“What it indicates is more of a thug mentality, doing things that are – wink, wink – not exactly above board.

“Why does it have to be a skull holding a rifle? How does that stand for hard work?” the union rep said of the Compton ink. That has done little to satisfy McDonnell’s internal critics, who complain he has been a reformer in name only, and threatens to cast a harsh spotlight on everything from controversial shootings to staff and equipment shortages as McDonnell faces an unexpectedly tough re-election battle against a 30-year department veteran in November. Jim McDonnell, the current boss of what is America’s largest county police department, has ordered an internal investigation into what he called “renegade cliques” and insisted – despite an official finding by the district attorney’s office last year in favor of Aldama and his partner, Mizrain Orrego – that the Compton incidents are still being investigated. Lee Baca, the former sheriff, as well as his former No 2 and close to a dozen former sheriff’s deputies, have been prosecuted and convicted of an array of offenses from abuse of police power to obstruction of justice. It has jolted civic leaders in Los Angeles, just a few years after an epic scandal in which sheriff’s deputies, supported and protected by senior officers up to the sheriff himself, were found to have engaged in systematic beatings of prisoners, helped smuggle drugs and other contraband in and out of jail on behalf of White Power gang leaders, and worked to conceal aspects of the scandal from the FBI. The revelation wasn’t just a Perry Mason moment in court. But he did know that the Los Angeles sheriff’s department had a history of violent gang-like cliques that glorify violence for its own sake and pressure deputies to break the rules so they can prove their bona fides and “earn their ink” in the form of just such hidden tattoos. Sweeney hadn’t known about the tattoo in advance.

We suspect there are a lot of victims of this gang John Sweeney

Between 10 and 20 deputies at the Compton station had the same tattoo, he acknowledged. After some hesitation, Aldama showed an elaborate image on his calf of a frightening skeletal figure wielding a rifle. Next, Sweeney asked Aldama if he had a tattoo. At first Aldama said he did have ill feelings, then changed tack and said he’d misunderstood the question. Again, no gun was ever found.Īt a deposition hearing in May, Sweeney asked one of the officers, Samuel Aldama, if he harbored racial animus toward African Americans, and Aldama spent close to five minutes struggling to give an answer. Again, the officers claimed to have seen a gun. Sheldon Lockett had been standing with a friend outside his godmother’s house in broad daylight when, according to eyewitnesses, the officers showered him with racial abuse, repeatedly used a Taser on him and shoved a night stick into an eye socket, causing him permanent damage. Sweeney later learned that the same two officers had delivered a savage beating to another young black man in Compton a few months earlier. And it hit me that something was going on, that they were doing this to become a member of something or to gain favor … because this is not policing.”

“He’d gone out to buy a Sprite and a single.

No reason!” Sweeney said in an interview with the Guardian. But no gun was ever found at or near the scene, and Taylor was not suspected of being involved in criminal activity when the officers approached. The police claimed that Taylor had been wearing gang colors – Compton is the birthplace of the notorious Crips and Bloods – and had pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his waistband. To Sweeney, who had cut his teeth as an associate of the legendary civil rights lawyer Johnnie Cochran, the 2016 killing smacked of an execution, the work of renegade police officers reveling in violence for the sake of it.

Compton shooting november