Gang Accused of Conspiring to Kill Blacks
Federal prosecutors allege that members of the Avenues in L.A. plotted to commit violence against African Americans.

By John Spano, Times Staff Writer
July 4, 2006

Authorities are using a federal hate-crime law based on the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that outlawed slavery, and another law created in the civil rights era, to go after four gang members. [color="Red"]Barbara Bernstein, deputy chief of the criminal section of the civil rights divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, is part of the prosecution team.

Attorneys for the defendants — Gilbert Saldana, Alejandro Martinez, Fernando Cazares and Porfirio Avila — have asserted that the federal government has no power to involve itself in a common street crime.

Defense attorney [color="Red"]Reuven L. Cohen told jurors last week that one of the slayings cited in the charges — the 1999 shooting of Kenneth Wilson — was not a hate crime but "a simple gang killing committed out of boredom."

Cohen said the crimes sprang from the "sad" truth of "a tension that exists between African American gangs and Latino gangs."

The first of three former gang members, each in custody and hoping for leniency, testified Monday. Jesse Diaz, who described himself as a tagger from age 12, told jurors the Avenues decided to fight the "infestation" of blacks in Highland Park with a systematic terror campaign designed to run them out of the neighborhood.

Diaz, who has 10 more years to serve in prison for attempted murder, said the Avenues hated all rival gangs. But the antipathy for blacks was different, he said.

Highland Park became the scene of a game in which Diaz's group of Avenues actually competed with another "clique" to run the most blacks out of Highland Park, he testified.

One [Spic] told the FBI in interviews that the gang got an order in 1998 from the Mexican Mafia prison gang to "kill any blacks … on sight."

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