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Los Angeles, California
March 13, 2000"Vale mas una gota de verdad que un mar de mentiras - - - one drop of truth is far greater than an ocean of lies" said Catarino Gonzalez Jr. to his mother Teresa Gonzalez to demonstrate his faith that he will be found innocent of the murder of Los Angeles police CRASH Officer Filbert H. Cuesta, Jr. on August 9, 1998. This is extraordinary for such a young man considering the horrors that he as well as his family have endured at the hands of the now discredited and disbanded neighborhood LAPD CRASH units.
The so call CRASH units were disbanded after a series of revelations that they had been framing and torturing Latino youths as well as planting evidence and intimidating witnesses in order to secure convictions. A CRASH police officer broke the scandal after he became an informant in order to get a lighter sentence for stealing 3 kilos of cocaine from the police evidence room. The LAPD corruption scandal has been unraveling ever since.
One can say that Catarino's problems began when former California Governor Pete Wilson decided to wage war on Mexican immigrants and Latino youths in certain areas of Los Angeles. With ambitions to run for president of the United States, he devised a strategy he thought would get him elected. A Republican, he figured that he would secure the votes of the conservatives by playing on their fears of Mexican and Central American immigrants. Pete Wilson and his cohorts pushed a series of anti-immigrant measures including the recent Juvenile Criminal Justice Initiative which will send children as young as 14 years to adult prisons.
In addition, Pete Wilson undertook a campaign to "demonize" Latino youths and specially those who associated with "gangs." One gang that was targeted was the so called 18th Street Gang of Los Angeles. The City passed a series of unconstitutional injunctions that prohibited young people from gathering in groups or from hanging out in certain areas of the city. For the purpose of enforcement, Republican Mayor Richard Riordan ordered Police Chief Parks to form the now infamous CRASH units.
The CRASH units, like an occupation force, were deployed in areas whose residents are exclusively people of color and whose majority are recently arrived immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The police CRASH units undertook their deplorable mission with fervor and assaulted the neighborhoods with a vengeance.
Catarino is typical of most youths in his neighborhood that is located southwest of downtown Los Angeles. The homes are well kept and the yards are kept neat and the sidewalks clean. Children play in their yards or ride their bicycles on the sidewalk. The people are friendly and polite but due to their experiences with the CRASH units, they are now mistrustful of the police and outsiders.
The LAPD CRASH police apparently began beating and robbing Catarino after they tagged this young man as being a member of the 18th Street Gang and after he was charged with possession of a small amount of a controlled substance. According to Catarino's mother, one night after working at a car wash, he was stopped by two CRASH officers and robbed of his $80 dollars in wages and a $300 gold chain.
His mother adds that on another occasion, while Catarino took his baby niece to the corner to wait for the ice cream truck, two CRASH officers stopped their squad car in front of him, got out and without provocation hit Catarino with a baton on his private parts and left him laying on the street writhing and vomiting a yellow substance. The loud crying of the baby girl alerted her and the neighbors who immediately attended to the injured Catarino. People here have been conditioned to remain quiet because they fear police retaliation so that they rarely make civil rights complaints .
The incident as told by Mrs. Gonzalez, a deeply religious mother, is not much different from what occurred to another young man who was left paralyzed by two LAPD CRASH officers. The young man, Javier Ovando, was shot by an officer then they planted a shotgun as false evidence in order to say that he was armed. Javier Ovando was sent to prison but has now been released after the CRASH officer confessed to the framing.
Officer Filbert H. Cuesta Jr. was one of the few good CRASH officers. He was respected and well liked by Catarino's neighbors. In fact, according to members of the community and Catarino's defense attorney, Officer Cuesta and Catarino liked and respected each other. Officer Cuesta was well educated and was attending California State University at Long Beach at the time of his death. Reliable sources say that a few of the CRASH officers were jealous and envious of Officer Cuesta and uncomfortable with his good rapport with the community and specially with the youths he tried to help. He was a good father, husband and active member of his church.
Catarino is also well liked by his friends and neighbors and very much loved by his family. His defense attorney, lamenting the predicament of his client, said that he is a "very nice kid." A catholic priest in the local church has also very good things to say about Catarino and occasionally visits him in county jail.
So what really happened that fateful night of August 9, 1998? Shortly after midnight, Officer Cuesta and his partner, Officer Richard Gabaldon, responded to a "loud party" call at a home near the intersection of Carlin Avenue and Du Ray Place in southwest Los Angeles. While waiting for "backup", Officer Cuesta was hit on the head after a number of bullets tore through the back window of the squad car. Media reports during the time of the shooting were contradictory and with significant errors. One newspaper reported that Officer Cuesta's partner was a female which later proved to be wrong. An intense hunt for the perpetrator or perpetrators was underway when the police chief announced that a person had turned himself in two days after the shooting. Details were sketchy and there was never a report that made sense. There has always been a gnawing feeling that something was just not right.
