Earlier, I mentioned being sent to the East LA Office. The Office is located in County territory East Beverly Drive and extends from the end of Boyle Heights eastward to encompass County areas east and ending in the City of Whittier with an area in County area known as “Jimtown.” Don’t know how “Jimtown” was named, but it was occupied generally by Latinos, including a gang known as “The White Fence” gang. The gang condition in LA was serious, but not there was not as many as the numerous Latino, Black and white street and prison gangs of today. That does not mean the drug, robbery and murder business was not controlled by the local gangs of the 40s and 50s. Actually the Sheriffs responsible for law enforcement were required to act, but they were reluctant to go into “Jimtown” area without substantial back up. Actually, I liked the East LA Office and the whole area and crimes committed therein were substantially different from what I knew, a guy raised in the Beverly Hills area. A new learning process for me. My duties were reviewing police reports and either filing a complaint or rejecting it for insufficient evidence or sending it back for further investigation; dealing cases set for trial or trying misdemeanor cases, mostly DUIs or assaults and putting on preliminary hearings. Also appearing in the Whittier municipal Court and dealing or trying cases in Whittier. Things were going very well, I was gaining a lot of experience and becoming a darn good trial attorney with a high conviction rate. The experience in East LA was a great learning process. Among one of my duties when I decided to file a complaint was to recommend bail. I was never a high bail guy, and believed that bail should be reasonable to assure that the subject would return to court rather than forfeit bail and have his/her family suffer due to their guaranteeing the subject’s return and forfeit what the bail amount was set at. East LA was not, except for Whittier, an affluent area, occupied mostly by workers, laborers and the like. Today bail is being used to keep an accused in custody by what is known as bail schedules set by the local Court Districts and set high and rarely reduced in order to protect the Courts from being criticized for releasing someone who then commits another crime. The US Constitution guarantees a defendant reasonable bail, but, in practice, in the California State Courts, in my opinion that does not apply, and only the rich can make bail while the poor languish in jail until their case is resolved. Don’t get me wrong; I’m no “bleeding heart” when it comes to criminals, but until convicted and unless a danger to society, and I mean a physical danger, I released most of mine, unless the charge carried the possibility of a death sentence in a 1st degree murder case. I believe bail should be set in a reasonable amount or the accused in many cases should be released on their own recognizance, i.e released on their promise to appear known as O.R. The bail schedule business came about actually in Orange County, where a bail schedule was devised to hold an accused after an arrest or the Court-appointed bail commissioner could look at the case and reset bail depending on the charge and the defendant’s background. Normally the bail was revised or the defendant was released pending further appearances on his/her OR. Then subsequently, the State legislature, based on the Orange County program, passed a law making the bail system state-wise. In so doing that, each County devised its own bail schedule and it was different from County to County. As an example, if a defendant allegedly committed a general plan to commit an offense such as robbery but an assault occurred, Santa Clara County would set the bail based on one act, robbery, but San Francisco would set the bail for the robbery and then stack the bail for the assault. The result would be that in San Francisco the accused could sit the jail at say $30,000 for the robbery and add another $10,000 for the assault, but Santa Clara would set the bail at $10,000. Did not matter because generally the schedule for most crimes was so high that the poor could not make it anyway. Whatever happened to “The Presumption of Innocence” that is presumed innocent unless evidence in Court, not a police report, is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. After many years of disproportionate bail for the rich and the poor, in the new reports and the present presidential race this is finally being addressed.
Anyway, I was enjoying East LA, then one day I was informed I was being transferred to “The San Antonio Area Office” that covered the Cities of Huntington Park, Vernon, Bell and the county Area of Bell Gardens, all located in South East LA. Seems a Deputy DA very favorably looked at by the “powers that be” was having almost a nervous breakdown dealing with the three judges that manned the Municipal Court covering the area office and asked me to switch with him, believing I was tough enough to stand up to the judges. So to give you an idea of the area, Huntington Park was a local working class neighborhood. Veron was strictly industrial. Bell was somewhat like Huntington Park and the County Area, Bell Gardens, was not close to a garden, probably populated by more ex-cons than any other area in LA. There was a bar in Bell Gardens called the Green Lantern furnished with boxes for seats as every Saturday night the place would be torn apart by drunken felony fights including mayhem (bodily dismemberment such as a split nose or an ear bitten off.) Cops were reluctant to even go in the place at “fight night,” ie Saturday night, when the brawls started.
Next San Antonio judicial District and my encounters with what I termed “The Three Blind Mice” referring to the local judges
Marshall
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