Mexican Mafia wields power in L.A. jails
Gang leaders facing racketeering counts
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County jails are run by the sheriff, but the Mexican Mafia wields the power in the underworld behind bars.
The organization made up of leaders from various Latino gangs operated like an illegal government, collecting “taxes” on smuggled drugs, ordering hits on people who didn’t follow their rules and even calling the shots on street crimes, federal prosecutors said this past week.
Their clout was diminished as 83 members and associates were charged in a pair of sweeping federal racketeering conspiracies that alleged drug dealing, extortion, violent assaults and even murders.
“We just delivered a blow to a cold-blooded prison gang and their associates,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said during a news conference.
In an effort to disrupt the gang’s stronghold, the suspects will be held in federal facilities, and those already in custody in state prisons will be moved, authorities said.
Sheriff Jim Mcdonnell acknowledged that others will follow in their wake, as leadership in the gang that operates in most prisons and jails in the state is always changing.
“There will be new leaders, that’s kinda how the whole system works. It’s hierarchical,” Mcdonnell said. “When one goes to jail or passes away then someone else backfills their spot just like any multilevel organization.”
The so-called “gang of gangs” — an organization of imprisoned Latino street gang leaders who control operations inside and outside California prisons and jails — started in the 1950s at a juvenile jail and grew to an international criminal organization that has controlled smuggling, drug sales and extortion inside the nation’s largest jail system.
“These Mexican Mafia members and associates, working together to control criminal activity within (LA County jails), have become their own entity or enterprise and effectively function as an illegal government,” an indictment said.
The gang was also able to control street crime by using wives, girlfriends and lawyers to help relay orders to be carried out by members who were not incarcerated, an indictment said.
In some instances, gang members would deliberately get arrested on low-level charges so they could smuggle drugs into the jail and be released days later.