The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-largest municipal police department in the United States, after the New York City Police Department and the Chicago Police Department.
The Rampart scandal involved in widespread police corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers either assigned to or associated with the Rampart CRASH unit were initially implicated in various forms of misconduct, including unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of false evidence, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury, and the covering up of evidence of these activities.
A shootout, also called a firefight or gunfight, is a fight between armed combatants using firearms. A shootout often, but not always, pits law enforcement against criminal organizations; it can also involve two groups outside of law enforcement, such as rival gangs. A military term for a shootout in a combat situation would always be considered a battle, rather than a shootout. Shootouts are often portrayed in action films and Western films.
Sanctuary city refers to municipal jurisdictions, typically in North America, that limit their cooperation with the national government's effort to enforce immigration law. Leaders of sanctuary cities say they want to reduce fear of deportation and possible family break-up among people who are in the country illegally, so that such people will be more willing to report crimes, use health and social services, and enroll their children in school. In the United States, municipal policies include prohibiting police or city employees from questioning people about their immigration status and refusing requests by national immigration authorities to detain people beyond their release date, if they were jailed for breaking local law. Such policies can be set expressly in law or observed in practice, but the designation "sanctuary city" does not have a precise legal definition. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated in 2018 that 564 U.S. jurisdictions, including states and municipalities, had adopted sanctuary policies.
Ray Lopez is an American former police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the central figure in the LAPD Rampart scandal. An officer with the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) task force, Pérez was involved in numerous crimes and corruption, notably the shooting and framing of Javier Ovando, in addition to the theft and resale of at least $800,000 of cocaine from LAPD evidence lockers.
Special Order 40 is a police mandate implemented in 1979 by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), its Police Chief Daryl Gates and the Los Angeles City Council preventing LAPD officers from questioning people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. The mandate was passed in an effort to encourage undocumented aliens to report crimes without intimidation. The first section of the order states:
Officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person.
Officers shall not arrest nor book persons for violation of title 8, section 1325 of the United States Immigration code.
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area. Over time, the gang grew into a more traditional criminal organization. MS-13 is defined by its cruelty, and its rivalry with the 18th Street gang. They are considered to be the most dangerous and ruthless gang in the world.
The Murder of the Bologna family occurred on June 22, 2008 when Anthony Bologna and his sons, Michael and Matthew, were shot dead near their residence in the Excelsior district of San Francisco by Edwin Ramos Umaña, who mistook the victims as rival gang members for whom he wanted retaliation.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a police force serving Los Angeles County, California. LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States and the fourth largest local police agency in the United States, following the New York Police Department (NYPD), the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Los Angeles municipal Police Department (LAPD). LASD has approximately 18,000 employees, 9,915 sworn deputies and 9,244 unsworn members.
Mark A. Morgan is an American law enforcement official who served as the Chief Operating Officer and acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from July 5, 2019, to January 20, 2021.
Timothy Joseph McGhee is a convicted serial killer and Toonerville Rifa 13 gang member of Scottish and Mexican descent from the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. He is alleged to have been responsible for at least 12 homicides between 1997 and 2001, three of which led to convictions. McGhee is also suspected of at least 10 attempted murders, four of which led to convictions. In 2018, the Los Angeles Times named McGhee one of the top 20 most notorious killers in the history of California, a list that included the likes of Charles Manson, the Golden State Killer, and the Night Stalker.
Tupac Shakur, an American rapper, was shot on September 7, 1996, in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was 25 years old. The shooting occurred at 11:15 p.m. (PDT), when the car carrying Shakur was stopped at a red light at East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane.
On July 1, 2015, 32-year-old Kathryn "Kate" Steinle was shot and killed while walking with her father and a friend along Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. She was hit in the back by a single bullet. The man who fired the gun, José Inez García Zárate, said he had found it moments before, wrapped in cloth beneath a bench on which he was sitting, and that when he picked it up the weapon went off. The shot ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier and struck the victim, who was about 90 feet (27m) away. Steinle died two hours later in a hospital as a result of her injuries.
The Lynwood Vikings is one of the many deputy gangs of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, appearing to meet the legal definition of a gang when taking into account the department's repeated illegal conduct. The Lynwood Vikings faction was based at the now-defunct Lynwood station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), whose members are sworn deputy sheriffs in the LASD. Its members have included Paul Tanaka, deputy sheriff and LASD second-in-command to the sheriff, Lee Baca, and, allegedly, Idaho Sheriff Robert "Bob" Norris. After lawsuits repeatedly surfaced concerning the group's activities, the Vikings were described by federal judge Terry Hatter as a "neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang" engaged in racially motivated hostility. The 1992 Kolts Commission report stated there was a lack of evidence of racist deputy gangs but that some Lynwood Viking deputies did engage in brutality and ganglike activity. Other sources have described the Vikings as a social organization.
The Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office was a U.S. government agency established within the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration in February 2017. President Donald Trump directed it be established by Executive Order 13768. The office was dissolved by the Biden administration on June 11, 2021, replaced by the Victims Engagement and Services Line (VESL).
Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes is a convicted Mexican murderer who killed two police officers in Northern California. On October 24, 2014, Bracamontes opened fire on three Northern California sheriff's deputies, killing two and wounding the third, while a civilian was also wounded in the shooting. Bracamontes is a citizen of Mexico and a convicted drug dealer who was in the United States illegally. Bracamontes was sentenced to death in 2018.
Ronil Singh was a Fijian-born American police officer who was shot and killed on the morning of December 26, 2018, in Newman, California, by a driver he had pulled over on suspicion of driving while drunk. Paulo Mendoza, a 31-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant, was arrested three days later. Prior to his arrest for the murder of Singh, Mendoza was found guilty of multiple offenses.
2017 California Senate Bill 54, commonly referred to as "SB 54" and also known as the "California Values Act" is a 2017 California state law that prevents state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources on behalf of federal immigration enforcement agencies. The law allows for cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement in cases of violent illegal immigrants, and is often referred to as a "sanctuary law" due to its resemblance of sanctuary jurisdiction policies.
The issue of crimes committed by illegal immigrants to the United States is a topic that is often asserted and debated in politics and the media when discussing Immigration policy in the United States.
