American Cartel (2021) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[police siren wails]
[helicopter whirring]
Each suspect was
armed with two handguns.
And between them, they fired
approximately 30 rounds at the officers.
Suspect's cold blooded murderer.
He's armed and dangerous.
And should be treated
with extreme caution.
[Tim Stehr] By the second
day, we had US Marshals and
Adam Bercovici and his crew getting intel
on everything they could. We had SWAT teams.
[gunshot]
[Adam Bercovici] We are serving search
warrants, taking people into custody.
We are questioning witnesses.
We are downloading information.
[Stehr] We had 11 active surveillances
involving 22 different teams.
It was a huge operation
by that second day.
[Bruce Applin] So the first few days of this
thing were pretty fanatic and fast paced
because the guy is on the run.
[officer] We got a manhunt
and it's a pretty significant one.
[Stehr] Who would be moving
him, who would be letting him hide?
We weren't necessarily looking for evidence.
We had evidence, we had evidence at the scene.
- [camera shutter clicking] - [Stehr] We
were looking for the person responsible.
[Gun shot blasts]
This stuff doesn't happen
in the city of Burbank.
And it didn't.
[Sirens]
What started as the
murder of my son
got bigger, and
bigger, and bigger.
He had a direct pipeline
source to a superlab from Mexico.
Primal drug cartels have
waged a deadly war
Victims suffered
violent deaths
Twelve more dead
bodies were found today.
Influence and money,
they've got it all.
It was shocking to me
that someone at the top
of city government was
swept up in the investigation.
A lot of people
watched "The Wire",
but we lived it.
[phone ringing]
[Stehr] We set up a command post
at the Burbank Police Department.
[Diane Kewin-Anderson] We had a
picture of Officer Pavelka on the wall.
To remind us all why we were
there and the job we were doing.
[Applin] It was
him in his uniform,
looking young and
idealistic and ready to go.
And even though I didn't know
Matt, it became immediately
personal to me because I
could kinda see myself in him.
This young aggressive officer
out trying to do the right thing,
serve and protect his community,
ends up getting in a
gunfight that cost him his life.
[officer] And again none of those other
guys, you don't have any other numbers or
[suspect] I have Carlos and
I have the one I gave you.
-[digital beeping] -[John
Williams] You all right?
[Bercovici] My investigators
were working with Burbank,
- doing interviews
- [suspect] I'm telling you, I didn't transport nobody.
- [Bercovici] with the Burbank officers.
- [officer] They've given us,
- you know, half-truths
- [Williams] I was partnered with
a gang sergeant from Burbank.
So the type of people we're
talking to are other gang members.
A lot of associates, a lot of family
members were being interviewed.
You have people across the
table from you that are very hostile,
calling you every
name in the book.
And you can't let that
distract you from your mission.
[Williams] One of the interviewees
they brought in was a Luis Sandoval.
You could tell that he was no stranger
to the police or an interview room.
From the very beginning,
he was uh, very belligerent.
He was saying disrespectful
things about, you know, Pavelka,
and he didn't care that an
officer was killed and, um
I can't remember, you know,
exact words that he would use,
but he pissed me off! [laughs]
Um you know, it's obvious
to us that this guy is probably
what we would call OG or original gangster
or, like, a shot caller of the gang.
He may know what's going on but
we had absolutely nothing on him.
No evidence to prove anything.
It's very, very frustrating,
but he was not gonna co-operate
with us or talk to us at all.
So, as you look at Erwin de Leon,
you look at where David Garcia lives.
They live in the
same neighborhood.
De Leon lived right
down the street from him.
We thought Erwin de Leon was a link into moving
David Garcia the night of the occurrence.
[officer] Okay, so, like we
were talking about earlier
We adopted a philosophy that anyone who
co-operated with us walked out the front door.
And that was their
incentive to co-operate.
[Erwin de Leon] So
when, like, our leader
Erwin de Leon admitted
that he drove David Garcia,
from the neighborhood, from
their neighborhood to Arleta.
