Making Of A Gangster

A Smile, A War, 
A Boy Named Bobby

By Mark Young

Caution: This is not an uplifting article. It is a story about a war I witnessed on the streets of California, a gang war in one small part of the Golden State that still rages today. A story of regret and sadness. A story of lost opportunities. I can’t possibly give readers a full perspective of that struggle—just a few sketches of one face and one battle. The cost—more than dollars and cents— is staggering.

Splotches of darkening blood marked a grisly trail into the hospital. A car—windows shattered, doors pox-marked with bullet holes—blocked the driveway leading into Kaiser Hospital’s emergency room in Santa Rosa, California. I followed the trail of blood inside the hospital and saw several young boys writhing in pain. Doctors labored over one teenager’s leg, a tibia bone shattered by a through-and-through AK47 round. Later, physicians wondered if the boy might ever use that leg again.

It was 1997. Thousands of gang members continued to wage a war that began years ago in California, a war handed down from father to son, from one generation to the next. Battlegrounds scarred this state, from streets of Los Angeles to the Central Valley of Northern California. The war broadened in scope to seep into every pour of our nation, from one ocean to the other.  Beginning in the early nineties, gangsters deemed illegal aliens were deported to their mother country only to return with international connections, bringing with them drugs, weapons, and human slaves.

I supervised Santa Rosa Police Department’s gang intelligence unit at the time, working with other officers to find a way to mange this chaos. We had to find a way to turn this tide. Our gang officers could not keep up with the violence, quickly reaching burn out. We took to the street, targeting gang problem areas and eliminating the influence of gang leaders by returning them to prison. We thought if we cut the head off this monster, the tentacles would dry up and die.

The shooting on this particular night led us to the doorstep of a young boy living in the midst of all this violence. I’ll call him  “Bobby”  in order to protect his true identity. Bobby’s smile made angels sit up and take notice, a smile that worked its way into the hearts of more than one gang officer. Bobby—on his tip-toes—may have been slightly higher than my gun belt. He seemed to admire police officers, although given his family history I could never figure out why.

Bobby’s natural father was history, and the current ‘man of the house’was a gang leader from Southern California, who migrated north to extend Surenos gang influence in our city among other goals. Nortenos—Northerners—felt they ruled everything north of the Tehachapi mountains. Bobby and his family—because his stepdad claimed Sureno allegiance—became natural targets for all Nortenos in Sonoma County. In retaliation, Bobby’s stepdad and other Surenos plotted to attack these Nortenos and the war escalated.

We began to untangle this shooting case, uncovering layer upon layer of lies, until we learned that a young girl smuggled the murder weapon right under the noses of a couple of officers patrolling a project earlier that night. She looked young and innocent, which is why Sureno gangsters had her smuggle the weapons to where they needed it. They ambushed a car coming out of a housing project, catching all four Norteno victims trapped inside at a stop sign. Miraculously, no one died.

This attack led to retribution and retaliation, over and over again. This war continued throughout  the summer, barely abating until I left law enforcement.

It continues today.

Each battle spilled out onto the street over the slightest provocation.  One youngster “mad dogging” another was sufficient reason to attack—even kill—another gang member. Damaged pride—“because he dissed me"—gave the injured party a legitimate excuse to fan more flames of violence. It became like the ocean driven by a major storm, each wave crashing on the shore with more force than the last.

We never had enough resources or manpower to handle this turmoil, let alone a little boy named “Bobby” caught up in the generational conflict between gangs. The department tried to muster up what we needed, but it never was enough. Changing priorities, changing budgets, and political infighting always seemed to stand in the way.

Looking back, I wished we could have made a difference in just that one boy’s life. It might have made everything else easier to stomach. Bobby seemed to lose the day I met him. We tried alerting school contacts, youth workers, and other groups to no avail. Everyone found themselves  in the same position we were in—trying to bail out a sinking ship.

Years slipped away. I ran into Bobby from time to time as he grew up. Frustrated, I watched as this boy was chased from school to school, neighborhood to neighborhood, because of family gang ties. The only protection he seemed to find was aligning himself with other gang members.

Meanwhile, the gang war took all our attention. The county in which we worked looked peaceful. Nestled amidst wine vineyards, pastureland, and the beautiful Pacific Ocean, Sonoma County looked the ideal place to live to tourists and visitors traveling through. And, for many people, it was a great place to live.

