila was already serving consecutive life sentences for the murders of Anthony Prudhomme and Christopher Bowser. In addition to charging that the murders were racially motivated, U.S. prosecutors noted that there had also been other incidents. Avenues members (who are strongly tied to the Mexican Mafia) shot at a black teenager who was on his bike, pistol-whipped a female African American jogger, and threatened a man with a box cutter, saying “You ******s have been here long enough.”


“Do people ever confess to reporters?”

“Put on your seatbelt,” Luisa Prudhomme instructs as she whips around Highland Park in her SUV, searching for someone who can or will talk, a witness even, or at least someone who knows the whereabouts of the man that murdered her son. Avila was convicted, but one of the key witnesses in his case testified that the shooter was another man, and remains at large. Prudhomme doesn’t live in Highland Park – her son did – but she knows every inch of it now. Finding the other man has become her mission; first, because it was her son; and second, because she wants to stop the racial killing.

“That guy looks like a gang member,” she says. “Want to get out of the car and see if he’ll talk to you?”

You could say that Prudhomme is fearless on these gang-infested streets. You could also say she’s white so that probably helps. The fact is that mothers of murdered children almost always say the same thing: Once your child has died such a senseless death, there is nothing else that can happen to you. “They took my son,” Prudhomme states. “What else can they do to me?

The man looks to be in his early 30s. He lives here – halfway down the block from the Montecito Heights Recreation Center, a known Avenues hangout, and around the block from some of their most visible graffiti. But he says he knows nothing about any gang. He does know that the Latino gangs are fighting with the black gangs “about turf” but when I ask him where the black gang is he contradicts himself and says there is no black gang. As to any black person that might get murdered in Highland Park, he shrugs. “Must have been a drug dealer,” he says.

At the car wash, it’s same thing. At the jobs program next door to the Washington Mutual Bank, a black schoolteacher says she’s never had a problem in Highland Park. “I teach fifth graders and they’re wonderful,” she says. She didn’t know about the shootings and terrorism of blacks in this neighborhood, and that young black men were murdered here. “Were they drug dealers?” she asks.

Anthony Prudhomme wasn’t a drug dealer and he wasn’t a gang member. According to U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted his murder as a hate crime, he was killed because he was black.

Unlike heavily gang-infested areas such as Watts, South L.A., and Inglewood, Highland Park is bursting with middle-class urban charm; nice hillside homes – some tiny and cute, others large and expensive-looking – overlook trendy new businesses and cafes such as the Highland Perk coffee house down the block from where Anthony Prudhomme lived and died. Unlike Watts, South L.A., and Inglewood, there are plenty of places for a kid to get a job. Highland Park simply does not look like your typical gang neighborhood.

The man Prudhomme believes killed her son is not your typical gangbanger, either. The man – we’ll call him “the shooter” – worked as a roofer and lived with his middle-class parents in one of those small, well-kept homes. His brother is in internal affairs at LAPD and his sister is a civil attorney. It is believed that after the murders he continued to live with his parents on Yosemite Street and then went to stay in the guesthouse behind his sister’s large hillside home. It’s empty now and the whole place is for sale.

Avenues gang member-turned-informant David Cruz was in protective custody in the county jail when he spoke with Los Angeles Police Detectives Teague and King in July 2001. He told the detectives that the reason he needed protection was that the Mexican Mafia had placed “a green light” on him for cooperating with law enforcement. He was marked for death. Cruz went on to tell Teague and King that Avila was at the scene and drove the car, but another man pulled the trigger.

All of which is documented in an unpublished court opinion issued on August 29, 2006, in response to Avila’s appeal of his murder conviction in the Prudhomme-Bowser trial. The appeal was denied, but the document presents a chilling account by Cruz about how the gang wanted all blacks out of Highland Park. They beat Christopher “regularly.” In the document, Cruz names the man who shot Prudhomme on November 3, 2000.

The document reads: “At some point, the detectives asked Cruz about a murder on Figueroa Street. Cruz responded that defendant had told him about some killings ? in Highland Park. He related that ‘they’ had shot an African-American on Figueroa Street, and said he knew about another incident where defendant went in a house and killed a guy for some drugs. Cruz had heard from defendant that [the shooter] killed the man on the hill. They had broken down the door and asked the man for drugs and money, after which defendant ran out of the house.”

CityBeat is not using the shooter’s name because, in the context of Avila’s trial, this information was hearsay. The shooter was not charged and there is currently no warrant for his arrest. Detective King confirms that the case is officially closed. Deputy District Attorney May Chung, who prosecuted Avila, says, “It came out at the trial that [the shooter] did the shooting, but we didn’t have any evidence against him.”

