"A Real Shot" Texas AG Sues To Stop $1.7 Trillion Bill Implementation On Constitutional "Quorum" Grounds; VIDEO: Ukrainian Troops On the battlefield Giving NAZI Salute; REVEALED: Nikki Haley Is One of Globalist World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab's 'Young Global Leaders' The Barrio Azteca gang derives most of its income from smuggling heroin, powdered cocaine, and marijuana from Mexico into the United States through the portal it controls between the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Nearly all of them, however, confessed that they knew TDCJ had its share of dirty guards. Some rules were just too silly to heed. In this role, you will be required to transport the signs to the customer's location, prepare the sig. They reinvest these funds to fuel the gang's supply of drugs, guns and ammunition. The officials fitted Sandoval with handcuffs, leg irons, and a belly chain. Eventually, however, Vicente and Garcia began to ask for more than a light. Sandoval was then ordered to take off his uniform and replace it with inmate furlough clothes. They use any means necessary in an attempt to control their . In Del Rio, a federal judge sentenced 29 Uvalde/Hondo-area Texas Syndicate (TS) members over the past two weeks to federal prison, including four defendants to life imprisonment, for various racketeering and drug trafficking offenses committed in Uvalde, San Antonio and the surrounding areas announced United States Attorney Richard L. Durbin, Jr., and Special Agent in Charge Christopher Combs . That afternoon in the interrogation room, Special Prison Prosecution Unit investigator Royce Smithey bore down on Sandoval. Full electrics grew share, whilst plugin hybrids remained static. Facebook The two inmate snitches who testified against Sandoval understated their criminal history, contradicted each other, and came off looking like dirtbags who would say anything for the right price. He had lied to his own investigator, just as inmates and Internal Affairs had lied to the jurors. Both in cities and behind bars, members of the Texas Syndicate began using hand-signs and gang markings to show their allegiance to the group. When Sandoval told me that, he was sitting in the interrogation room of the Walker County jail in Huntsville, wearing prison whites. McALLEN, Texas (WOAI/KABB) They're one of the most notorious gangs in Texas - the Texas Syndicate and according to the DEA, they are a criminal organization that works with the Mexican cartels. Sandoval took a step toward the crashgate but was held back by the more experienced guard. Sandoval is one of more than sixty TDCJ guards who have been indicted by McDonalds Special Prison Prosecution Unit over the past six years for felony offenses. He did not turn himself in. Released or parole members who generate money for the gang must surrender a 10% tax ("the dime") of all proceeds toward the Texas Syndicate in prison. Perhaps it was because Vicente was so quiet and servile or perhaps he had such a talent for lingering that the porters simply paid him no mind. The caller advised Sandoval not to show up for his March 18, 1991, trial, and then hung up without identifying himself. Were he to pay his old workplace a visit, Luis Sandoval would notice several changes at Ellis I. The war ended with a treaty in 1997. More accurate investigations lower the number to about 4000, with some sources even going as low as 3800. The question was when. Peaceable inmates who had lost faith in TDCJs ability to protect them now felt less inclined to carry shanks everywhere they went. texas syndicate hand signs Come on, Sandoval. And as in any society, some lead while others are led. Rank is taking care of them.. Garcia would later say that he told Sandoval shortly after the Arredondo murder, Man, youre in deep shit. Paranoia overcame him. By the spring of 1986, prison officials had examined every inmate for telltale tattoos, weeded out identifiable gang members, and ordered that they spend the rest of their sentences in administrative segregation, away from the general population. Prisons, crammed with thrill-seekers and outright junkies, provide the ultimate captive consumers. A week later another juror wrote Sandoval a four-page letter, expressing her chagrin that he had been put through all the agony. Sandoval experienced the escalated violence in the summer of 1985 first hand as he initiated . SMU is among the Texas colleges that have unique ways of showing pride -- with their hands. Beneath the cosmetic alterations, however, things at Ellis I are just as Sandoval left them. [4][5], The Texas Syndicate was established at Folsom State Prison in California in 1978 in direct response to the other California prison gangs, notably the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia, which were attempting to prey on native Texas inmates. Anytime they choseanytimethey could kill him. Everybody knew about this scum. Yet Apple Jack went unpunished: He tithed a share of his profits to the Texas Syndicate and gave the supervisors something to crow about by setting up a guard now and then. By now he was a CO III, an old boot, and he had trained many of the guards who now worked with him. By the time 21-year-old Luis Sandoval, a new boot at Huntsvilles Ellis I Unit in the summer of 1985, was approached by an inmate with an unlit cigarette, his ears were still ringing from a more desperate request he had heard during his first week on the job. The guard made the call, apparently unaware that such messages, and the letters, might contain coded instructions from a prison drug-runner to a high-ranking member of the Texas Syndicate. The impulse is to accommodate the inmate, since prisonsspiritual wastelands of concrete and metalcry out for random acts of human kindness. Colors: Red, black, green; Green can be used with Red ; 5 point star or crown; Pitchfork pointed down; MOB ; UBN; 21 Brick Pyramid; Dawg paws; hand sign making "B"; "P" or "TP". Many of the gang leaders who had been doing time are now in the free world, spreading the gang network across the state, beyond prison walls. As the free world would have it, there are