Hector "Weasel" Marroquin (pictured above, with his son), the anti-gang worker who people say never really left the shadowy embrace of 18th Street, is back in trouble. This time, for selling firearms to undercover federal agents. Jeffrey Anderson at LA Weekly.com has the details of how the arrest went down. In the L.A. Times story, respected civil rights attorney Connie Rice bluntly states: "I never for a moment believed that he ever left the life. ... I always thought he was using the system." See Anderson's previous look at Marroquin's shady dealings, with Christine Pelisek, in "Broken Bridges."
Meanwhile, gang-related homicides in Los Angels are down down down, the LAPD says. But keep in mind its only June, and the hottest months of the year are not even here yet:
Police in high-crime areas such as Newton Division and the neighboring 77th Street Division are accustomed to sharp, inexplicable spikes in crime. "We go 11 weeks without a homicide, and then we'll have three in three days," Arsiniega said.
Gang violence in L.A. may be down, but it seems to be soaring in the high desert outpost of Victorville, where intervention efforts are starting earlier than ever. (With relatives in Modesto, Tracy, Stockton, and Fresno, I've learned to never doubt cholos from the interior; don't they always seem more hard-core than city cholos?)
At the S.F. Chron, ACLU Nothern California chapter director Maya Harris has a compelling op-ed about the values and priorities in the new state budget, pointing out that California pays more to incarcerate its people than to educate them. And at NPR, Mandalit del Barco files another documentary piece from El Salvador on the inexorable reach of the Mara Salvatrucha.
* L.A. Times photo above by Carlos Chavez.