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Collusion Between White Supremacist Gangs and Corrections Officers?

 

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COMMENT: Pro­vid­ing depth on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the mur­ders of a Texas DA and his wife, we learn that some cor­rec­tions offi­cers have been col­lud­ing with ele­ments of the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas (not, appar­ent­ly, part of the nation­al Aryan Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion.)

One thing that sug­gests itself is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that field intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­cat­ed by cor­rec­tions offi­cers in league with the white suprema­cists may have been used in the killings.

There have also been reports that the Texas gang may have been work­ing with Mex­i­can drug car­tels, whose abil­i­ty to “turn” law enforce­ment offi­cers and politi­cians is no secret.

We have pre­vi­ous­ly seen white suprema­cist law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als with white suprema­cist views oper­at­ing in con­junc­tion with sim­i­lar­ly-mind­ed crim­i­nal ele­ments before.

Mark Fuhrman and the O.J. Simp­son case will prove an eye-open­er for those unfa­mil­iar with this type of rela­tion­ship.

“Ex-War­den: Texas Prison Gangs Are Col­lud­ing With Guards” by Erin Fuchs [Busi­ness Insid­er]; Yahoo News; 4/8/2013.

EXCERPT: The recent assas­si­na­tions of two Texas pros­e­cu­tors have drawn atten­tion to bru­tal gangs that rule pris­ons in the Lone Star State and beyond.

The Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas (ABT) was linked to the case after the gang alleged­ly issued orders to inflict revenge on law enforce­ment for recent arrests.

The ABT and sim­i­lar gangs alleged­ly oper­ate crim­i­nal enter­pris­es involv­ing meth traf­fick­ing and mur­der even though many of their mem­bers are behind bars.

To do so, gang mem­bers send cod­ed mes­sages to each oth­er through girl­friends on the out­side, for­mer Texas prison war­den Ter­ry Pelz tells us. Prison gang­sters also rely on the very peo­ple guard­ing them to facil­i­tate their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, accord­ing to Pelz, who’s now a “prison envi­ron­ment” expert and con­sul­tant.

Prison guards have been known to accept bribes in exchange for bring­ing in con­tra­band like cell­phones or drugs. Since guards lis­ten in on pris­on­ers’ offi­cial phone calls, a cell­phone can be high­ly use­ful con­tra­band.

Even though this con­tra­band can play a huge role in mak­ing prison gangs’ ille­gal activ­i­ties pos­si­ble, Pelz says, cor­rec­tions offi­cers some­times just get fired and not crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed if they get caught.

But in Feb­ru­ary pros­e­cu­tors hand­ed down a rare fed­er­al indict­ment accus­ing 13 Texas Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Jus­tice prison guards of rack­e­teer­ing. The feds said they were crack­ing down on a Beeville, Texas facil­i­ty’s “cul­ture of cor­rup­tion” that involved smug­gling phones in to mem­bers of the Aryan Cir­cle (a rival of the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas).

One of the for­mer cor­rec­tions offi­cers, 38-year-old Jaime Jorge Garza, pled guilty after get­ting caught at a check­point with four cell­phones, pot, and tobac­co, the Cor­pus Christi Caller-Times report­ed ear­li­er this month. In court, Garza said he got pushed around a lot when he was a cor­rec­tions offi­cer.

“When I got caught at the check­point I was relieved,” he said, accord­ing to the Caller-Times. “I was glad it was over.”

Not only is it tempt­ing for low-paid guards to accept bribes in the first place, but it’s hard for them to stop doing so because prison gang mem­bers might threat­en them, says Pelz, who was a war­den in an Angle­ton, Texas prison in the 1980s when the Aryan Broth­er­hood of Texas start­ed to pro­lif­er­ate.

“Our stan­dards aren’t very high for hir­ing offi­cers,” Pelz says. “These young­sters come to work for the pen­i­ten­tiary and the con­victs eat them alive.”

Discussion

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