Our own private Afghanistan

The images are grainy, but surveillance video from the night of October 26, 2008, is clear enough to show a hooded thug run up to the home of Cudahy City Council candidate Luis Garcia and hurl a brick at his front window. Seconds later, Garcia emerges from his house in a full sprint, clad only in his underwear, chasing after the assailant.

In the last 18 months, police reports show unknown assailants have launched a half dozen similar attacks on his house and property – including a Molotov cocktail assault that scorched the front end of his truck just feet from his home.

No one has ever been caught in connection with the crimes. But this much is clear: Someone doesn’t want Garcia to run for Cudahy City Council.

On March 3, the 1.2-square mile city in southeast L.A. County will hold just its second election in 10 years. The last election, in 2007, ended in a razor-thin, 33-vote defeat for Garcia and his running mate Daniel Cota, amidst allegations of electioneering and gang influence at the polls. That same election saw challenger Tony Mendoza drop out of the race after receiving telephone death threats.

Since then, Cudahy’s anemic democracy has only deteriorated. Earlier this month, police say, Cudahy Councilwoman Rosa Diaz first said she wouldn’t run for reelection, then decided she would – and then found her security camera disabled and the window of her townhouse shot with a pellet gun while she was home.

Diaz was a first-time victim. Since 2006, Garcia’s truck has been splattered with paint four times. Last July, an unknown assailant threw a brick through his front window. Two weeks later, the Molotov cocktail assault was caught on a surveillance camera. A vehicle belonging to Garcia’s running mate Daniel Cota was spray-painted.

Mendoza, Garcia, Cota and Diaz all have two things in common: they ran for city council, and subsequently became targets of vandalism and terrorization. Police reports show that Garcia got a license plate of a getaway vehicle in the October brick attack, yet, so far, Maywood police have failed to make a single arrest in any of the dozen or so attacks on Cudahy candidates.

“You could draw a pattern here,” admits Maywood Police Chief Frank Hauptmann, whose department polices Cudahy on a $2 million per year contract. “Maybe there’s a common motive.”

Yet Maywood police have not identified any suspects, and Hauptmann implies they have stopped investigating: “Without further evidence, we can’t conclude that it’s the same individual or different individuals who are responsible. We don’t want to point fingers.”

Hauptmann’s situation is precarious. The FBI is investigating corruption in Cudahy, according to veteran law enforcement sources and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. Maywood police have been under state and federal investigation since 2006 for allegations of brutality and receiving kickbacks from a tow truck company. Yet Hauptmann denies knowledge of either investigation. “I don’t believe [the feds] would inform me unless they thought I should know,” he said, in an interview with City Beat last August.

With the 2009 Cudahy City Council election less than a week away, a treacherous situation is unfolding only 10 miles away from downtown Los Angeles – one that is simply unimaginable in small, wealthy cities like Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. Authorities appear unwilling or incapable of guaranteeing a fair, safe election.

In the mid-20th century, a rancher named Michael Cudahy founded the city he named after himself, and mapped out a series of deep, narrow lots that allowed for small farms. As agriculture and the subsequent automobile industry came and went, the demographics shifted and Cudahy became a city of working-class immigrants, many of them undocumented. It has a population of 26,000, with a scant 4,500 registered voters and just 1,000 actual voters. It also has a dark side that is easily concealed in the rundown houses and apartment complexes that have since filled the city’s deep lots.

A review of crime reports and news accounts over the past 30 years and interviews with law enforcers and numerous longtime residents suggests that contemporary Cudahy is a narco-hub – a haven for gangs and mid-level drug mules.

In the 1980s, major arrests were frequent: A 1986 drug bust in Dallas, Texas, involving a Mexican national from Cudahy, netted the largest amount of Mexican “black tar” heroin ever seized in the U.S. Two years later, police seized $2.4 million worth of cocaine from two Cudahy homes. In 1989, a Cudahy man was caught with 288 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of his car; that same year, a drug task force seized more than 400 pounds of cocaine at a Cudahy house on Clara Street.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, suspects from Cudahy branched out across the United States. A Santa Ana undercover narcotics team seized 154 pounds of cocaine in 1993, and again, one of the suspects was from Cudahy. In 1998, law enforcers made a “significant dent” in the cocaine and heroin supply in Utah, when they arrested suspects in Cudahy and Salt Lake City. One of Ohio’s largest drug recoveries of 2002 (44 pounds of cocaine) involved a Cudahy man. In 2003, a brazen daytime abduction reminiscent of the tactics of a Mexican drug cartel resulted in the body of a Cudahy man turning up in an industrial area near Watts.