But if one looked closer, they’d see the footprints of trouble. Gang graffiti going up faster than workers could cover it up. Sirens howling thorough the night as patrol units knifed through the darkness to another gang call. Emergency rooms routinely filled with wounded as doctors and nurses tried to patch up  the wounded and dying.

In all this, I lost track of Bobby. The community tried to rally together, creating coalitions targeting the gang violence, trying to work at the root causes of the problem—dysfunctional families, unsafe neighborhoods, poor housing, rising living costs, and rising unemployment.

Meanwhile, the gang unit launched a successful operation, dubbed Operation Black Widow, to attack at least one side of the gang problem—Norteno gang leadership developing throughout Northern California. In a county like Sonoma—with a little less than a half million population—police indentified and targeted more than 1,500 certified gang members in our county alone. The problem became much worse in other areas of Northern California. And, of course, Southern California suffered under an even larger gang problem.

Operation Black Widow and other successful gang efforts brought a short reprieve to the violence, but I saw political interest wane towards gang enforcement as violence lessened. Resources began to trickle in more politically-correct directions.

I was reassigned to work patrol as a supervisor, following calls, helping officers when possible, and watching the gang problem worsen. It seemed unrelenting.

Gang violence returned with a vengeance.

Bobby’s picture floated across my desk just before I left the department, his face scarred from violence. I saw the hardened eyes of a gang leader looking back, a young man bound for prison, the next stop in a gangster’s higher education. The streets finally won. Another young man destined for a life in prison—or worse.

I look back on those years working gangs with a certain sense of loss. Early on we had the potential to make things right, to effectively target gang leadership, to bring a community together, to save some of these young people from the gangs. However, politics and the economy got in the way.The cost of that war sickens me. More than the money, we wasted opportunities to offer a future to these youth.

Most of all, I remember Bobby’s smile, lost somewhere along the road to adulthood.

Today, the best I can do is to weave Bobby’s story into a novel that tries to make sense of of this mess. To somehow make the characters come alive with the reality of Bobby’s world. To help others understand why something must to be done. Before more smiles are lost. Before more kids like Bobby are lost to the streets.

Operation Black Widow

Part II--Operation Black Widow

Gang Expert: George Collord

Santa Rosa Police Department Detective (retired)

Gang instructor, FBI's national in-service training for field agents

Ever wanted to know what goes on behind the headlines of the major crime stories of today? Here is an opportunity to take that journey, to put faces and emotions to those who combat gang violence. This is the second part of the Operation Black Widow interview with gang expert George Collord.

Gang violence rocked the city of Santa Rosa in the late 1990s, shaking up this wine country community an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. Shootings, stabbings and fights erupted throughout the city, reflecting the level of violence in a number of California communities throughout the Golden state. Gang detectives from Santa Rosa Police Department (SRPD) became exhausted trying to clamp down on this bloodshed. The fight seemed hopeless.

Then something began that evolved into one of the largest and most penetrating gang investigations in California. It began small and slowly spread until local state and federal investigators collaboratively took down one of the most powerful prison gangs to ever emerge from the large penal system in the nation. These gangsters called themselves Nuesta Familia (Our Family). This is the story of Operation Black Widow, a joint task force that penetrated the very core of this gang and shook up California gangland worse than any earthquake.

The story begins in 1997. It is a story told by one police officer who was there at the beginning and stayed to the end. It is a story of determination, danger, and personal sacrifice. It is a story of team work between law enforcement agencies throughout the State of California—local, state and federal. It is a story of a case that took five years to bring federal indictments against the leadership of the gang.

It is my pleasure to introduce my friend and former partner, George Collord, currently a gang instructor at the FBI’s Quantico training facility and a consultant to a number of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors in this ever-changing war against gang violence. He has been called to provide consultation to a number of television, movie and media outlets regarding their effort to accurately portray the gang threat in California and other parts of the nation. George retired from SPRD a few years ago and continues to work with law enforcement regarding gang issues.

MARK: Give us some understanding of the breadth and width of this investigation. Ultimately, how many agencies and how many investigators became involved in this effort?

GEORGE: Including federal state and local, there were at least thirty agencies that had parts, some more integral than others. The main local agencies were Santa Rosa PD, Salinas PD, Modesto PD, Stockton PD, and San Jose PD. The Sheriff’s offices were Sonoma and Monterey. The DA’s offices were Sonoma, Santa Clara and Monterey Counties. The state agencies were California Department of Corrections, California Highway Patrol and to a lesser extent the California Department of Justice. Federally, and without them we’d have been nowhere, was the FBI.  The main core of investigators numbered about ten with a dozen or so others in support positions.

