Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [32]
For a long time, I was assigned to the 18th Street gang, one of the biggest Hispanic gangs throughout Los Angeles and eventually the world. I was also assigned to the Mara Salvatrucha, a ruthless Salvadoran gang. The School Yard Crips was another one I had. There was a turf war on the Venice boardwalk between the Venice Shoreline Crips and the Playboy Gangster Crips out of West Los Angeles in the Cadillac-Guthrie area.
We were in uniform, driving through the gang-infested territories in unmarked vehicles. We could make legal detentions, stopping suspects to talk with them and investigate if we had reason to believe they had done something.
Sometimes I’d stop gang members during what’s called a consensual encounter. I’d pull up in the squad car and ask a gang member to come talk to me. Many of them didn’t know they could just say no and keep walking. I wouldn’t be able to follow them, but I wasn’t about to tell them that. They’d always agree.
Some were no older than ten or eleven and were usually victims of school yard or neighborhood abuses. They’d been harassed enough and thought it was better to join a gang than get the piss beaten out of them until they did.
I understood that these kids were just trying to survive, and sometimes it was hard not to feel bad for them. However, they all had a choice, and they made it. And there were enough kids who said no to it. I knew this was a hard thing to do, but gang life was no joke. One thing TV doesn’t sensationalize about gangs is their finality. There are only two ways of getting out: you die or you move to another county, state, or nation for good.
I arrested one kid when he was twelve years old for being part of a drive-by shooting. He was a member of 18th Street and had been a passenger in the car, so he ended up going to court and being placed in juvenile hall. He was back on the street in about four months.
When he was thirteen, I arrested him again when he was involved in another drive-by shooting. This time he was the shooter. He was sent to the California Youth Authority (CYA), where he stayed until he was sixteen.
He was out for two days before he executed four TMC gang members at a 76 gas station up on Hollywood Boulevard. Not only did he put them down with his first round of shots; he popped an additional bullet in each of their heads with a Calico 9mm, loaded with a 100-round magazine, not your standard choice of weapon for a gang hit.
I’d arrested that kid three times in four years, but he kept committing crimes. I saw this often and couldn’t help but feel frustrated with the system for spitting him back out every time I put him in jail.
Because they chose this life, I never had a problem with gang members shooting other gang members. To me, that was part of natural selection, like animals in the wild. It was survival of the fittest.
The worst part of CRASH was pulling up to see an innocent old man shot on his porch or a little kid dead on a sidewalk after a drive-by shooting. That would get to you and drive you mad. It was all so senseless.
In CRASH, I was considered one of the go-getters and usually brought in high stats. I think I did well because I saw the big picture and knew when to pounce or to hang back and wait. Sometimes keeping a lowlife out of jail would lead to them owing me info on the street, and that could pave the way for the bigger arrests.
I didn’t have a problem giving members and their gangs respect as long as they showed me the same in return. I never downplayed a gang, which sometimes wasn’t easy,