The LAPD and Los Angeles district attorney face persistent problems protecting witnesses to gang-related crimes. Following Brad's court testimony against Sanchez, a group of young toughs showed up at his former job site.
"They were asking for me but didn't say why," Brad says. "Then one day as I was leaving my building, a few guys that looked like bangers were trying to get in. They said they were looking for a girl. When I asked them what apartment, they named mine. I took off."
PHOTO BY DYLAN GORDON
Part Time Punks producer Michael Stock at the Echo
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He's watching his back. "If they're stupid enough to shoot into a crowd, they're capable of doing something else stupid."
No one accuses the Mongols of being smart. They've been infiltrated twice by federal undercover agents. Former Mongol national president Ruben "Doc" Cavazos was autographing his HarperCollins tell-all at Book Soup in West Hollywood a week before his 2008 arrest.
But they are "the most dangerous criminal organization operating in Southern California," according to the 177-page racketeering indictment that resulted from Operation Black Rain. It charged Mongols with peddling meth and coke in Hollywood nightspots Vanguard and the Key Club. It also accuses the Mongols of racially motivated beat-downs on the Sunset Strip.
The indictment described "wing parties," where Mongol members earn badges: green for banging an STD-infected biker babe, purple for screwing a girl who's dead.
That indictment led the federal government to outlaw the Mongols' patch, which depicts a warrior wearing sunglasses on a bike, under a forfeiture law that lets police confiscate property being used to engage in criminal conduct.
From 2008 to last September, officers could stop members wearing the Mongol patch and take their jackets right off their backs. But a federal judge struck down that practice. The Mongols are again flying their colors and flexing their muscle.
On any given day, the most menacing thing rolling down Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz could be Kirstie Alley stopping at restaurants as she falls off her diet. But on a recent Sunday, about a dozen big men, flaunting their Mongol black leather and riding Harleys or driving a pickup, dropped into the Drawing Room bar.
The windowless gin mill, rated by L.A. Weekly as one of the best dives in the city, had at the rail a handful of old smokes and ubiquitous hipsters. One rattled customer later said, "They just had beers, but when they all walk in together with their colors, it's intimidating."
Now the Mongols are recruiting, looking for guys back from Iraq and Afghanistan. A federal report to law enforcement groups nationwide obtained by L.A. Weekly says: "The Outlaws, Pagans and Mongols, adversaries of the Hells Angels, are actively recruiting from the military for new members."
Brad has since returned to catch bands at the Echo, his mind now focused on economic worries, as the Hollywood restaurant he works at is shuttering. "This guy is an idiot," he says of Sanchez. "I just want to get this behind me."
Reach the writer at hstier@truthdig.com.