Palm Springs Cop Killer: Repeat Offender and yes, GANG MEMBER

Is anyone surprised that the (suspected) degenerate that murdered two Palm Springs police officers was a member of a gang?

Is anyone shocked that this (suspected) executioner was a repeat offender?

Is anyone shocked that the (suspected) killer made it known to his family that he actually wanted to kill police?

Deeply saddened?  Yes.  Surprised?  No.

There’s a significant difference between truth and fiction when it comes to tragedies of this nature – and if you are armed with the truth, horrific events such as this most recent one in Palm Springs will not come as a surprise.

FACTOID # 1: (Suspected) killer John Felix, 26, was a member of a gang.

FACTOID # 2:  The FBI’s 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment reveals that, on average, “48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions” is gang-related.   An even more disturbing revelation is that this number is as high as 90 percent in some jurisdictions.  90%.

FACTOID # 3:    In neighboring jurisdictions, authorities recently gathered to discuss the increasing gang bloodshed in Orange and Los Angeles counties.  After more than 50 shootings took place in the first 50 days of the year, Garden Grove Police Chief Todd Elgin said, “Over the last 20 months, gang crime in Orange County has surged in the city of Santa Ana…in Garden Grove, gang assaults have increased by 30 percent over the previous year.”

FACTOID # 4:  According to the FBI’s National Gang Intelligence Center, gangs are expanding, evolving and posing an increasing threat to US communities nationwide. Many gangs are sophisticated criminal networks with members who are violent, distribute wholesale quantities of drugs, and develop and maintain close working relationships with members and associates of transnational criminal/drug trafficking organizations. Gangs are becoming more violent while engaging in less typical and lower-risk crime, such as prostitution and white-collar crime. Gangs are more adaptable, organized, sophisticated, and opportunistic, exploiting new and advanced technology as a means to recruit, communicate discretely, target their rivals, and perpetuate their criminal activity.

Why is the subject of gang violence unpopular and considered largely irrelevant when brought up in context of “gun” violence?  Is it more effective to use the simple image of a gun rather than the image of a gang member pointing a gun?  GOC believes that talking about criminal behavior makes the gun grabbers uncomfortable.  On the other hand, GOC has no problem telling it like it is, and we will continue to take the spotlight OFF the law abiding and shine it directly ON who’s causing the wrong-doing.

FACTOID # 5:   Southern California law enforcement recently uncovered evidence that gang members were given orders to burglarize homes and expected to bring their leaders “at least $5,000 and a weapon every single day.”  Plus, the “daily burglary quota was discovered after officials made 15 arrests in “a gang-related burglary ring that they say hit thousands of SoCal homes” and that gang members involved in the burglary ring allegedly “[struck] homes four to five times in a week” and “are suspected of some 5,000 burglaries” in total.

It took eighteen different police departments and “400” individual law enforcement personnel “three and half years…to track the burglary suspects back to the ringleaders.”

Let’s be real.  Evil is out there and the one solely responsible for cutting down the lives of Jose “Gil” Gilbert Vega and Lesley Zerebny is 26-year old gang member John Felix – who had already spent time behind bars for attempted murder.  The loss to the community of Palm Springs is unimaginable. The shattering loss to the families of the slain officers will last lifetimes – for their spouses, for their children.  Vega was a father to eight and Zerebny came from a respected family in law enforcement and was a new mom, just having returned from maternity leave.

These killings are ugly.  Malevolent.  They make us all cry out in angst at the senseless nature of it all, but it should make us angry as hell, too – because murderers like John Felix are permitted to live among us.   It’s time for crime control.  Not gun control.