Thread by @ethanbrown72

New: for decades, violent "deputy gangs" inside the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department have wreaked havoc with beatings and shootings that have cost LA County upwards of $55 million in legal settlements. 1/13
nymag.com/intelligencer/…

But a deputy gang called The Executioners at the LASD's Compton Station may be the most violent. For nearly 20 years attorney John Sweeney has litigated cases involving violence committed by Compton deputies, eventually cracking The Executioners code. 2/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Sweeney's war with Compton deputies began in 2001, when Shanara Batiste tried to help a relative stopped by deputies who wrongly believed he was involved in a burglary. Deputies slammed Batiste onto a car hood, shattering her teeth and jaw. 3/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Sweeney obtained a 375K settlement for Batiste. His next case was in 2009 when deputies chased and shot to death Avery Cody Jr., 16, outside a Compton McDonalds. Deputies said they had to take cover behind a newspaper rack as Cody took aim at them. 4/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

But Cody was unarmed and fleeing from the deputies when they shot him—and surveillance video showed that the deputies never hid behind a newspaper rack. In 2011, Los Angeles County settled the Cody case with Sweeney for $500,000. 5/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

In 2010, Compton deputies chased and shot to death Robert Thomas, Jr., 21, whose only crime was standing outside a party deputies said was gang related. Deputies said Thomas had a gun—but no gun was found—and LA settled the case for $7.5 million. 6/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Sweeney had been litigating Compton cases for nearly a decade, and he was suspicious. "There is a gang out here. We just don’t know it. I knew that I had a gang because of the history of deputy gangs within the LASD...I just had to prove it." 7/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

In 2016, Compton deputies Samuel Aldama and Mizrain Orrego chased and shot to death Donta Taylor, 31. They said he was armed, but LASD searched the scene for days and found no weapon. LA settled the case w/Sweeney for a staggering $7 million. 8/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Sweeney found out that months before Aldama and Orrego killed Taylor, they nearly beat Sheldon Lockett, 29, to death in Compton. After the beating Lockett was charged with attempted murder+jailed for months before the (false) charges were dropped. 9/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Sweeney filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on Lockett's behalf and as he conducted depositions he found out that Aldama and Orrego bore the Executioners tattoo, which features a skeleton holding a Kalashnikov style rifle encircled in flames. 10/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Finally, during the deposition of an LASD whistleblower in 2020, Sweeney broke The Executioners code: deputies seeking to join the gang commit an act of violence—sometimes a killing—and are then accepted and "inked" with the Executioners tattoo. 11/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

The whistleblower said Executioners prospects radio in a false report of a gun—a "ghost gun"—give chase and then shoot their unarmed victim. Suddenly, the long history of Sweeney’s deputy killing cases where guns were never recovered made sense. 12/13 nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Legislators like @RepRaskin and @RepMaxineWaters have asked DOJ to investigate. Meanwhile, deputy killings+big settlements keep coming. Sweeney estimates that $30 million of the $55 million deputy gang related settlements have been his. 13/13 #longreads nymag.com/intelligencer/…