by Samuel Logan
Rodriguez grabbed the kid, took him back to his parents’ apartment dressed in his street gang clothes. Around cops the bad attitude was hard to mask. With the clothes and bad attitude still in place, Rodriguez revealed the boy’s other life to his bewildered parents. Lifting up the kid’s shirtsleeves, Rodriguez showed the parents their child’s gang tattoos.
To Rodriguez, these tattoos were a brand and a constant reminder of the permanency of the MS influence on any kid’s life. When Rodriguez explained all this to the unsuspecting parents, they were speechless. Rodriguez thought the kid was on the fringe of the MS. He wasn’t yet a hard-core member. “The parents are the last ones to know,” the kid’s mom lamented before Rodriguez left the apartment.
For many immigrant families, the gap between their lower-class existence and the middle class always seemed to grow wider, making it impossible for them to pull themselves up and out of the hole they had tried to escape back home in Central America. They were constantly chasing an American dream that could be seen everywhere but was never obtainable at home. The only way to keep the family afloat was to work constantly. Keeping up with the Perezes—the Latino version of the Joneses—was never supposed to be this hard.
Three years after Rodriguez and others inaugurated their community policing program, the Mara Salvatrucha firmly established itself in the Culmore neighborhood of Fairfax County. Columbia Heights West and the Arlandria section of Alexandria were also MS-13 hot spots. It was a growing problem, one the local police had still not been able to completely control. Prevention programs, desperately needed to keep kids from joining gangs, were meager in the face of such need.
Rodriguez remembered that MS-style violence finally splashed across local media in the summer of 2000, when a fourteen-year-old was arrested for the stabbing death of a twenty-two-year-old man in the Falls Church section of Fairfax County. José Rodriguez, along with two other minors, pushed, kicked, and stabbed their victim outside the Culmore Shopping Center on Leesburg Pike. José had been jumped in when he was thirteen, having fallen under the influence of his older sister’s boyfriend, an MS member who, like Veto in Texas, had MS tattooed across his forehead and numerous other tattoos across his neck, arms, and upper chest. José received fourteen staples in his head after his jumping-in ceremony. He had been beaten with a crowbar.
Before killing his victim, José met fifty other MS members in the woods behind a restaurant where he requested judgment and punishment for excessive drug use. It was rare for an MS member to request to be judged by his fellow gang members. Normally, MS members tried to avoid it. But José was adamant and he was found guilty. After the beating, he set out to find a victim to prove his loyalty to the gang and bolster his position within the group. José was still in elementary school when he was arrested.
At the time of José’s arrest, Rodriguez had become familiar with twenty to thirty gangs in the northern Virginia area through police training. All except the Mara Salvatrucha had fewer than a hundred members. The Mara Salvatrucha boasted at least six hundred members in Fairfax County alone.
José Rodriguez was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was the youngest person in Fairfax County to be tried as an adult, and even after receiving twenty-two years for secondary murder, the young gangster didn’t recant his loyalty to the MS. His sister started hanging around the MS when she was ten. His parents were never home. The MS had become his family, and even in prison, he was not about to let it go.
In August 2001, the brutal rape and murder of Diana Garcia, a young mother and not a member of the MS, hit the papers. Not a month later, the murder of Joaquin Diaz shocked Rodriguez and his colleagues, as well as federal authorities. They realized that there was a growing gang problem across northern Virginia. But the Mara Salvatrucha was a nebulous, fluid group, one that blended in perfectly with the Latino immigrant communities and, like these communities, was always flying under the radar of state and federal law enforcement.
Like the Latinos around them, members of the MS followed the labor market. They took jobs hanging dry wall, cleaning carpets, nailing down shingles, or building wood frame houses. Their daily interaction with other Spanish-speaking immigrants during lunch or after work was always laced with the allure of the money a criminal life could bring. The more MS gang members, the greater its power and presence. Power meant dominance. Once its rule was established in any Latino community, the MS could run a number of criminal rackets and enforce its position with the threat of violence. Drive-by shootings, stabbings, armed robberies, and other violent crimes were on the rise. More and more, hardworking mothers and fathers in the Latino communities found their children lost to a fast-moving world of crime, drugs, money, and sometimes death.