good inmates and bad inmates. While the number of effective affiliates within the federal prison system continued to grow, the Texas Syndicate began expanding their operations to the outside world. Texas Chicano Brotherhood (TCB) Texas Mafia. Throughout that specific decade, the state of California saw the birth of several criminal organizations. He grabbed the stash of marijuana he had recently picked up, ran to the bathroom, and flushed it down his toilet. Inmates fashioned shanks out of road signs, door hinges, food trays, typewriter platen rods, and field equipment. The main activities of the TS are centered on drug trafficking, extortion, protection rackets, and internal discipline and contract murdering. The caller, known as El Carpintero, was a convicted child molester from El Paso who nonetheless had managed to obtain a job, under an assumed name, as an x-ray technician at Ellis I. El Carpintero instructed Sandoval to drive to a location in Huntsville where a sack containing marijuana awaited. The gang cooperates with allied Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) or transports the illicit cargo themselves. Either the guard didnt know what was going on, or he did. Over time, Sandoval got sucked into the undertow of prison life. Throughout the Sandoval trial, guards on the witness stand were asked if they had ever stopped a gang member from murdering an inmate. In his first year on the job, Luis Sandoval found himself delivering drugs to a self-described drug runner on behalf of the states deadliest prison gang, the Texas Syndicate. [1] Gang members smuggle multikilogram-quantities of powdered cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, and multiton-quantities of marijuana from Mexico into the U.S. for distribution inside and outside prison. Respect other members; 8. One Ellis I officer reported that in 1986, between one hundred and two hundred gallons of chock was discovered on a weekly basis within the unit. Leslie Zepeda died the day after Christmas. Ten Ellis I guards who worked with Sandoval testified that they had no knowledge that Sandoval was involved in drug transactions with prison gangs. Texas Chicano Brotherhood 11. Sandoval felt more at home with fellow Hispanics than with the black inmates, who terrified him. Sandoval got off in Los Angeles and found his way to Van Nuys, where a cousin put him up in his apartment. A court granted the ACLU of Illinois and Black Lives Matter Chicago permission to intervene in the consent decree negotiations. Located in thriving Austin, Texas, Airship Syndicate was founded by four industry vets formerly of Vigil Games - the house that Darksiders built. The corridor where Joe Arredondo was murdered is now permanently guarded. (This inmates name has been changed as a condition of his interview.) And as you work there, you tend to become a product of your environment. On the way home Sandoval asked his cousin to drive the scenic route. We know who you take orders from. They didnt believe Sandoval. The drugs are distributed by the gang on both sides of the border. To get drugs out of the free world and into prison cells, there must be a courier. The money chiefly comes from drugs. Each society sustains the other, but the economic cycle depends on a vital link, for the supply will not meet the demand unless the product reaches the consumer. Had Schapers investigation been thorough, this denial might have seemed implausible to the jury. Sandoval insisted that he didnt know anything about the Arredondo murder other than what he filed in his report. If he refused to do the favor, they could always snitch on him for lighting an inmates cigarettethough Sandoval didnt think either was that type of inmate. On March 19, the name of Luis Sandoval was called three times in the Walker County courthouse, but the defendant did not respond. Sandoval did not tell his mother why he was such a vulnerable candidate. The answer was always no said former Ellis I officer Nolan McCool, If the opportunity exists, theyre gonna make the hit. The west end of the B-wing hallway was left unguarded after three-thirty every afternoon, when the guard normally stationed there was transferred to the chow hall. The prosecutors of Luis Sandoval not only conceded this but went out of their way to make it part of their case. When cocaine was cheap, he sold coke; when pure coke became scarce and heroin became abundant, Garcia seized the opportunity. Wear the Texas Syndicate tattoo; 6. Other gangs also sprang up: the Hermanos de Pistoleros, the Self-Defense Family, the Texas Mafia, the Nuestra Carnales. Youre telling us its a coincidence that you werent down at the end of the hallway? To the newer guards, Sandovals stature among the inmates was something to behold. Thereafter, inmates made their blades out of hard plastic or made do with whatever crude instrument was within reach, like the cast-iron weight an inmate found in the recreation yard and used, with one vicious swing, to lop off the ear of another inmate. What you usually see in any gun buyback program is elderly people turning in old junk guns from some closet or garage where they have sat gathering dust for many years. Did you know that 40% of all inmate escapes occur during transport? Several of them testified vigorously that Ellis I was understaffed and overcrowded, and that the unit was riddled with blind spots. Each gang had its own hierarchy and its own rules; each member was not permitted to leave his gang, even outside of prison, except by his own death. He had a one-week prison furlough coming up; the gang didnt want to spook him, fearing that he might not return to Ellis I. Garcia, a four-time loser serving a life sentence for repeated theft and heroin offenses, was one of the friendlier inmates: 33 years old but actually grandfatherly in demeanora gentleman, you could almost sayquiet and unthreatening. Neither possibility seemed likely, given what Sandoval had learned about TDCJ in his first few months on the job. Upon Arredondos return, they ushered the inmate to an infirmary cell, where a guard stood nearby, waiting for Arredondos bowels to evacuate a container of drugs.