Then the LAPD CRASH corruption scandal broke to the surface hitting Los Angeles like an earthquake. People's memories started becoming refreshed and questions arose concerning the particulars of the Cuesta case. Why would a person turn himself in for such a heinous crime? Catarino was targeted as the culprit by the police soon after the shooting and the police visited his family. According to Catarino's mother, the police raided his sister's home and ransacked it and told her that they were looking for his brother. They informed her that if Catarino did not turn himself in that they will hunt him and kill him like a deer. Catarino, affirming his innocence to his family, went to the southwest police station with his brother-in-law. This was the beginning of what must be the greatest nightmare in Catarino's life.
Tagged as a "Cop Killer", scores of officers started torturing him, according to accounts by Catarino to his mother. Catarino told his mother that they injected him with some kind of drug that made him go crazy. They interrogated him for hours, threatening him with death and all of this without the benefit of an attorney. Catarino reported to his mother that he went without water and food for days for fear that they had put something in it. Official court documents indicate that Catarino was apparently given some kind of polygraph examination but it is apparent that the questioning was done under extreme psychological duress. A question has arisen as to why the judge did not immediately dismiss the case.
According to members of Catarino's community, the police then took extensive efforts to find witnesses in the neighborhood. One disturbing incident according to both Catarino's mother and sister was the attempted production of a false witness. They stated that the police went to an elderly neighbor and asked him to testify against Catarino in the preliminary hearing but that the neighbor refused. The elderly man had a police record with two strikes and according to Catarino's mother and sister, they threatened him with a third strike if he did not testify against the alleged suspect. The elderly man still refused and he is now in prison. This allegation merits the most extensive investigation by federal authorities. It would not be very difficult to interview the mother and sister and determine the name of the elderly man to see if like at the Rampart division, the CRASH units in the Southwest division also intimidated witnesses to secure convictions against targeted youths. The Rampart LAPD CRASH Officer informant confessed to tactics similar to those alleged by Catarino's mother and sister. He is now in jail and many other officers have been dismissed and there are now pending criminal charges against these officers.
Catarino's mother, Teresa Gonzalez, cries a lot because she worries about the safety of her son Catarino while he waits for the trial in Los Angeles County Jail. She visits every week but for a period of three weeks she and other family members were not allowed to visit. After three weeks, when she was finally allowed to visit, she was horrified to see her son's face swollen and covered with sutures. Catarino told her that one night two guards took him out of the cell on the pretext of having to clean inside. They guided him to a dark corridor where a person was waiting with his head covered with a black hood. He was then beaten severely. These allegations have been brought to the attention of Supervisor Gloria Molina but an aide by the name of Miguel Santana, said that they do not want anything to do with the case because they do not want the county government to be sued. This same county supervisor, who represents the immigrant areas where the CRASH units operated, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times of saying of the victims "After all we are not exactly dealing with the pillars of the community."
Catarino's mother stated that the defense attorney has received anonymous death threats. This was confirmed by the attorney. The attorney stated that he now has installed a surveillance camera outside his office. Also, Catarino's younger brother Luis was shot under mysterious circumstances. The police left him on the street injured with a bullet lodged in his hand. Catarino's attorney expressed deep concern that the CRASH units did not call paramedics. The family had to drive Luis to the hospital. According to Mrs. Gonzalez, the police showed up during surgery to confiscate the "bullet" removed from Luis's hand.
Who then killed Officer Cuesta? This very question should be asked by every decent Angeleno. We must search the pit of our souls for an answer for after all there is a young man in jail under threat of state execution. He is there because the discredited and corrupt CRASH units say young Catarino is guilty. Javier Ovando, the youth framed and crippled for life by the CRASH units was lucky because one "dirty cop" spoke up. Should the decent Los Angeles society or the "pillars of the community" as Supervisor Gloria Molina is fond of saying, depend on possibly another "dirty cop" to speak up on this case as well? Just last week, the Governor of the State of Illinois, mandated a moratorium on all state executions because police there have also lied and framed many people of color and some have been executed by the state. How many innocent Chicanos and Blacks have been executed by the various state governments on the lies of the police, a corrupt judicial system or the incompetent and uncaring performance of a public defender? Anyone familiar with the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter saga will know the answers to these questions.
All of us have a moral obligation to make sure that justice prevails on this case not only for the Gonzalez family, but also for the Cuesta family. The fates of these two Mexican-American families, separated by a gulf of social and economic parameters, became intricately entwined by forces only too dimly understood by the public.
Meanwhile, Teresa Gonzalez can only pray and hope that her son's faith that "vale mas una gota de verdad que un mar de mentiras" will also prevail.
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Prior Cuacauhtzin Columns:
LOS(T) ANGELES: The Shameful LAPD and LAUSD Corruption Scandals
California Proposition 21 Will Incarcerate More Latino Children
The Hypocrisy of U.S. Immigration Policy
A DEAFENING SILENCE: Latino Elected Leaders and the LAPD Corruption Scandal
Hector Carreon is the founder and editor of La Voz de Aztlan and resides in Whittier, California. He was born in the Mexican state of Chihuahua and moved to Aztlan at the age of 5 years. Hector is a graduate in Civil Engineering from California State University at Long Beach where he was a founding member of the Society of Mexican-American Engineers and Scientists (MAES). He served honorably for two year as a Vietnam-era soldier in the U.S Army's 2nd Armored Division and is a graduate of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund's Advanced Leadership Program. Hector Carreon can be contacted at La Voz de Aztlan