So, when David Garcia ran up the
freeway, back to his neighborhood,
de Leon, he didn't
know what to do with him.
So he took him to another
gang member's house in Arleta.
After de Leon had shown us
where he had taken David Garcia,
- we brought in bloodhounds.
- [barking]
- And they alerted and followed the scent down the street.
- [barking]
And it stopped next to the curb.
The handler said,
"It ends here."
And we assumed he
was taken away in a car.
[police radio chatter]
[Applin] One thing maybe
the movies got right once,
was the sentiment by Tommy
Lee Jones in The Fugitive
that, like, time starts now,
clock is ticking, we've got to go.
Every second you give a fugitive is
another second he has to get further away,
to plan more and to take advantage
of whatever network he's using.
[Stehr] With the information we had, we
knew he was being moved by associates
- of Vineland Boyz gang members.
- [siren blaring]
- [Stehr] So that made us focus on the gang neighborhood.
- [siren blaring]
And we weren't gonna
quit until we caught them.
[Michael Albanese] It was
like one long SWAT call-out.
A typical SWAT call-out
may go four-to-six hours.
In this operation, this manhunt
would start in the afternoon
end in the early
morning hours
double back, come back again.
And it just went on and on and on.
[Stehr] At times there was 500
people out there, searching and looking.
[SWAT team member shouting]
So, I really thought we were gonna be
finding him, catching him relatively soon.
[Bercovici] After two days, I
remember getting a few hours' sleep
and coming back and
doing it all over again.
You know, where a three-hour
nap in your car was, like, you know
was the greatest thing
you could ever have.
[Albanese] It wasn't right.
Everybody was running out of gas.
So one of the challenges is to
keep them focused on the mission.
Could be a little bit tired,
maybe you haven't seen the kids.
But you need to be focused.
So that no one gets hurt.
[Williams] By day four, we
probably had interviewed,
I would say, at least 40 people,
trying to get more information.
- [phone ringing]
- [gun cocking]
[Stehr] I thought we were on his tail
all the time. You know I really did.
I thought we were right
behind him constantly.
But we hadn't been
able to find him.
We had no lead of
where to go from there.
[Bercovici] What
represents to me,
all these years later and even back
then, was a certain sophistication
that we weren't prepared for.
Sophisticated enough
to get him out of there.
And have him essentially have David Garcia
essentially kinda disappear into thin air.
Before this happened I had not heard much,
if anything at all, about the Vineland Boyz.
But any group that is able
to hide guy like this, it's not
just a street level
JV kinda gang.
So we had to move them up into a
slightly higher, more dangerous category.
[song playing in Spanish]
A typical gang, if you look at them right
away, you know, they're gang members.
They dress down,
socks up to their knees,
they've got baggy clothes, they
sport their tattoos out in the open.
You want people to know
you're a gang member.
Vineland was
little bit different.
Vineland Boyz had a whole bunch of gang
members that were flying under the radar.
Because they had got into
it with the Mexican Mafia.
- [bell rings] - [Mundo] The
Mexican Mafia is not from Mexico.
The Mexican Mafia is
as American as apple pie.
When you think Mexican Mafia, you think
Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
But it's a prison gang.
The inside controls the
outside. The Mexican Mafia today
controls tens of thousands of
gang members on the streets.
By way of the green light.
[Fournier] What green-lighting
means is almost like a target list.
So basically what happens
is, if you're not paying taxes,
the Mexican Mafia
green-lights your gang.
And basically that opens your
gang up to be shot on the street.
[Mundo] And if you are not caught on
the outside by other rival street gangs,
then, if you come to the
county jail, which is inevitable
You're involved in crime, inevitably
you are going to end up in the county jail.
and you're on the Mexican
Mafia's green-light list,
something's gonna happen to you.
[Fournier] Vineland
Boyz got so worried
about being identified
by the Mexican Mafia,
they would actually, when
they were running their dope,
they'd dress up
like college students.
They would wear glasses and if they
didn't need glasses, wear a backpack.
And they would try to look like a
student so they wouldn't stand out.
