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John & Ken from 640 KFI Radio Los Angeles on the Jamiel Shaw murder
640 KFI radio Los Angeles
May 12, 2008
John & Ken from KFI 640 radio in Los Angeles interview the father of slain high school football player Jamiel Shaw Jr. about the gang allegations that had been circulating on the internet, specifically the article written by Alex Alonso on May 9, 2008 that suggest that the shooting was not a racially motivated hate crime
District Attorney Steve Cooley does not confirm or deny the gang allegations in a previous interview with John & Ken, and he stated that the evidence will come out during the preliminary hearing of Pedro Espinoza.
The father denies that the shooting had ANYTHING to do with gangs, and that Espinoza, an 18th Street gang member, was looking to murder a black person. The father suggests that "everything pointed to a hate crime." He further states that the red belt was a belt of another color that had red in it and that the myspace page may not be his son's.
He further states that since Espinoza was recently released from the County jail the day before, and that he had a car, a driver, a gun, and a "squad of people together to kill," that the murder had to be for the sole purpose of murdering a black person.
Note: The original article never mentioned Walter Moore as the interview stated.
A gang member, associate, affiliate is not defined by whether one is in a database or commits crime. Most gang members are not criminals, an important fact that many are not knowledgeable of. Even though a young person will associate with a gang innocently, that person can be equally victimized by an opposing gang member.
Nothing from the original article was ever removed after it was posted. There was some confusion from John and Ken about the removal of a myspace post which can only be explained as an internet issue on their side. Read entire article.
The 18th Street gang does not have a history of targeting people based on race such as the 204th Street gang in the Harbor City and the Avenues gang in Highland Park.
When I received the call from 640 KFI, I had been in court all day and had no idea about the heightened conversation that had been taking place on the radio.
I called KFI at about 4:30pm and spoke to Jason Stein, the producer for the show, who was extremely rude, unprofessional, and argumentative towards me on an issue that was a "no brainer" and that most people understood. I was asked to come on the show to defend a statement that I never made. Jason Stein said to me, "come on the show and get your 15 minutes, dude, if you don't come on the show at 5pm, we will twist your story anyway we want, you have our number if you want to come on the show at 5pm" and at that point we ended the conversation. Since Stein was disrespectful to me on an issue that I have been passionate on for years, I felt that John Kobylt & Ken would not be respectful towards me either. I refuse to have an argument about how and why a young man was murdered therefore I declined the show. I did the Larry Elder show the following day without incident,
No one ever called me for "a favor," to write this story as John Kobylt suggested. My article was called "dirty work," but everything I wrote absolutely everything will be confirmed. Although my article was posted on May 9, 2008, I had started working on it two weeks prior and before I was aware of any issues going on between the Shaws and the prosecutor Michelle Hanisee. My desire to write the article was to distinguish between a racially motived crime and a gang-related crime, an important distinction.
John Kobylt's description of my site as being "an obscure web site" is completely inaccurate and it exposes their complete incompetence on the topic of gangs by revealing not ever knowing the existence of my website or my work on gangs. I have been a guest on nearly every radio and television channel in town including KFI. Everyone that has every dealt with the topic of gangs in Los Angeles, including the LAPD, the LA Sheriff's Department, the LA County Probation Department, the Los Angeles Superior Courts, and even the Governor's office are familiar with my work and website. My site, streetgangs.com (ranking:46,818) receives more traffic and visitors than John & Ken's site, johnandkenshow.com (ranking: 527,068) and even more than kfi640.com (ranking: 62,913), so if any website is obscure, it is John & Ken's website that is not ranked in the top half million of web sites on the internet (Check rankings at www.alexa.com).
Alex Alonso
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