Throughout the 1990s, the L.A. County Sheriff had a contract to police Cudahy. But in 2000, Cudahy’s fortunes changed. Then-City Councilman George Perez stepped aside and was immediately installed as City Manager, in a move that sparked a grand jury investigation by District Attorney Steve Cooley into an alleged conflict of interest. No charges resulted, and since then, Perez, a former janitor who has since amassed significant real estate holdings, has ruled Cudahy with an iron fist. In 2003, he fired the Sheriff and hired Maywood P.D., a force with a reputation for hiring problem officers and for suspected internal corruption.

In 2007, Cudahy was off to a violent start with a number of homicides, including two men executed in broad daylight in front of the Elizabeth Learning Center. A Maywood detective who spoke to fifth graders at Park Avenue Elementary, near Cudahy City Hall, said 50 percent of the kids reported seeing guns in their homes, and 30 percent reported seeing drugs or paraphernalia.

Though killings tapered off in 2008, a dispute between the dominant 18th Street Gang and newer sets Down in Action (DIA) and Just Blazin’ It (JBI) have added to a complicated landscape that already included Florencia 13 and Cudahy 13. A neighboring gang from the troubled city of Bell Gardens known as Kansas Street also has been associated with violence in Cudahy. According to law enforcers, the Mexican Mafia makes its presence felt through these gangs.

Yet despite the crime, police seem

to make residents feel more anxious than safe.

“Officer Lawrence Mesa is probably the most popular traffic cop you will ever see,” boasts an article on the city of Cudahy’s website. More like “infamous.” Around Cudahy, people call him “El Moto.” At a recent city council meeting, a woman who had recently been pulled over by Mesa got up to angrily denounce the officer for unfairly targeting Latinos in traffic stops. She accused him of hunting for undocumented residents so he could impound their cars and generate revenue for the city.

Alfredo Leal, 25, an Army veteran only two months back from Iraq, says he’s already been pulled over several times by Mesa since returning home – and has never been charged with a moving violation. “He can’t touch me, because I have a military ID,” says Leal. “But he towed my mom’s car.”

Hauptmann acknowledges Mesa’s predilection for aggressive traffic stops, and recently advised him to mount a surveillance camera on his motorcycle. But the discretion to turn the camera on lies with Mesa, and Hauptmann says the primary intent is to protect Mesa from frivolous or unfounded complaints.

Democracy’s last best hope in Cudahy may be the upcoming election. But District Attorney Steve Cooley has denied any jurisdiction over election matters, including detailed allegations, reviewed by City Beat, of criminal threats made against Mendoza in 2006 and of election tampering in 2007. D.A. spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons says Cudahy is a matter for the FBI.

On a recent Saturday, City Beat observed what appeared to be city resources being used for campaign activity: signs endorsing Mayor David Silva and City Planning Commissioner Josue Barrios were stacked in a city vehicle parked outside the home of a city employee, Gerardo Vallejo – a two-time felon and right-hand man to City Manager George Perez. Another vehicle with campaign signs was parked behind City Hall next to a black Ford Mustang that Perez and Vallejo use to actively campaign for Silva and Barrios. Later that day, the same Mustang was spotted in the parking lot of grocery store owner and city councilman Osvaldo Conde – right next to the same black 1999 Jeep Cherokee that Garcia says he spotted leaving the scene of the October attack.

Deputy District Attorney David Demerjian, head of the office’s public integrity unit, acknowledges that city resources being used for campaign purposes is illegal, but refers to the specific observations in Cudahy as “minimal and incidental.”

L.A. County election officials and

the state Fair Political Practices Committee have not responded to requests for information about election monitoring protocols.

Garcia says March 3 can’t come fast enough, but despite the threats he isn’t backing down.

“This is America,” he says. “The people of Cudahy deserve to feel safe in their own city.”