They would have tattoos,
they'd just hide them.
They would wear a long-sleeved shirt,
do anything they can or they would tattoo
themselves in areas like on the stomach
or back, where it wouldn't stand out.
So a lot of gang members
started flying under the radar.
[Fournier] Eventually they made
amends with the Mexican Mafia.
Hindsight, I believe
part of that was
because of their connection
with the cartel in Mexico.
I believe that that's what probably
helped end their green light.
They started running dope and it became
or Meth especially and it became
mutually beneficial for the Mexican
Mafia, the cartel in Mexico, and them.
A lot of high-level Vineland
Boyz, they learnt that being
flying under the radar not only kept them
from getting shot by the Mexican Mafia,
it also kept them from getting
pulled over by the police.
So they learnt, "Hey, wait a minute,
this is really good for narcotic cells."
So, what happened is these
people went underground
and us as gang officers,
we weren't aware of them.
[Applin] Why was a
cartel doing business with
or collaborating
with a street gang?
'Cause it's a way for them to operate
without detection, underneath the radar.
Nobody's looking at the Vineland
Boyz because they are perceived
to be a relatively JV,
unsophisticated street gang.
[Applin] At least
up until this point.
[Stehr] It had
been several days.
And we had a a
very important break.
[phone ringing]
[Stehr] We received two
independent tips, that told them,
the gang members were hiding
David Garcia in one of the houses
in the gang area in Sun Valley.
[officer] Unit five
and six standing by.
[Bercovici] We were still working on the
assumption that he was in the neighborhood,
that he was still in the
valley, in the Sun Valley area.
[Stehr] Adam Bercovici
came to me and said,
"Tim, just tell me if you want to
push the button, I'll push the button.
I'll get you all the
resources you need."
[Gary Pugliesi] Back then, 2003, I was
working the North Hollywood gang unit.
I was working Vineland
as one of my gangs.
That particular night,
my sergeant had just jumped in the passenger
seat and we were driving together. And he says,
"Hey, code three to
Burbank police station. Hit it."
- So I hit it.
- [police siren blaring]
[Gary] We walk in
the command room.
And the guys that were in
that room at the time were all,
you know, like big
dogs in the department.
Hillmann, who I
looked up to greatly.
My sergeant, he's,
like, "He's your guy."
And he points to me and he
hadn't given me any heads up.
So, I'm, like, "Um,
I'm the guy for what?"
- [typing]
- [phone ringing]
Chief Hillmann, he says, "So, you
know this neighborhood because
we're gonna do a search
warrant for this whole city block.
And we want you to tell us where
we're gonna put our resources."
This is the center of Vineland Boyz
gang area, what is called Joker's Alley.
And if David Garcia
was in that area,
it's basically a worst case
scenario for a manhunt.
[dogs barking]
[Pugliesi] We had heard rumors in
the past that Vineland had talked about
ambushing officers
in Joker's Alley.
On a regular basis,
we would find casings
and hear AK47 rifle fire.
[Mike Hillmann] We call it a
non-permissive environment.
If you drove into that neighborhood,
and you didn't belong there,
it was an alert to everybody.
You know, when we get
in pursuit of somebody
and they would bail out of
their car in this neighborhood,
if they got out of sight of us,
we almost never found them.
[Pugliesi] They had their escape
routes already pre-planned.
They knew all the ins and outs,
all the little alleys,
all the little cut-outs.
[Fournier] Look at the
way these places are set up,
I mean, just right here you
have maybe five or six units.
These places are
on top and then
Completely on top of each other and you
could actually move around in these attics.
So you could be
in that unit there,
you can go up into the attic
and drop down into another unit.
That used to happen quite a bit. We'd
be looking for these gang members,
we'd do search warrants, and we'd find them
up in the attic moving into another apartment.
And of course the people living in those
apartments aren't gonna say anything
'cause these are Vineland Boy
gang members. They don't wanna get,
you know, shot later on
or beat up from the gangs.
That's what had made it so difficult. These
places are right on top of each other.
