Undercover?

The police are not the only people that can be undercover.
In the story below the director of an antigang organization
that he posed for was still very much involved in crime and
was still a shot caller for L. A.'s largest street gang. He was
recently sentenced to eight years in prison. Do you think
justice was served or should he have been given more time?


Hector "Big Weasel" Marroquin, 51, was sentenced to eight years in prison, said Eric Harmon, the Los Angeles County prosecutor in the case.

Marroquin's accomplice and girlfriend, Sylvia Arellano, 26, pleaded guilty to illegal weapons sales. She is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison, Harmon said.

Marroquin was arrested in May in a case that stemmed from an investigation by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into gun sales by the 18th Street gang.

Using video surveillance and a confidential informant, the agency bought several weapons from Marroquin, Harmon said.

In one case, Marroquin sold a MAK-90 semi-automatic assault rifle out of his bar, Marroking Seafood and Bar on Atlantic Avenue in Cudahy, to a confidential informant for the firearms bureau, authorities said.

He also sold a Ewbank 7.62-millimeter assault rifle to the confidential informant and a M-11, similar to an Uzi, to an undercover bureau agent, authorities said.

Marroquin has had numerous run-ins with law enforcement.

He is a reputed longtime member of the South-Central Los Angeles 18th Street gang. A gang expert testified to a grand jury that Marroquin remained a shot-caller in 18th Street despite claiming to have dropped out, Harmon said.

Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators believe he organized street-gang taxing for the Mexican Mafia in the city's Lennox area in the mid-1990s.

Sheriff's investigators believe he ordered Latino street gangs to attack the Lennox 13 gang for refusing to pay taxes to the Mexican Mafia. A gang war ensued.

In 1996, Marroquin formed No Guns, an organization he said was dedicated to mediating gang wars and stopping gun violence in besieged neighborhoods.

The city's antigang program, L.A. Bridges, eventually contracted with No Guns to provide gang intervention services, in part becaue of a dearth of Latino antigang organizations in the area.

The city ended up paying No Guns $1.5 million over a three-year period.





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