When Denis Rivera killed Joaquin Diaz, the MS was thoroughly entrenched across the mid-Atlantic region between Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Nearly eight years had passed since Snoopy arrived, and the Mara Salvatrucha had control over most of the Latino communities across three states. The toughest hurdle for Rodriguez and others trying to combat the MS was the gang’s ability to hide inside immigrant communities.
Immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, were afraid to talk to the cops. They were afraid of what the MS would do if word got out that they had shared information with the police. Worse than gang retribution, however, was deportation. Most members of the Latino communities where the MS thrived just wanted to work hard, send money home, and live a quiet, simple life. They wanted nothing to do with the MS or with the cops.
But the MS wanted something from them, something more than silence. The MS wanted their kids, specifically, their American-born sons. Many of these kids saw the MS as something cool, a source of pride in their Latino heritage, and a way to get ahead in life. The parents, ever fearful of deportation, could do little to prevent their children from entering a life of crime. They were forced into silence and remained at a distance from the local police. Immigrant parents could not share information that men like Rodriguez needed to rid Latino immigrant communities of predatory gang members.
Rodriguez worked hard to win the community’s trust, reassuring people that he couldn’t deport them. Only if they were arrested could federal agents put them in detention and have them deported. All he asked for was some information and a little trust. He needed them to help him make their communities safer and protect their kids. Rodriguez, and other local cops who spoke Spanish, could make some headway in these communities, but their numbers were limited. Most cops didn’t speak Spanish.
Despite the surging MS presence in his jurisdiction and the general sense of trepidation among Latinos in the communities where the MS thrived, Rodriguez did manage to make some impact. It was enough to earn him a luz verde.
CHAPTER 22
It was a hot day in mid-July, but Rick Rodriguez was determined to enjoy his son’s baseball game despite the heat. It was the weekend, and Rodriguez was off duty, a rare break when he could enjoy himself and not worry about his law enforcement duties. He was in a part of Maryland where his police beeper didn’t pick up a signal. I don’t mind at all, he thought with a smile. He didn’t know yet that he was a marked man. A short drive away, in Arlington County, Detective Mike Porter had learned from Brenda’s description that Rodriguez was probably the other cop who was given a luz verde by local MS leaders. Porter couldn’t get in touch with Rodriguez.
The marked detective was driving home after the game when his beeper began vibrating as page after page registered. He had at least a dozen calls from Porter, who was frantically trying to get hold of him before some MS member put a bullet in his head. Rodriguez called Porter immediately, curious to know what all the frantic paging was about. Porter quickly told him that he had a credible informant who knew something about the MS wanting to kill cops. The informant had accurately described Rodriguez.
“Well, Porter, I don’t know what to tell you, but how do we know she doesn’t know me?” Rodriguez asked. “I know we’re not supposed to as
k for names, but if you want me to know, you’ll tell me. So in light of all this, can you tell me who this person is?” Rodriguez asked with some caution. He knew he was pushing professional boundaries by asking for the name of Porter’s informant, but it was his life at stake here.
“Yeah, no problem. Her name is Brenda Paz,” Porter replied.
Brenda Paz, Brenda Paz, Rodriguez swiftly mouthed, testing the name against his memory, but it didn’t register. “The name doesn’t do anything for me,” Rodriguez responded. He had always suspected that he was a marked man, but it had been weeks since he had deciphered Brenda and Denis’s conversation, and he had never heard Brenda’s name. He would have to get to the bottom of this information and determine if Porter’s informant was truly credible.
“Well, she knows you well,” Porter said, explaining to Rodriguez that he needed to make it a priority to see her.
“Can I come by?” Rodriguez asked, looking at his watch while driving, guessing it would take him about an hour from Maryland to get there.