Trying to find a gang
member in this neighborhood,
is like trying to find a
needle in a haystack.
[Fournier] So what do you do?
Basically you gotta flush out the neighborhood.
You gotta do a door-to-door search.
You gotta search apartment
to apartment, house to house.
Because David Garcia could
be hiding in any one of them.
A rolling search warrant is
like, you know, you start at
one end of the community and you
hit a warrant and you don't find the guy.
Hopefully you'll have enough information
that can move you right to the next location.
Eventually you're moving
across the entire neighborhood.
In searching this whole
area, a whole city block,
we're gonna put our
officers into the hornet's nest.
So for us on SWAT, it's a
little bit heightened sense of,
"Hey, this guy has been on
the run now for five or six days.
He's had time to give this some thought.
He's had time to get guns and weapons.
You guys saw the pictures
from the crime scene.
There were some sophisticated
assault rifles, higher caliber weapons."
So there's no: "Would this guy
be dangerous if we arrested him?"
That's That's a given.
[Hillmann] Under these conditions,
SWAT is a life saving organization.
When an average SWAT officer spends probably
close to 800 and some hours of training,
the use of force
is extremely low.
[Applin] People don't want
to take a SWAT team on.
And that's the whole
that's the whole idea.
[Albanese] In our
team, we had 80 folks.
You multiply that times seven,
and when you look at it, you have over 500-600
folks that are involved in the operation.
Heavy vehicles -
heavy vehicles would be
like a BearCat,
certainly the SWAT truck.
The scale was huge.
We had buses to
bus people to the park.
Due to safety reasons, it
involved closing the freeway again.
[Craig Richman] I wasn't there
when this idea started to develop.
I'd gone home to go to sleep. Once I got
over being stunned at what was happening,
I jumped on the train but
there was a lot of concern
about the idea of doing
rolling search warrants
where we were just
gonna go house to house,
searching for a suspect and developing
probable cause as we go along.
That was an unusual tactic. It was
something that had never been done before.
[Richman] We are
not going to stand by
and wait for the
murderer of a police officer
to decide whether he's
gonna turn himself in or not.
[officer on radio]
Three minutes.
The expression's used that the
heat is on. They haven't felt heat yet.
[Mike Pavelka] I
stand here before you,
asking for the public's help
in bringing David
Garcia to justice.
Until the time that he is brought to
justice, the community cannot rest
knowing that such a
violent man is at large.
I've lost my son,
who I love so dearly.
It's just not fair that a man
like that is out there free.
[police siren blaring]
[Stehr] It was such a large operation we
moved the command post to Burbank airport.
My chief was there,
Chief Tom Hoefel.
Chief Bill Bratton
was there from LAPD.
High ranking officials.
It was nerve-racking, as different
places were being searched and hit.
[police radio chatter]
And I was waiting
for really good news.
I was hoping we
would find David Garcia.
It was a very long night.
I thought we would come
up with something for sure,
doing these search warrants
and during these raids.
I thought for sure we would get
the lead that would take us
to David Garcia and we didn't.
The trail for him
had stopped in Arleta.
[Stehr] Coming from NYPD,
he wouldn't have any specific
knowledge about a specific gang here in LA.
He asked to find a
gang officer to brief him.
And I was standing right
there when that happened.
Dan Fournier, he was an
expert on Vineland Boyz.
[Dan] So Chief Bratton called me into
the command post and he just told me,
just straight, you know, "Be honest
and be candid with him about the gang."
I started off telling him, you
know, that, "Hey, you know,
this isn't the first time, the
gang has killed a police officer."
[Bercovici]
Fournier told Bratton
that this was the second police
officer that the Vineland Boyz had killed.
And Bratton didn't
know anything about it.
He said, "Who'd they kill?"
"They killed one of yours in 1988."
[Hillmann] I was a
young lieutenant in 1988.
And I remember that an officer by the
name of James Beyea was shot and killed.
He had interrupted a
burglary in North Hollywood.