To activists and community leaders, the federal hate crime conviction against the Avenues – the first of its kind – provided a small measure of closure, a precedent to convince authorities to bring more cases to trial, or at least a place to start educating the city about where the focus needs to be. But much as Prudhomme is grateful for the work prosecutors did in bringing the racists to justice, she still has to return to these dangerous pretty streets, searching for the man who murdered her child because of the color of his skin. There was so much – granted, important – publicity surrounding the hate-crime convictions that many don’t even know the racist triggerman is still at large.

So she drives Highland Park, puts up flyers, attends neighborhood council meetings in a neighborhood she wouldn’t live in on a bet, and talks to gang members, to people in the coffeehouse, in the parks, at the car wash, on the street, heck, to anyone – even to journalists.

“Do people ever confess to reporters?” Prudhomme asks. Not to my knowledge, I admit. At least it’s never happened with me. It pretty much doesn’t matter today. If anyone has seen the shooter, they aren’t admitting it. He virtually disappeared a year ago.


“How long will they mourn me?” –Tupac Shakur
Even in the aftermath of the hate-crime convictions against five Avenues gang members in August 2006 – with U.S. Attorney’s calling the crime “ethnic cleansing” – city officials still didn’t get it. When members of the 204th Street gang murdered Cheryl Greene in Harbor Gateway in December, early reports by law enforcement and the media were that this was a “gang-on-gang” crime.

Prudhomme recalls going to Neighborhood Council meetings in Highland Park and despite that the gangs left plenty of evidence – shootings and graffiti – “everyone in the room was in denial.

“They worried about how things looked, like if the trash was being picked up. But I don’t think they wanted to admit that they had a serious crime problem,” Prudhomme adds.

“I believe the media was very responsible when they finally did report on this issue, but they were slow to react. They were overly cautious and did the city a disservice by not informing people what was going on. It took us two years to connect the dots,” says Project Islamic Hope’s Najee Ali.

In the last year, Ali’s efforts at drawing attention to mounting episodes of hate crimes in L.A. often preceded the media coverage. And with his ongoing press conferences, peace walks, and endless e-mails, some believe that he’s driving the debate – which has earned him his share of detractors. In fact, Ali has gained such prominence for spearheading hate-crime press coverage in the Highland Park murders, the Long Beach attacks on white teenagers by blacks, and the Cheryl Greene murder, that he was the subject of an L.A. Times article with “self promoter” in the subhead.

In an e-mail to CityBeat in January, Positive African Image Institute Chairman Fige Bornu, wrote: “I continue to grow suspect of so-called community leader Najee Ali and his endless love for attention from the white television and print media.”

Ali says it goes with the territory. “People say I pander to the media, but I just use my personal relationships. For example, the Cheryl Greene murder – the L.A. Times completely ignored this. She was a statistic. Just another black child killed. I refused to accept that. I called reporter after reporter till I found someone sympathetic.”

Bornu did not respond to CityBeat’s interview request in time for publication.

But to the mothers of murdered children, Ali is exactly where he needs to be. “I like getting his e-mails,” says Prudhomme. “I think he’s sincere and he helps me stay in touch with what is going on.”

In January 2007, at a press conference Ali organized at the Lucy Florence Coffee House in Leimert Park, Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa drew heat from some of his longtime supporters when Ali announced that, “The mayor has not met with one single family member of the African American victims.”

The conference was noteworthy in that it was the first public mention of the Mexican Mafia as possibly ordering these hits.

Beverly Hills criminal attorney and sometime state Assembly candidate Anthony Willoughby, was the first to publicly make this connection. Ali began saying it after that, noting, “I was very uncomfortable. I had felt those words could be inflammatory especially if there’s no hard evidence to back up that type of harsh rhetoric. We didn’t use it until the prosecutors said it in the hate crimes murders. Then it was revealed that the FBI had evidence on their website.”

On Tuesday, Ali presented the LAPD police commission with evidence from the FBI’s website about the Mexican Mafia’s half century of hatred directed at blacks.

Willoughby has defended gang members as well as members of the Mexican Mafia. He notes that the prison gangs, unlike street gangs, are highly organized. And as long as gang members don’t end up in prison, Willoughby explains, they are safe. However, since most gangbangers will do at least one prison stint, a Latino gang member who refuses to carry out their agenda and ends up in prison, stands a good chance of being killed.

To Willoughby, this is the “the 400-pound guerilla in the room. No one is talking about it.

“I’ll give you an example,” he adds. “When Mayor Villaraigosa was running for mayor, I raised the issue at a community forum about the racial conflict in Jefferson high school. And explained that it wasn’t an isolated instance; it’s been happening everywhere and it’s been going on for over 10 years starting in East LA … . The response was that he and Bernard Parks were going to have a dialogue.

“They’re missing the boat. The issue is that the Mexican Mafia has issued a green light for these killings. Unless you deal with the source, the Mexican Mafia, you’re only dealing with the symptoms, the end result. The light’s still green. The light must go red.”