“No problem,” Porter said.
Rodriguez wanted to be sure Brenda wasn’t playing any games. “Okay, I’m headed your way now. Do not tell her I’m coming.” Rodriguez emphasized that last part. If this informant knew who he was, he wanted to judge her reaction to him when he stepped through the door unannounced.
When he finally did walk through the door in the classroom at the juvenile detention center, Brenda was seated next to Porter and Greg. He looked at Brenda and didn’t recognize her. So he turned to Porter, waiting to be introduced.
“Brenda, do you know who this is?” Porter prodded.
“No. Should I?” Brenda asked, not catching on.
“Well, you don’t know him?”
“No.”
“I don’t know her either,” Rodriguez added.
“This is Detective Rodriguez. He speaks Spanish,” Porter said, looking for some sort of reaction from Brenda.
“Oh my God! You! I, I’m trying to save your life!” Brenda shouted, with a sudden burst of energy and recognition. Rodriguez was skeptical. She could have been faking the outburst.
Considerably more composed, Rodriguez said, “I appreciate it, Brenda, I really do appreciate it.”
Rodriguez had his doubts. He was aware that Porter’s informant could be setting him up in some way for a hit, rather than trying to save his life.
“Tell me about this,” Rodriguez began as he sat down in front of Brenda, seeking to dig further into the matter.
“No, I’m trying to…I’m trying to save your life. They really want to kill you,” Brenda said, still excited.
“Just me?”
“No, there’s another guy named Ignacio.”
“Oh, I see, and where does this information come from?” Rodriguez asked, curious to know how Brenda knew he and Ignacio were given a luz verde.
“You don’t believe me?” Brenda asked, beginning to see that Rodriguez was going to be hard to convince.
“I didn’t say, ‘I don’t believe you.’ I’m asking you questions because I don’t know who you are, and you apparently know me,” Rodriguez explained. “If you’ve never seen me, how do you know what I look like, what I drive, where I work?”
“The meetings,” Brenda said with a confident tone. She knew what she was talking about. “At la misa, they discussed you. They discussed you going after them, you locking up the leaders. How you’re not giving them respect. You’re always in their business. You know too much about them and they don’t like it,” Brenda explained. “And the same thing for that other cop in Alexandria. They say you two work together.”
“Well, we do work together because we are police officers and we share information,” Rodriguez responded, still cautious. “And that’s a reason to kill a cop?” Rodriguez asked, still probing Brenda.
“Do you want me to prove it?” Brenda was obviously bothered that Rodriguez didn’t believe her. “I can make a phone call right now,” Brenda offered.
“You can make a phone call right now and do what,” Rodriguez challenged.
Brenda had found a way to win Rodriguez’s confidence. “I can get them to talk about it,” she declared.
“Really? Well, as long as Detective Porter doesn’t mind me using one of their phones, I don’t mind sitting in. And I can listen to the conversation because I speak Spanish,” Rodriguez said.
Porter arranged for Brenda to make some phone calls while Rodriguez listened, but it didn’t work. None of the MS homies that Brenda called were willing to talk about killing a cop. They were cautious and suspicious, with reason. Brenda had been off the streets for just over a month. Suddenly she called asking about their plans to kill cops. It made Rodriguez nervous. Even though she pushed the gangsters on the other end of the line to the point where Rodriguez thought that she might reveal her true motives, Brenda still wasn’t satisfied with her performance. She grew upset, on the verge of tears. Brenda desperately wanted Rodriguez to believe her.
“Calm down, Brenda,” Rodriguez told her, trying to get her to relax after she hung up. “Just calm down. I’m the one you’re talking about here. And I’m okay. I appreciate what you’re doing. I’m not sure why you’re doing it, but I appreciate it,” Rodriguez said. Brenda’s face remained twisted in a scowl. She was still upset, but had composed herself somewhat. The tears were gone. “The fact that they’re not talking to you is okay. I believe that you’re telling the truth,” Rodriguez offered.