[Bercovici] Jim Beyea was a rookie
cop. He and his partner responded.
When they got there, there
was just the two of them.
They saw a couple of suspects
break from the place and run.
Beyea caught up with one of the suspects, a
16-year-old violent boy named Bobby Steel.
There was a quick struggle.
Somehow in the course of the struggle,
the suspect got a hold of
Beyea's gun, and shot him.
And Bratton was shocked. I mean,
you could just see the shock on his
face and it almost felt like he's, like,
"And this gang is allowed to
exist?" Almost as like, I mean,
something was gonna
be done about this gang.
There was gonna be more to
this than just finding David Garcia.
It was very clear at that particular
point. This had to be dismantled.
[Fournier] Even though those rolling
search warrants didn't find Garcia,
certain gang members were
suddenly more co-operative with us.
A couple of people decided that
the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
And Pickles is an
example of that.
[Williams] Pickles was Juan
Salinas. He was a violent boy.
He was a friend of Garcia's. We got an indication
that they were close and that if anybody
was in contact with Garcia or Garcia
was on the run and needed help,
this was probably one of the guys
that he was gonna reach out to.
The rolling search warrants and the big
operation put, you know, fear into Pickles.
So, he wants to keep
himself out of trouble.
[Stehr] He agreed to help us.
He agreed to give us information.
What Pickles told us was once David Garcia
got to Arleta, he gets a hold of Pickles.
Tells him, "I gotta get out of here." At the
time Pickles and several other gang members
were at a party. He said, "Sit
tight, we'll come pick you up."
And they got in a
car, drove up to Arleta.
David Garcia explained to them
in the car what had happened.
[Pickles] That's when he started going
on about about blasting some cops.
He began to talk about statements that
Garcia made about how Matt Pavelka died.
David Garcia said
he had shot the cop.
And that he had circled around when
the cop was behind the wheel well,
kinda begging for his life
and that he had executed him.
[gunshots]
Garcia said that that
cop cried like a little bitch.
To demean somebody
in their last moments
[Stehr] And he was doing it to inflate
his own his own stature in the gang.
You know, "This is what I did."
That's just disgusting.
[Pickles] It was me and
Chuy. And And David.
So you drove by to where
the shooting happened?
- Ya we drove by where the shooting
- [Stehr] We did learn
people that were involved in
moving him and who was in charge.
Pickles told us that David
got in a car with Luis Sandoval.
He was calling the shots.
We had talked to him earlier.
Talked to him a couple of days earlier.
We didn't know his role
in this. He was in charge.
To learn later, that he was
one of the key individuals that
facilitated his escape, you
know, it's very, very frustrating.
But it's It's
part of the job.
[Stehr] Pickles told us that
they went back to the party.
And they went back,
and they collected money.
He said they came up with $900.
They gave David Garcia the $900.
Luis Sandoval made a call to
someone else, Alfredo Barba.
And he said, "I need you to do something for
me, you need to drive someone somewhere."
And they drove to a gas station,
where they met Alfredo Barba.
Pickles watched David Garcia
get in a car with Barba and leave.
That's the last time he saw him.
This was a concerted effort by a
group of people to get Garcia out of there.
That becomes something
that we can work with.
[Stehr] We now had names. So,
we started to key in on Luis Sandoval.
We wanted to find Alfredo
Barba to help us with the manhunt.
[female dispatcher on radio]
[Stehr] We switched focus at
that time of the investigation.
We were really focusing now on
finding Alfredo Barba and Luis Sandoval.
And we have Alfredo Barba
we believe in his home.
So we had a surveillance
team watching the house.
[radio] There is a lot of
activity right now so stand by.
[Stehr] We knew very little about him.
Alfredo Barba had been in the military.
He didn't have a criminal record. So
he was someone we call a facilitator.
They're not necessarily
participating in the direct gang activity,
but they're supplying locations,
rental agreements, telephones, pagers.
It was under his name
because it was a clean name.
We knew he was the person
that transported David Garcia.
Different surveillance
teams were watching him.
