By: Armando Vazquez
In the mid-1970’s I was hired as a Deputy Probation Officer with the Los Angeles County Probation Department. Affirmative action was the scraps de jour of the time and being thrown at the select minority that had managed to navigate the pristine white waters of the “game”.
I met the minimum requirements of the day: Chicano male, college graduate, literate, no arrest record, and bilingual.
So they hired me, Armando Vazquez, Investigative Deputy Probation Officer II, a very lofty position indeed! I was assigned to the notorious Rampart/Wilshire Division, a rouges gallery of burnouts, retreads and misfits; working side by side with what was to become the most corrupt and notorious Los Angeles Police Department Unit, the infamous Ramparts Division. Justice didn’t have a chance.
I recall receiving very little legal professional training; it was a gritty learn as you “burn them” drama that unfolded before me. You learned as your hair was set on fire and your ass was kicked; by the petitioners, the cops, the judges, your supervisor, everyone coming at you at wrap speed in this brutal real life tragedy.
You would have to deliberate, weigh the evidence and testimony given and then decided to a very significant degree whether the man or woman sitting before you pleading their cases would walk out of your cubicle facing jail time or you have granted the petitioner the “freedom and responsibilities” of probation.
I used my intellect, my common sense, I researched the law and used my street sense, and it was not nearly enough. I could never adequately and rationally adjust my heart and mind around the role of the midget god that I was to play out on the lives of these miserable souls.
Many of my colleagues had no such trepidations; our unit had the reputation for being one of the most inept, toughest and cruelest probation department unit in the entire LA County; no one got empathy, a free spot and easy ticket to probation. I was a punk hippie; a dreaded anomaly, I had to go.
My job was to determine suitability for probation for adjudicated misdemeanor and felony criminals that had petition the court for probation rather serving out their entire jail sentence. I learned quickly that we were unfit gods controlling the lives of these dysfunctional miserable souls.
I was less than one year into my on the job training from hell when my supervisor admonished me that I was not cutout to be an Investigating DPO, “Your too soft, you have to get a hell of lot tougher, they are walking all over you, they are making a fool out of you and a mockery out of the department. You work is unacceptable. Accept a transfer with a demotion and you can stay with the department, otherwise I must recommend that you get terminated!”
I took the transfer and the demotion. I was shipped out to the Siberia of the Los Angeles County Probation, Central juvenile Hall. I was assigned to the X-Y Unit, where the 187’s and the incorrigibles are housed.
There are manmade evil black hellish holes on earth and this chamber of horrors is certainly one of them; a segregate God forsaken isolated prison full of violence, fear, hopelessness, and desperation for broken kids.
I was assigned to work with the most violent and broken wards of the court in all of the Los Angeles County juvenile justice system. Nothing that I had done in life remotely prepared me for the assignment. The X-Y unit was designed intentionally to be isolated from the rest of huge Central Juvenile Hall prison.
The X-Y unit was a claustrophobic rectangular building, dimly lit that was one long dark ominous hallway that seemed to literally suck the air out of you as you made your hourly rounds down the hallway that felt like it was leading you to hell. In the middle was the supervision and command center.
Here our team of 4 to 6 untrained probation staff was directed by a Senior Supervisor. During my tenure at the hall I never met one supervisor that had not “retired on the job,” or had effectively check out of his professional or moral responsibilities; they did nothing more than sit around the command center and gorge themselves with the highly toxic food that was fed to the wards and staff alike.
They were all killing themselves with the poison that we all consumed. The nerves shot, the adrenaline rushing we were all gorging ourselves to death. Fear will do that to a man, make him crazy.
Our work of supervising the ward on the X-Y unit was never routine. You let your guard down for one second and a ward would cold cock you good, injuries were common. You learn quickly that if anyone was going to get hurt it was going to be the wards. The kids could smell the fear that you sweated out of soul, a coward did not last long in X-Y, the kids made sure of that.
The X-Y unit housed about 35 to40 wards, equally divided and housed on either side of the command center. The unit was always filled to capacity with young black and brown men and boys whose life had tragically taken one too many wrong turns.
The X unit was for wards that had committed or were being tried for murder, where active gang members still “claiming” even in the hall, and acutely violent wards. The Y unit generally housed the younger population of dysfunctional ward, highly manipulative, generally re-offenders, many of these wards, some as young as 12 years of age, were victims of horrific sexually and physically abused; and who themselves were capable of monstrous crimes.
These were the kids that you had to watch very closing, or you paid the price of serious injury if you let your mind wonder or rest for one split second around these angels demonized by a world that had betrayed them.
