LOS ANGELES — A gang’s campaign against blacks began at a meeting at a local park in 1992.
From there, prosecutors contend, the predominately Latino gang went on the attack in Azusa, east of Los Angeles.
Graffiti with racial epithets began appearing around the city, including “Get out n——” sprayed on the garage doors of some black residents. Gang members allegedly beat up blacks they found in their “territory,” telling one man: “We hate n—— in Azusa. This is Azusa.”
Over the course of 20 years, blacks were assaulted, chased and robbed, their property vandalized, in a “crime spree to drive African-Americans out of the city of Azusa,” said U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr.
Authorities announced Tuesday that a federal grand jury has indicted 51 people allegedly associated with the Azusa 13 gang in a campaign that prosecutors described as “terrorizing” blacks in the suburban San Gabriel Valley city of 44,000.
Police Chief Robert Garcia said the campaign was partly motivated by racial prejudice. But he said it also grew from orders from Mexican Mafia gang leaders to organize their drug business by “eliminating competition so they can have a monopoly on drug sales,” Garcia said. “Usually a street gang member doesn’t get an original idea; it comes from someone higher up.”
The indictment says one Azusa 13 member drew up a “business plan” aimed at monopolizing drug sales, which included taxing dealers, protecting those who paid, and attacking those who did not and destroying their businesses.
Authorities said the campaign went beyond drugs to harassing innocent black residents allegedly because of their race.
“We’re brainwashed to think that if we let a black family in, then their (gang) cousins are going to come from Compton,” said one ex-gang member who grew up in the neighborhood and requested anonymity in an interview Tuesday.
The 24-count indictment is the latest in several prosecutions involving allegations that Latino gangs in Southern California attacked blacks in an effort to get them to move out of neighborhoods they controlled. Many of these incidents occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
