Officer AJ Blake (center) said the GPD gang unit has focused almost
exclusively on the Latin Kings despite the fact that other gangs have
been shooting against each other. Also pictured are the Rev. Cardes
Brown and Blake’s fiancee, Sandra Sanchez. (photo by Jordan Green)
The Latin Kings, a provocative Latino
street organization labeled a gang by
the Greensboro Police Department,
found perhaps the most unlikely of allies
earlier this month a former member of the
department’s gang unit.
Officer AJ Blake, who is currently
suspended without pay as he appeals a
conviction for two counts of assault on a
female, told reporters at New Light Missionary
Baptist Church on June 2 that the gang unit has
almost exclusively focused on the Latin Kings,
even to the exclusion of investigating gangs
that were shooting at each other.
“The Latin Kings have been specifically the
focus, given to me by my supervisor, Sergeant
[Ronald] Sizemore that he referred to as being
directed by Captain [John] Wolfe,” Blake said.
“The gang unit was instructed to charge the
Latin Kings with any possible violations that
we could.”
Blake said certain investigative tools used
against the Latin Kings qualified as abuses of
police authority.
“For example, we’re investigating an
attempted murder on, I believe it was,
Maplewood Lane, and we were having
difficulty locating one of the Latin King
members that was involved allegedly in the
incident as the driver of the vehicle,” he said.
“Her parents were not cooperating, so the
strategy of my sergeant was to order several
officers to stay outside her house waiting for
the mother and father to leave because they
did not have a license, to wait for them to get a
certain distance away from the house, to then
arrest them for driving without a license, and
tow the car. Which to me is outrageous.”
Officer
AJ Blake (center) said the GPD gang unit has focused almost exclusively
on the Latin Kings despite the fact that other gangs have been shooting
against each other. Also pictured are the Rev. Cardes Brown and Blake’s
fiancee, Sandra Sanchez. (photo by Jordan Green)
Blake said he approached Sizemore last year
with a concern that the squad was focusing
exclusively on the Latin Kings while two street
gangs on Martin Luther King Drive were
actively shooting at each other.
“To me, preservation of life is more
important than going after what we think [the
Latin Kings] might be doing,” he said. “When I
approached my sergeant, and said, ‘We need to
stop this incident before someone gets killed,’
he still wanted to focus on the Latin Kings.”
Chief Tim Bellamy dismissed Blake’s
allegations.
“If someone has given you a directive
you don’t agree with, our directives allow
you to file a complaint,” he said. “He filed
two complaints before. Why didn’t he file a
complaint about this? I talked to his chain of
command and no one recalls him bringing this
forward.”
Blake said the gang unit’s obsession with
the Latin Kings dates back to 2006, when
arrested members of the Latin Kings refused
to cooperate with police officers who were
trying to book them and, as Blake described
it, “attempted to
assault the arresting officers,” requiring them “to call the deputies
to assist them.” Blake himself was the subject of complaint by the
Latin Kings.
Cornell said after he was arrested in December
2007 and charged with assaulting a police officer, Blake asked him
which hand he wrote with. Cornell responded that he wrote with his left
hand, and said that subsequently a warrant was drawn up alleging that
he struck Officer Robert C. Finch with his left arm. A year later,
Cornell was acquitted of the charge.
Blake responded at the
press conference that he “told Jorge I only asked questions relevant to
the investigation.” The suspended officer, who played the “good cop”
with the Latin Kings, described an attitude of hostility among his
colleagues.
“Once when I was interviewing Cesar Herrera, a
member of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, I was interrupted
by Officer Sizemore, who took over the interview,” Blake said in his
prepared statement. “Officer Sizemore began shouting at Cesar and said
that he wished Jorge Cornell, the leader of the ALKQN who had been
recently shot, had been killed. It was not said in a joking manner.”
During the same episode, in which Latin Kings
were
accused of carrying out a retaliatory attack against someone who turned
out to be completely uninvolved, Jason Yates said Sizemore made the
same statement to him. “I made an off-hand joke,” Sizemore told YES!
Weekly when asked about the allegation last November. “Probably it was
in bad taste. He was laughing. I was laughing.”
Despite his
acquittal last December for the charge of assaulting a police officer,
Cornell said the gang unit has continued to harass the Latin Kings, and
his organization has filed five or six formal complaints with the human
relations department. They have also been using digital video to
document their interactions with the police.
“We’ve actually
got an officer on tape laughing at us,” Cornell said, “saying, ‘You can
go ahead and file all the complaints you want with human relations;
it’s not going to help.”
Racism alleged to be widespread on force
Blake,
who is a black officer of Honduran descent, suggested the abuses of the
Latin Kings that he has described are tied in to a larger culture of
racism within the department. He said that when he “indicated that
there was other more serious gang activity than the harassment
activities in which we were engaged, Sergeant Sizemore said that his
image of a gang member is a Latino male.” Blake said he filed two
complaints against fellow officers for making racist statements, and
the department took no action to correct problems.
Then a
member of a street narcotics squad, Blake said he filed a complaint in
2006 against a Sgt. Hafekaneyer for describing Latinos as “wet-backs”
and saying during surveillance of a Latino club “that all the members
there looked like illegal immigrants and he was disgusted that a
blond-haired, blue-eyed woman would degrade herself with illegal immigrants.”
Blake
said he filed a complaint with the sergeant’s supervisor, who
investigated it and told the complainant that the offending sergeant
“admitted making the ‘wet-back’ comment, but [said] that he did not
realize I was Latino.”
Blake said he also filed a complaint
against Officer Ashley Brown, who “said because I am from Honduras I
must be a gang member and that he considers everyone from Honduras to
be gang members.” The response from Lt. Whisnant and Capt. Dwight
Crotts, who is now an assistant chief, Blake said, was that he could
not substantiate his complaint and “I was claimed to be hyper-sensitive
towards jokes about Latinos, that I can’t take a joke.”
Asked to respond to Blake’s account, Chief Bellamy said the complaints “were investigated by supervisors and appropriate actions were taken.” The chief said he could not discuss the outcomes of the complaints, but questioned Blake’s credibility, stating, “Everybody he’s talked to he’s done changed lines about what he’s said.” Blake acknowledged that his motivation for coming forward is his unhappiness with the city’s decision to suspend him without pay after he was criminally charged. That policy has been applied selectively, he said.
During the press conference, Blake apologized to the city, to the police department and to his fiance, Sandra Sanchez, for his behavior at a drunken police party to celebrate the birthday of Michael Caudle at the Police Club on Jan. 16. Blake acknowledged that he and Sanchez became engaged in an argument but denied attacking either her or Lorraine Galloway, another guest at the party. A warrant against Blake alleges that he grabbed Galloway around the neck and shoved her backwards; Blake maintains that put his hands in Galloway’s chest area and pushed her back in response to the woman shouting and raising her hands at him. Blake was suspended without pay the following day.
