Texas police officer also a Drug Dealer

Texas police officer also a Drug Dealer

Leading a double life can sometimes get you killed

Julian Pesina sold drugs for the Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, while at the same time serving as a police officer for Balcones Heights, hiding his gang tattoos under the safety of the uniform he bore.

Julian was gunned down on May 4, 2014 by the gang whom he pledged allegiance to after having learned of his daytime job as a police officer from Facebook.

Even more problematic for Julian, the feds and the SAPD were investigating his involvement with the Mexican Mafia and were poised to arrest him but, the gang got to him first.  

His sentence from the feds would have included prison time, his sentence from the gang he was affiliated with, well it was death.

On that fateful day Julian was outside of a tattoo shop that he owned. The FBI had set up surveillance of the shop and saw the entire murder play out.

Jerry “Spooks” Idrogo plead guilty to the murder last Friday, he also plead guilty to the murder of another man Texas Mexican Mafia member Billy Padilla, who Jerry killed in back in 2013 for not turning over the organization's cut of drug money.

The gang’s Texas presence gained power in the 1980s, according to court documents and it’s still growing and going strong.

To gain membership into the gang, inductees have to commit a criminal act, which could include the murder of an enemy.

And according to the gang’s constitution, cooperation with law enforcement was punishable by death.

So Julian just being a cop was enough to seal his fate once the gang discovered that. What makes Julian’s murder interesting however is the fact that it is not unusual or uncommon according to author Tony Rafael, to find civil servants among the gang’s ranks.

Tony says that it the group is very good at the art of being able to coerce people into doing things for them or things that would benefit the gang. According to Tony, they have corrupted social workers for the gang and even police. They are from what Tony says quite capable and excellent manipulators.

As with any individual who has a manipulative personality, they seek out the weak, someone that has something to gain through the manipulation process. After all, regardless of victim or criminal, every relationship we choose to have, has some benefit for both parties, otherwise we wouldn’t have them.

But for a manipulative person, the benefit from searching out the weak and manipulating them is sometimes criminal intent. They get the weak to do their bidding thus shielding them from the law. 

Just how it was that Julian ended up in uniform is a mystery, he was part of the gang prior to becoming a cop so it’s a valid question.

It’s clear that he somehow managed to keep his life as a gang member from surfacing when he accepted and took the job as a cop.

That question, well it has never really been answered, let alone addressed. 

Did he want out, was it a past he couldn’t quite escape or did he enjoy the benefits of leading a life as a cop and a criminal?

We may never know now because Julian Pesina was murdered by one of his own for being a cop.

One thing that we do know for sure is that a member of the Mexican Mafia managed to become a cop in Texas.

Cristal M Clark

IOS users can find The Crime Shop onApple News

@thecrimeshop

Coming soon National Police Reform

National Police Reform

Why is it so hard to prosecute cops?

Time and time again as with the Freddi Gray case, we blame in terms of how we see how things played out and we choose to ignore the realities of how it really did play out.

We are missing a key piece, we see it how we want to see it, we put our personal expectations onto police, through that we determine how cops should behave, how they could have reacted differently. We interject our personal beliefs and feelings into the situation which causes it to become clouded.

So why is it so hard to prosecute a cop?

First, we have to determine whether or not they actually broke any laws and in our most recent case on the books the answer was no. They didn’t even violate any civil rights. Things become so blurry to us because we are truly seeing them differently than a cop does.

Police are trained to view things differently than we do. They are trained to go into certain situations with a preconceived notion or to be on heightened alert. Domestic Violence calls are the best example. They roll to a domestic violence call already on heightened alert not knowing what to expect.

Most of the time they roll up to such calls prepared to mediate, care of the injured and/or take a man into custody because in general it is the man committing the crime. I believe most of you would agree.

And if most of you did agree with that, you just did what everyone assumes cops do all of the time the thing we are constantly condemning them for. It’s easy to do. We all assume that men are the aggressors, which by the way is not always true. But that is a preconceived notion or idea as to what to expect.

Doesn’t matter if the guy is white or black, in general whenever someone says the words Domestic Violence, we associate men to be the aggressors. We have a mental image of a man being the aggressor.  

We all judge others based off of our own beliefs and how we feel that we would personally handle a situation. IF you want to police the police we need to stop blaming, criticizing and pay attention.

Recently, I made an honest attempt to read the book “ Why it’s so tough to prosecute cops” by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who I like and respect but honestly I laughed while trying to get through the book. I literally thought the book was a joke until a friend of mine pointed out it was supposed to be taken seriously.

The gist was that a lot of blame was going around from Police Unions being at fault, to white cops, cops protecting each other, a judicial system that protects bad cops and cops are always saying that they feared for their lives.

Yet at least as far as I read into it, no mention was made that in two of the cases that the book went over, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, the men were not innocent.  THEY WERE BREAKING THE LAW WHEN THEY WERE CONFRONTED BY POLICE!

And Grey wasn’t murdered, shot, run over, shot with a taser, he died in a freak accident. No one meant to cause him harm.

The reason it’s hard for some to take things like cops being racist seriously are that the cases used as examples are jokes. Bring us a case that shows clear racial bias on the part of the cops for instance, white cop always pulls over only African American men, or 3 out of 5 arrests are African American’s while the other 2 are other races or white.  Things like that show a pattern of racial bias.