We were afraid to serve a
search warrant on the home
and give him time to
make a telephone call.
If Barba makes a phone
call, tells Luis Sandoval,
the gig is up, David Garcia
is moved somewhere else.
So we wanted to get
him outside of the house.
[officer] No change.
[Stehr] It's kind of unusual that he
doesn't come out and go somewhere.
But we have other things happening,
you know, the command post was busy,
busy, an extremely
busy location.
Still trying to find
Luis Sandoval.
We were still trying to get information
from Pickles who was with us.
You know we were there
was a lot of different avenues.
We were still bringing in,
talking to gang members.
[Stehr] Matt Pavelka's
funeral was on a Friday.
You know, of course a very
emotional day, plus it was a huge day.
We had worked all night before but
we had to pay our respects to Matt.
[announcer] Proudly served this country
as a member of the United States Air Force
and earned meritorious and
outstanding achievement awards.
He was hired as a police recruit by the
Burbank Police department on August 5th, 2002
and was graduated from the Ventura County
Sheriff's Academy on January 31st, 2003.
On November 15th, 2003,
Officer Pavelka answered Officer
Gregory Campbell's call for backup,
with courage and valor.
[bagpipes playing]
The men and women of the Burbank Police
Department are forever grateful and proud
to have served with
Officer Matthew Pavelka
and will never forget
his ultimate sacrifice.
Officer Pavelka is survived by his parents
Michael and Sue and his brother Nick.
Officer Matthew Pavelka, end
of watch, November 15th, 2003.
[helicopter whirring]
It's overwhelming how many people
are here and how many lives he's touched.
I'll always remember your smile
because it was so contagious.
The way you would sing and dance for
me at any time, any place whenever I asked.
I'll never forget the way you would look
me in my eyes and tell me, "I love you."
You would take my breath away.
[Darin] Jessica was,
uh, Matt's girlfriend.
They were very serious.
In fact, they had even talked
about possibly getting married.
So she was considered
part of the family.
[Sue Pavelka] I never actually
never saw Mike cry, not even once.
I know he was hurting.
I think it's because he was a police
officer that he doesn't show his emotions.
[Mike Pavelka] I mean the
pain that I felt was so extreme.
At the very beginning of this,
I couldn't get through an hour.
And I remember I talked to
an LAPD psychologist about it.
I said, "How do How do you get
past this pain?" And he said, "You can't.
Because you loved
Matthew so much that,
that is what's causing
you all this pain.
If you had a relationship with your
son that you didn't care about him,
you wouldn't have the pain.
"So which way do you want
it, Mike?" is what he asked me.
As soon as the funeral
was over, I paid my respects
and then immediately moved
back to the command post.
There was a heightened fear
'cause we had information that
gang members are going to retaliate because
we killed Aranda, who was a gang member.
Tom Hoefel, the
chief at that time.
He was concerned about what
other family members were thinking,
family members
of other officers.
Is this going to be a gun battle
between the gang and the police now?
Are they going to be
gunning for each other?
[female officer] Uh,
is this our target?
[Williams] He's
heading your way.
[female officer] Understand.
[Stehr] Alfredo Barba. It was almost two
days before he comes out of the house.
And the surveillance team thinks
that's the right time to take him down
and arrest him, before he
can make any phone calls.
Alfredo Barba is that missing link
that probably transported David Garcia.
We need to get him to talk.
[officer] Opening
clear. We have a visual.
10-4.
[cell phone rings]
Yeah. Okay.
[Scott Samuels] The Marshal Service
have been doing this for 230 years.
We're really good at finding
people that don't want to be found.
Everybody's heard
the Old West days of
have the marshal go out and find the
bad guy and bring him to court for justice.
That is how we started.
And that's still what we do.
We hunt people.
[Stehr] Alfredo
Barba gets arrested.
They take him to the US
Marshals. US Marshals take custody.
[officer] This is 23. We
have suspect inbound.
So Tony Burke was Bad Tony.
Everybody called him Bad Tony.