MARK: Can you share with us some of the statistics of this operation?

GEORGE: Are we talking about how much overtime I made or how much weight I gained eating fast food in darkened parking lots? Didn’t think so. We arrested and convicted in the neighborhood of about seventy-five gangsters in both federal and state court. Of course that doesn’t tell the whole story since there were, and continue to be, spin-off cases that have nabbed dozens of others throughout California.

MARK:  Many of our readers are mystery writers and readers. Can you paint a picture of a gangster that would be true and authentic? If you were to create a fictional character—a gang leader—on paper, what are some of the attributes and characteristics you might choose to create this character? 

GEORGE: My training/speaking partner with whom I travel the country lecturing is Daniel “Lizard” Hernandez, a veteran of savage battles both in and out of the pen. He was and is definitely gang “shot caller” material. Over the nine years that I’ve been around him I’ve come to appreciate his specific characteristics that made him a feared leader. So, I’ll use him as an example. First, he is highly intelligent and reasonably educated, even though he never made it past 8^th grade. Instead, he educated himself in prison libraries. I remember when he told me how important it was for his gang writings to contain proper syntax, Hey, I thought syntax was something the IRS collected in Vegas.

Next, he is fearless. He proved this through years of gunfights, knife fights and takeover robberies in which the next second could be your last. “Manipulative” is how I’d describe another constant characteristic in those of his ilk. He could, through writings and verbal messages, make someone a thousand miles away do his bidding—and basically thank him for the opportunity to serve the organization. Charisma drips from gang leaders.

Lizard speaks and law enforcement officers crowd around to listen, whether it’s during a lecture, or later around a beer. Gang leaders must be extremely charismatic because of the constant need to either recruit or convince others of your point of view in a world so brutal it would turn most men to pudding. Being decisive is a necessity for survival in the gang world. He who hesitates gets his wind taken by a sharpened turkey bone. And you cannot underestimate a good old sense of smell. Gang leaders can smell a set-up for miles (unless it’s a sneaky spider web being spun!). It’s the only way they have survived to get to the top. I was lucky enough to surreptitiously observe these guys in their natural habitats and would say they are as driven and competent as some of our better known CEOs in this country. It’s just that in their world, a hostile takeover is a little more serious.

MARK:  Tell us about the GUNS CD and the story behind this part of the investigation

GEORGE: Generations of United Nortenos was a music disc and brainchild of three Nuestra Familia members in The Bay. They were Gerald “Cuete” Rubalcaba, my pal Lizard Hernandez, and Robert “Huero” Gratton. The idea was to create a music CD that would appeal to young Latinos and help recruit them into the ranks of the Nortenos, the breeding ground for hate toward the soldados of the Mexican Mafia.  Gratton got out of the pen and hooked up with a rapper in Tracy, California known as Sir Dyno. They put together an illegal record label and produced the CD with 13 songs.

The lyrics were all about killing as many “scraps” (derogatory term for Surenos) as one could in a statewide war. If you were to join this war with the southerners, you’d be part of a huge army that would have your back on the streets and in the joint. It was very appealing to a lot of dysfunctional kids out there looking for a cause and a family to accept them and their violenct tendencies. Ultimately, we recruited both Lizard and Gratton as witnesses.

Operation Black Widow

Part I-Operation Black Widow

Gang Expert: George Collord

Santa Rosa Police Department Detective (retired)
Gang instructor, FBI's national in-service training for field agents

Gang violence rocked the city of Santa Rosa in the late 1990s, shaking up this wine country community an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. Shootings, stabbings and fights erupted throughout the city, reflecting the violence erupting in a number of California communities throughout the golden state. Gang detectives from Santa Rosa Police Department (SRPD) became exhausted trying to clamp down on this bloodshed. The fight seemed hopeless.

Then something began that evolved into one of the largest and most penetrating gang investigations ever tackled in California. It began small, slowly spreading until local state and federal investigators joined hands to take down one of the most powerful prison gangs to ever emerge from the largest penal system in the nation. These gangsters called themselves Nuestra Familia (Our Family). This is the story of Operation Black Widow, a joint task force that penetrated the very core of this gang and shook up California gangland worse than any earthquake.