So it is hard to prosecute a cop because while we all feel entitled to be able to point out how the cops actions were not appropriate we were never in the that cops shoes at the time the incident occurred, not to the mention the crucial key is whether or not a cop broke any laws. Not civil rights but laws.

Take the shooting in Miami a few weeks ago, yes you all know the one. The cop who shot an unarmed therapist who was lying on the ground with his hands up?

The issue I have with it,  we only see part of the video, part of the story. So it’s more convenient for us to sit around and say that he never should have fired his weapon. We too often judge others based off of how we ourselves would have handled things, you know in the perfect world.

The video doesn’t actually show the therapist being shot. The officer who shot the therapist has since then come out and admitted that it was an accident and according to one media outlet also made a statement that he did what he had to do. His union if that is true, should have walked away and left him in the dog house over that.

Still the same, proving that he broke any laws will be difficult because he most likely didn’t break any laws whatsoever. Did he have to shoot someone? We don’t know that answer, we’d like to say that he shouldn't have shot anyone but we would be basing that off of our own personal beliefs.

Those beliefs do not mean that any laws were broken. Cops are trained to handle situations differently than you or I. We might pause in a situation because we want to better think it through where cops are not really afforded that opportunity, that pause could mean the cop ends up hurt or worse, dead.

Cops are trained to think and make a judgment call sometimes within the blink of an eye, if you or I were in the same situation we might be badly injured or dead ourselves because we handled the situation the way we normally would.

Prosecuting cops isn’t easy because it’s not meant to be. So in order to change that, we would have to lobby for changes in policing and policing policies. We’d have to lobby for change in how the judicial system is setup to hear cases involving police but well before that, you would have to lobby for changes in terms of who oversees police misconduct within the communities you want to see change in.

Some of what’s out and about throughout the US isn’t working, Oakland, CA and Portland, OR are two examples of oversight already not working, not to mention that when the DOJ becomes involved and departments are ordered to change and bring in oversight, it’s costly for the taxpayer who have to pay for the misdeeds of that department.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, lobby to have grants cut from police departments who are not playing well with the citizens of the community and you’ll see change a hell of a lot faster than you will if you are waiting on the Feds.

Cut the funding and you might just see a change in how police react to everyone’s cries for police reform.

We just have to be able to meet them halfway and work together for the changes everyone seeks.

Cristal M Clark

@thecrimeshop

IOS users can find The Crime Shop on Apple News

Portland Oregon getting rid of the Citizen Oversight Committee for it's police

Portland Oregon getting rid of the Police Citizen Oversight Committee

Portland will stop public hearings on appeals of Portland Police Bureau findings that stem from citizen complaints of alleged officer misconduct.

At least that is the latest proposal heading into Portland’s City Council next month by city officials. That proposal has left some with a feeling of unease to say the least.

If the proposal is approved that would mean that complaints would be heard behind closed doors before a Police Review Board.

Some are saying this is what the city needs while others seem to feel that if the proposal passes it will remove what some describe are the very elements that are crucial for promoting community trust in the city's police force.

Those elements are transparency and citizen oversight.

But that really isn’t the case if one were to really dig into the proposal. Those who file police complaints with the city would be able to challenge a police supervisor's findings. They would be able to make their concerns heard before the Police Review Board. That is the front of the line.

Currently the Police Review Board is made up of police and one citizen. They meet behind closed doors and make decisions that aren’t working...clearly.

The proposed board would be made up of officers and citizen representatives, more than one citizen. They would then recommend to the police chief whether to sustain a complaint and they could suggest the level of discipline. They would still meet behind closed doors because of union rules and it’s not a court of law and thus complaints are not trials because of criminal investigations.

This step would remove a lot of political red tape that simply is not necessary. Currently across the nation for every citizen oversight board, they are riddled with democracy and bureaucratic red tape.  

Both by the way are best described as the messy bedroom of a teenager.

They are mess, they make things difficult, such things like filing complaints, this move is a step to alleviate the mess and get to the floor, the bottom of the pile. It is designed to make the complaint process easier, more efficient and clean for the citizens who file complaints.

Of course the Citizens Review Committee is challenging this proposal and it is completely against it because it would take away the CRC’s right to hear public appeals of the Portland Police Bureau's findings from complaints it has received.

What the CRC fails to mention is that This step basically if you paid attention combines the efforts of both committee’s working separately into one cohesive group which would be made up of both police and citizens. They are quick however to insinuate that citizens will become intimidated by being behind closed doors with armed officers, hence without actually saying it, they ever so quietly suggest that police are more like bullies with guns.

It's a subtle suggestion, either way I hear it loud and clear. 

Sometimes the need for change is met with a lot of resistance and fear, people don’t like change, they will go to great lengths to prevent it at times, but it’s 2016 and it’s pretty clear that what Portland has in place today isn’t working. It’s a bold move that should be made. As long as they pick the right players from each side, it can be a very big success. 

Cristal M Clark

@thecrimeshop

https://crimeshop.wordpress.com

IOS users can find The Crime Shop on Apple News