City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo hired former U.S. prosecutor Bruce Riordan as Senior Supervising Attorney for Anti-Gang Activities in November 2006. As Anti-Gang Coordinator for the U.S. Attorney, Riordan investigated street and prison gangs, including the most dangerous and organized Latino gangs – Mexican Mafia, 18th Street, and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). He obtained convictions of 26 members of the 18th Street gang for – among other things – racketeering, murder, narcotics trafficking, and money laundering.

As far as an organized plot by Latino prison gangs to murder all blacks, Riordan says he has read quotes to that effect, but these seem to be based on hearsay, even after 10 years of investigating and prosecuting the gang that is the most heavily tied to the Mexican Mafia, which is 18th Street.

“I am totally unaware of [a plot]. I haven’t seen hard existence of one, or even non-courtroom evidence. I’ve never seen any soft evidence – admissible and inadmissible,” he says, adding: “That doesn’t mean that we don’t take any gang’s racial agenda very seriously. But the proposition that there is a gang-wide green light … I have never seen any proof.”

An article in Sunday’s L.A. Times titled “How a community Imploded” documents previously unknown, specific attacks on blacks in Harbor Gateway since 1995, citing LAPD statistics that “there were nearly five times as many homicides, assaults and other violent crimes by Latinos against blacks as by blacks against Latinos.”

The mayor has vowed to make gang violence the number one priority in 2007. But there are overwhelming questions about where the money is going to come from. On the simplest level, as Sheriff Lee Baca has pointed out, there isn’t even enough room in the prisons. So, with limited funds for more LAPD patrols of gang neighborhoods, prosecutions, not to mention gang intervention and prevention to address the issue on a larger scale, many question how L.A. is going to deal with the complexities of short-term law enforcement and long-term solutions.

In his 2005 State of the Union Speech, President George W. Bush announced the appointment of First Lady Laura Bush to oversee a new $150 million program aimed at addressing gang violence with faith-based initiatives and community programs. One thing everyone we spoke with agreed about: L.A. has not seen one dime of that money.

“I remember that speech,” says Riordan. “I was the gang coordinator for all Los Angeles, so I was excited to hear it. I never heard another word about it except when someone asks, ‘What happened to that?’ I know the program existed, I heard about it in the State of the Union, and I never heard about it again.”


American Me





~ Luisa Prudhomme, left, and Anna del Rio lost their children to gangs operating under the orders of the mexican mafia ~





~ Anna del Rio’s daughter, Teresa, as a child ~



Based on information from the LAPD and FBI, Prudhomme has concluded that the rash of hate crimes in Los Angeles is being dictated by the prison gangs that control street gangs such as the Avenues.

The mothers of the murdered children, like friend Anna Del Rio whose daughter Theresa was killed eight years ago, disagree about some issues, like the death penalty. In the case of the killers of their children, Prudhomme and Del Rio are pro death penalty. Cheryl Greene’s mother Charlene Lovett is against it. On the questions of the root causes of these crimes, however, the idea that prison gangs somehow control the cycle of violence in L.A. is hard to ignore. Del Rio, whose 20-year-old daughter Theresa was also shot to death by a gang member, thinks the attacks are organized and coming from higher ups. “Why are the hits continuing?” she asks rhetorically. “And how are the drugs getting in?”

Teresa Del Rio’s alleged killer is currently in custody and on trial. “His name is Franklin Rodriguez, aka ‘Looney,’” Del Rio emphasizes. “He was in the18th Street gang, then he went to the Avenues then he went to Ramparts to start his own gang. He killed a 16-year-old boy, then killed another, escaped out of the country and then came back in and killed my daughter.”

Ironically, Theresa Del Rio was a dancer and had appeared in the Edward James Olmos film about the Mexican Mafia, American Me. According to Wally Fay’s respected website, In the Hat, at least two people tied to the Mexican Mafia were killed while allegedly consulting on American Me.

David Cruz, who gave the testimony that mentions Prudhomme’s shooter, also notes that he never spoke directly with that shooter – only Avila. But evidently that was enough. Cruz was stabbed 22 times in 2002, which he claimed was the result of his testimony to Detectives Teague and King. The Mexican Mafia had green-lighted him and there was no protection available from his gang.

Asked by CityBeat to confirm the timeframe when Avila’s appeal was filed, or even to confirm that that the appeal was denied just three months before Avila was indicted on hate-crime charges, Avila’s court-appointed attorney Edward H. Schulman said that he never speaks to reporters and hung up the phone. It is impossible to determine from the facts supplied at the Prudhomme murder trial or in information contained in the unpublished court opinion whether or not Avila refused to testify against his fellow Avenues gang member because he feared being green-lighted in prison by the Mexican Mafia.






03-08-07

















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