The story begins in 1997. It is a story told by one police officer who was there at the beginning and stayed to the end. It is a story of determination, danger, and personal sacrifice. It is a story of team work between law enforcement agencies throughout the State of California—local, state and federal. It is a story of a case that took five years to bring federal indictments against the leadership of the gang.

And after all this effort and expense, don’t look for a happy ending.

It is my pleasure to introduce my friend and former partner, George Collord. He is currently a gang instructor at the FBI Headquarter’s in-service nationwide training program for field agents. He is also a consultant to a number of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors in this ever-changing war against gang violence. He has been called to provide consultation to a number of television, movie and media outlets regarding their effort to accurately portray the gang threat in California and other parts of the nation. George retired from SPRD a few years ago and continues to work with law enforcement regarding gang issues.

MARK: To understand Operation Black Widow (OBW), help us understand what gang detectives were up against in 1997.

GEORGE: Mark, thanks for the opportunity to inform your readers. We were up against it as a community and as a police department. We’d been caught slippin’, as they say, by a wave of gang violence that started in the late 1980’s and hit its stride in the early 1990’s. At first it was groups of what I call “fad” gangsters, fringe kids who fell in with the gang life style as a result of films such as Colors, Boyz in the Hood and Menace to Society. But once the fad faded, we were left with two main opposing forces, younger latino kids in huge groups, one wearing red, the other wearing blue. The colors had nothing to do with Crips and Bloods, though we did not know that at the time. We had assaults (beat downs, stabbings, shootings) and murder that jumped off in the schools, malls, streets and housing projects. We could not figure out what caused it.  The board of supervisors, city council and community leaders were alarmed to say the least. They were opposed to the term “gang-related” because that meant a threat to tourist dollar coming into the Sonoma/Napa wine country. But there was no denying the wounded and dead bodies. So the police departments were charged with coming up with ways to stop the violence.

MARK: How did the Nuestra Familia (NF) come to be? Why were they formed? Who were they?

GEORGE: Well, the NF started as a defensive organization in the California Department of Corrections. You have to back up to just after World War II. In the pen there were no gangs, just inmates. But in 1957, a small group of latino inmates from Southern California, who’d been affiliated on the outside with one another in LA and Bakersfield, came together for protection at Duell Vocational Institute in Tracy, California. They called themselves the Mexican Mafia or La Eme.

Essentially, they wanted to protect themselves from bigger, meaner white and black inmates. The idea caught on and their numbers swelled. The black inmates soon came together in a gang known as the BGF, Black Guerilla Family. The whites came together as the Aryan Brotherhood.

This left one large unaffiliated group, latino farmer worker types who’d come from the Central Valley, San Jose, and Salinas who had no gang affiliation on the street. They found themselves the object of extreme abuse from rape to extortion.

In the mid 1960’s, due to physical and mental problems among military serving in Viet Nam War, a number of latino soldiers wound up in the pen. Some of them found their way into numbers of the unaffiliated latino inmates who came from the farms. They,  along with some disaffected Mexican Mafia members, helped to organize the rural latinos into a self protection group known as La Nuestra Familia. The NF formerly announced its existence with a series of vicious attacks on La Eme starting on Mexican Independence Day, September 16, 1968. The war that ensued cost the lives of nearly 300 inmates in the prisons of California. The CDC began separating inmates from Northern California from those in Southern California in a bid to stop the violence, hence the North-South conflict we have today.

MARK: How much of this did you know before Operation Black Widow began?

GEORGE: Very little. I’d gone through the Oakland Police Academy in 1982-1983 and there was absolutely nothing on this prison problem in our classroom instruction because it was not relevant at the time on the streets of Northern California.

MARK: How much power do Nuestra Familia (NF) leaders wield?

GEORGE: The leaders’ words are the difference between life and death. They can control, via proxy, thousands of inmates in state pens, county jails and juvenile halls. They control the streets via older more influential street gang members or parolees from that gang.

MARK: What is the organizational structure of the NF?

GEORGE: The organizational structure is set forth in their constitution. They have an Overall Governing Board (OGB) that acts as a check and balance for three generals, ten captains and a series of regimental commanders. Under them they have what I call a farm team, the Northern Structure (or Nuestra Raza). Under them they have thousands of street nortenos and norteno sympathizers. Their organization looks like a great pyramid from Egypt.