Saturday, December 03, 2005

CAUTION: SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE STUPIDITY.
A crank head in San Francisco tried extracting meth from his urine. In the process he spilled some solvent on himself and then lit a cigarette to ponder what to do next. The answer was get a fire extinguisher. He set himself on fire and was eventually arrested. Here's the url:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/03/BAGECG2AOV1.DTL

Apparently it is possible to extract meth from the urine of chronic user. But you need gallons of the stuff, equipment and at least half a brain. This fool was clearly missing one of those items. If the brothers find out about this you have to wonder if they'll impose a wee wee tax on top of the cell tax and commissary tax.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

ANOTHER AVENUES INDICTED
We're a little late on this one. Not as late as the LA Times, however. While going through the stack of papers from the month-long travel, there was the notice that on Nov. 17 another name was added to the Federal hate crime indictment against the four AVENUES charged with terrorizing blacks in Northeast.

The new addition to the indictment is PORFIRIO AVILA. He's been accused of driving the vehicle that carried the trigger man in the Bowser murder. We don't quite get the reasoning behind this because Avila is already serving a life sentence for the Bowser hit. Maybe it's because that murder, prosecuted by the County DA, didn't have the hate crime allegation? Who knows. The way of the Feds is mysterious.

Because of this fairly late addition to the case, we're speculating that the lead USA is probably still beating the bushes looking to round up witnesses and anything that could beef up his prosecution.

Just to recap, the Avenues soldados already indicted are Gilbert Saldana (doing LWOP in CDC on an another murder beef), Merced Cambero (in the wind and probably in Mexico), Alejandro Martinez (in Fed custody) and Fernando Cazares (doing 3 years in CDC on a prior case). Another shooter in the Wilson murder (whose name we won't mention), was already convicted by the DA three years ago and is curiously absent from the Federal indictment. And yet another shooter who was never convicted or indicted on the Wilson or Bowser cases is also absent from the Federal indictment. Discuss among yourselves as to why.

Let's see, it's been almost six years since Kenny Wilson was lit up on Avenue 52 and the LA Times hasn't written one word about this. Asleep at the switch? Lazy? Not PC to write about this? Take your pick. And they wonder why their circulation is going away.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

TATI TORREZ KILLED IN SUPERMAX
Thanks to an email from a reader, we just got word that MANUEL "TATI" TORREZ, a 64-year-old Emero, was killed in Florence supermax by other inmates. Torrez was serving a 160 month sentence that he picked up in the second of the big Eme Federal cases prosecuted by the US Attorney's LA office back in the late nineties.

In that case, US vs. DETEVIS et al, the USA rolled up bunch of Eme members and second tier associates. Tati apparently took a plea at the time. Some observers have speculated that Tati provided information in exchange for some sort of benefit. If he did, he must have had a lousy lawyer because 160 months for a guy in his fifties doesn't sound like much of deal.

So far, nobody has been charged with the Torrez murder. According to the local TV station in Florence, this was the first homicide to occur in that facility. But it probably won't be the last.

Over the years, a number of LEOs with a lot of experience with the Mob have speculated that sending made guys into the Federal system is like pollinating the fields. It just gives the brothers another area for recruitment. We may be seeing the first public evidence of that. LEOs have tracked Eme recruitment in the Feds for some time and have warned against putting them there in the first place.

As a commenter mentioned some time back, Torrez was tight with Bala Talamantez back in the day. Bala made it into the history books when he hooked up with George Jackson in Quentin just before Jackson made his famous escape attempt.

Just for the record, Tati was stomped on and beaten and finally one of his killers jumped off a bunk and landed both feet on Tati's chest. That's the way it happens prison style. When shanks are hard to come by, feet will do.