He looked a little bit like an
outlaw biker. Don't let that fool you.
Because he is a
crackerjack investigator.
Some people are lucky and
some people make their luck.
Investigatively, Tony would
be the guy that makes his luck.
Sometimes you get to a point
where you need somebody to talk.
You need to get that information.
You need to extract it somehow.
You may have to do
something new and be creative.
Sometimes shaking the tree, rocking
people, getting them uncomfortable,
creates situations to happen.
[Tony Burke] So I
came up with a plan.
We told the officers who were gonna arrest
him, like, "Don't really say anything.
Let him do that long ride where
you sit in the back of a police car.
You know, showing up, you walk into
the dark van. And put leg irons on him.
Telling him, 'Just letting you
know, you'll be coming with us.'"
He just had that stunned
deer look in his face.
A lot of these gang members are hardened
individuals, who spend time in jail.
- But not all of them.
- He was already scared.
I'm sitting in the front
seat with the driver.
As we transport him, we're doing radio
transmissions and having people talk to us
on our radio.
Go ahead. That is Burke.
Uh, we got one.
[Burke] Back there, we're talking with
command center, on the Mexican side.
[man speaking Spanish on radio]
Okay, yeah, we're
inbound right now.
We're saying, "We're possibly
bringing one material witness across"
to continue with
the investigation.
"Please notify our Mexican counterparts."
So he can hear us talking about this.
- [man speaks Spanish] - That's right.
Warren, we're going to be bringing him over.
[man speaks Spanish on radio]
[Burke] He's, like, "No, I
can't I can't go to Mexico!"
You know, like, is he being handed over
to your Mexican Interpol or to a cartel?
Who knows? I mean he's got There's
probably a 100 things going through his mind.
[radio chatter in Spanish]
So at this point, even though
some of us were starting to believe
that the gang might have
connections in Mexico,
we weren't really sure
what they were yet.
But then again, Alfredo Barba
probably wasn't sure either.
In other words,
Tony was bluffing.
Alfredo Barba, he wants to
stay on on good American soil.
And take his chances here.
My chief, John Clarke,
he's worried that I would just
continue driving this guy to Mexico.
And he goes, "You know what? You
gotta be extremely careful around here.
'Cause technically, if you transport
him outside San Diego County line,
you know, lawyers may
construe that as kidnapping."
[Burke] I go, "We don't plan to do
that. We plan to get him to Santa Ana.
That's still in our still
in our judicial district."
He's, like, "Oh, my God. Please don't
go south of that San Diego County line."
Santa Ana office, depending on traffic,
is probably about an hour, hour and a half.
Hopefully this would work. Hopefully,
he would, you know, crack and tell us
what we needed to know.
[man speaking Spanish on radio]
[Burke] We're on pins
and needles ourselves.
[man continues speaking
Spanish on radio]
And after about 45 minutes into
it he finally just broke and said,
"I don't want anything
to do with this anymore.
I will tell you whatever you
need to know." I'm, like, "Oh"
- [Williams] How are you doing?
- I'm good, sir.
- You've been in here a while, you're probably thirsty?
- Oh, thank you.
My name's John Williams. I'm a
detective with LAPD, Major Crimes.
And the Marshals tell me that
you do wanna talk to me today.
[Alfredo Barba] Yes, I do.
From Barba we learn that what
Pickles first of all told us was the truth.
Barba got a phone
call from Luis Sandoval.
"Meet me at the gas station off of
Vanowen." Barba said he arrives there.
There were several people there. He
didn't know many of them. He knew Luis.
He explained to us that he was a facilitator.
That he does different things for Luis.
He is told by Luis, "I
want you to take this guy."
Alfredo Barba says, "Okay," loads
him in a car, and he drives him to Mexico.
Parks on the United States side.
They told him, "Don't drive across.
Park and walk across." And
he parks and walks across,
and delivers David
Garcia into Mexico.
[Bercovici] Our wanted
guy was in another country.
Now we were in a
whole different ball game.
We will not rest, until we hunt
him down and bring him to justice.