GANGLAND GODFATHER

Two teenage males are dead after an afternoon shooting in Highland Park that police say may be gang related. Officer Karen Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department said the shooting occurred about 3:30 p.m. near Figueroa Street and York Boulevard. According to initial reports, the two victims were fighting with a man when another man pulled out a gun and shot the pair. One teenager was pronounced dead at the scene; the other was transported to a local hospital in critical condition and died there. A witness to the shooting told police that the shooter was a gang member, Smith said.

"There is this mystique that the Hells Angels are bad people and we need to get these bad people," he said, "when in reality, it's mostly a bunch of old guys riding their motorcycles around." County officials said they spent about $2 million on the 2001-02 case against the Hells Angels, but some think the figure is closer to $6 million. "I think (former District Attorney Mike) Bradbury spent $6 million to get George on probation," said Sheahen. "Maybe (current District Attorney Greg) Totten can spend $6 million to get him on derision." George Christie Jr., and his attorney said the delay was evidence of a weak case stemming from years of vindictive, costly intimidation against his client."This continues a pattern of harassment," said Los Angeles defense attorney Robert Sheahen.Delays in filing charges, however, are not uncommon, and people shouldn't read too much into it, Senior Deputy District Attorney Derek Malan said. The off...

Victims Christopher Lynch (1999) Miguel Reyes (12/26/2004) Fenise Luna (12/29/2004) Claudia Rosio Chenet (2003) A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury has ordered the death penalty for an Azusa gang member convicted of killing four people.Ralph Steven Flores, 26, sat impassively at the defense table as the verdict by the jury of nine men and three women was read shortly after 11 a.m. Flores was convicted last year in four separate slayings dating back to 1999. His activities were part of a larger crime wave afflicting the usually tranquil city, authorities said.

Mexican gangs in Los Angeles, like Florencia 13, are waging a bloody campaign to drive blacks from neighborhoods.Gangbanging is responsible for much of the carnage. Greater Los Angeles is now home to some 500 Mexican gangs—compared with some 200 black ones—and they’ve aggressively tried to push blacks out of mixed-race neighborhoods. More than just turf wars, the Latinos’ violence has included attacks against law-abiding African-Americans with no gang involvement; a horrifying example was the December 2006 murder of 14-year-old Cheryl Green by Mexican gang members in Harbor Gateway, a brutal crime designed to terrorize local blacks. Three years earlier, the same gang had killed a black man because he dared to patronize a local store that they considered “For Hispanics Only.” Meantime, federal authorities have indicted members of another Los Angeles–based Latino gang, Florencia 13, for random shootings of blacks in South L.A. The indictment chillingly accuses a gang leader of giving mem...