I was from the streets so I kept my fear in check as much as I could, no one was fearless in that hell hole, but we all had to front our machismo or our “mud” as we use to boast. With some PO’s the act worked, with others the façade was weak and transparent and the wards pounce on these fool like Hyenas on a wounded antelope, it was ruthless.
That is the way of life for law enforcement, Terminator/Gladiator tough; and that my friends is where the problems begins. We put on the uniform, the facade and far too often we check out of our humanity.
We worked a 10 hour/4 day shift, frequently we put in 12-14 hour days; frequently one of our colleagues would call in “sick” and we would have to stay to support an always understaffed unit. We were at war with ourselves, our demons, our growing inhumanity, our fear and our stress. We took out all of our anguish on the wards, and they in kind retaliated.
We were in a war zone.
The violence and the eminent threat of violence permeated the air; it could suffocate your reason and sanity. I tried to be a team player from the beginning, and for us in the X-Y unit the beginning was the mandatory strip search of every ward that was transferred to our unit.
The ward was told repeatedly that during the strip search protocol silence was mandatory, and that all orifices of the ward body would be closely examined. These stupid commands were like waving a red flag in front of an enrage bull; often times the wards attacked, they had nothing to lose and a reputation to gain.
During these frequent, often violently, protracted strip search uprisings a ward had to be restrained. When the restraint was done by the book 3 to 4 PO’s would attempt to grab one of the four limbs of the flaying combative ward; control not harm was the mantra.
It seldom worked that way; before we knew it one or more of the PO’s having been punched, gouged or bitten and they retaliated with a punch or a kick to the gut or the groin area.
More than one of the line PO’s during my tenure at X-Y was infamous for using the now outlawed neck chokehold, that back in the 1970’s was euphemistically called the “Chicken Choke”; as in when you cut off a chicken head off it flays around for a short time and then it flops motionless on the ground.
This is what frequently happened to a ward that just could not or would not comply. He was choked into a semi-conscience state to do the “chicken” dance and then plot unconscious into the waiting arms of the assailant PO and the support team. The assaults were often report to the supervisors; nothing was ever done to bring the sadists to justice, or end the torture.
This illegal chokehold was 100% effective when “administered properly” by the few sadistic PO’s that that had the evil audacity to choke a kid nearly to death. I prayed incessantly to my God for safe deliverance and that I would not fall prey to the insidious evil that crept into the souls of the men that worked the X-Y unit.
I prayed that I would never lash out violently at a ward, but rather would have the guts and presence of mind and body to intervene in some way while the scrum was at its violent apex so that I could prevent injury to the ward and my colleagues.
After the incident I would talk to the offending PO and I would get the mad dog glare, admonishing me to “Shut the fuck up, man up and fuck that fool up”. Only my god and I know if I succeeded, but I am at peace with my soul and the work that did in that bottomless pit, full of nothing but rage, violence and pain. I can look straight into the eyes of every young man of color and know that before God I did not succumb to torture.
I share this painful and very detailed confessional with the express purpose of illuminating some light on a very dark and dirty policing practices and tools, that have been around forever; and that I witnessed firsthand both as a Los Angeles county Probation Officer.
And as a Chicano youth growing up in the San Fernando and Pacoima and having seen and experience firsthand the chicken hold brutally applied to me and some of my homies back in the day.
Which bring to mind the phrase that former LAPD Officer turned writer Joseph Wambaugh coined some years ago when he was asked to describe police work, he stated and I paraphrase, “When you roll around in shit long enough, it is hard to separate the shit from who you are”.
That is what is happening with alarming frequently and deadly force today throughout America. , this county is at war; we are killing our men of color and cannibalizing our soul. Our first responder cops far too often see men and boys of color as their enemy.
I pray, organize, reach out, educate, fight for all of the young men, of all colors, that have been murdered by the law enforcement officials. I wait the day that this nation acknowledges that today must be the first day that we get on with the holy mission of sanctifying and honoring all lives, everyone of them.
And Mister Cop if you can do that then get the hell out of the way, burn your uniform and go seek out your humanity.
“I can’t breathe”, he pleaded 11 times as he was being murdered and he will never breathe again! America we must all breath in love, and equity; and justice and peace will be exhaled and liberate us all!
Armando Vazquez, is an owner of Café on A / Acuña Gallery and Cultural Center in Oxnard, California The Café on A has had a historical presence in the Ventura County art scene for 15 years
For more information on Cafe on A:
Executive Directors Dr. Deborah DeVries and Armando Vazquez
438 South “A” Street, Oxnard , CA 93030 Box 1387, Oxnard 93032-1387 Phone: 805-216-4560