“When I set my mind on something, I want it done,” Brenda responded in a huff. “There is no waiting,” she said, still scowling.
After his discussion with Brenda, Rodriguez was convinced she was right about at least one piece of information: he was a target. But he still had his doubts. Rodriguez continued to ponder his situation as he left the interview room and headed for his office in Arlington. Against his better judgment, he couldn’t help but like the girl. He thought about what Porter had told him before he left, about Brenda’s knowledge and her group of friends, but he just couldn’t imagine how she ended up running with the real bad boys of the MS.
“On one hand,” Rodriguez said to a colleague at the office after spending some time thinking about the young MS informant, “Brenda Paz could probably sell an Eskimo a block of ice. And on the other hand she could be as ruthless as anybody else. She has this smile. I mean, her nickname is Smiley. She has this cute little smile, and she has a great personality,” Rodriguez continued, shaking his head as if trying to clarify Brenda’s confusing dual personality. “What in the world would possess her to get into this kind of crap? I mean, she’s got personality, she’s got spunk, people seem to just gravitate toward her—and yet she has this other side of her that frightens people.”
Rodriguez was worried that Brenda’s personality was so contagious that she could even convince a law enforcement person that she was doing the right thing when in truth she was setting him up for the kill. She’s that good at it, and she knows it, Rodriguez thought to himself. Brenda had earned respect to the point where she had the tattoos. And according to all accounts, the people she ran with were not wannabes or friends of members. They were hard-core.
Ten percent of MS members were the guys who give their life and soul to the gang, spending every day of their lives in gang affairs. Veto and Denis were part of this group. About half of the homies were jumped in, calling themselves MS, but spending time with the gang mostly on weekends, holding regular jobs during the week. The rest, Rodriguez often told the rookies, were simply posers.
After Rodriguez met Brenda and began spending time with her, he continued to feel that something was not right. He had to get to the bottom of why she was helping them.
“Let me ask you this, Brenda,” Rodriguez said to her at a meeting at the end of July. “Why on earth are you helping us? What is your motive? What’s your angle?”
Rodriguez couldn’t shake the feeling that she was setting them up. Maybe she gave the cops the little things that meant not
hing to the gang so they entered a comfort zone with her. Rodriguez considered that Brenda was likely well versed in the various methods of rocking the cradle, gaining confidence before the strike, and he knew cops were not immune.
During the first few weeks after Brenda decided to become an informant, she remained in constant contact with Mike Porter and Greg Hunter. By the end of July, Rick Rodriguez was also a regular presence at her interviews with other police. Whenever she called, one of them would show up. Who knew if she wouldn’t call one day to lure them into a trap?
Responding to Rodriguez’s question, Brenda was surprisingly frank with him. It was an important moment when Rodriguez finally realized that Brenda was genuine about wanting to help the police. He had begun to realize the truth. She was a teenage girl simply trying to get out of trouble.
“Listen, I’m tired of this life. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of watching people get hurt. I’m just tired of it all,” she said with a sincerity Rodriguez found hard not to believe.
“So how is working with us going to help you?” Rodriguez countered.
“There are only two ways I can get out,” Brenda replied. “One, I can help you guys dismantle MS. With the information I have, you can be rid of them quickly. You will be locking every one of them up,” Brenda said with confidence. “We eradicate them all, they’re all gone, and I’ve got nothing to go to. I have to start brand-new.”
Rodriguez waited for her to offer up option number two. Brenda slowly looked up and said with a straight face: “Or they kill me.”
CHAPTER 23
Addicted to the freedom she’d experienced while living on the streets, Brenda got antsy in her new role as informant. For nearly two months she had spent most of her time locked up with no hope for release or escape. Greg took her out to eat on occasion, and there were always the meetings with Porter, Ignacio, her defense lawyer Jason Rucker, Greg, and Rodriguez, but she was ready to get out of detention.