Dying in LA LA Land
This PodCast series from Ron Campise Retired Night Supervisor L.A.P.D. Crime Scene Investigator/Documentarian with 20 years on the job, 13 years of which as a Supervisor on the Night Shift. The busiest shift for Crime Scene Investigation, mostly from 2 to 4 am, "The Hours of the Spirits of the Dead". With over 3000 cases personally investigated and documented everything from run of the mill murders to occasional death of celebrities. And a vast number of fatal accidents, death investigations, robberies, officer involved shootings, drug houses and meth labs with vast amounts of cash, literally falling out of the sky. As the evening super I coordinated with a squad of investigators another 10000 cases. "Dying In LA LA Land" Are Stories of my actual Experiences and/or Experiences of Friends or Co-Workers, So be prepared to be shocked, horrified, amused or just plain disgusted!!
Dying in LA LA Land
"The Dogs of Sinaloa rule the night".
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Ron Campise tells the story of an L.A.P.D. Officer, wounded during a Traffic Stop and how his Badge saved his life.
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I'm Ron Campise. I was a supervisor with the scientific investigation division of the Los Angeles Police Department for 13 years. The story I'm about to relate out of the Dying in La Land series is entitled The Dogs of Sinaloa Rule the Night. You know, the uh division I was in, the CSI division, we had to photograph new officers coming in. And you know where they were there smiling, all optimistic. Then we had to take a photo after they came out of the academy, the few that passed and came out. And we called it the sweaty ID photo. That was the photo that would carry them most of their career. And then at the end of their career, end of watch, and after on occasion they expired in the field, they were killed. We also did photos of them. This is a story about a training officer and his uh rookie or boot. The training officer's name, uh Officer Mitchell, and his boot was I think it was Officer Calvino. And Calvino was sharp. I mean he was passing every mark on his uh probation. You know, that same night when they were on patrol, two cars were speeding down San Pedro Boulevard and they were they were weaving. There was a lead car and then there was a rear car. And this caught the notice of uh the training officer and he told Calvino, go after them. And they did what they call a check, and they found out one of the cars was possibly stolen. So what they did is they did what they call a felony stop. And the rear car did stop, the other car sped off at high speed. They couldn't really do much about it, there was so much going on. So the car pulled over, training officer Mitchell told his rookie, Calvino, he goes, Okay, I'm gonna cover you. Go check out the car. Officer Calvino walked up to the passenger side window. As he was walking up to the window, what he didn't know is that one of the cars was the courier car from the Cina Loa drug cartel, and the second car contained what they called the dog soldiers of the Cina Loa cartel. They called them Sinaloa dogs. And as soon as Calvino walked up to the window, a blast came through the window from a silver, high powered 45 caliber pistol, and it hit Officer Calvino right in the face below his left eye. Blew his left eye out of his head, and it wound up in the cutter, and then it exploded out of his sinus cavity in front of his head, near the top. Calvino fell back and he was in shock. I'm gonna call him a Sinoloa dog, got out of the car, and he fired one more shot. Officer Calvino laid on the ground there. He fired a shot right into his chest, and the shot hit Calvino's badge, took most of the energy, and entered his armpit area below his left arm and shattered it. The training officer Mitchell, he had already called in. Officer down. He saw what was going on. He was at the car, and so what he did, he was very calm, professional. LAPD officers, especially the senior ones, they know how to shoot. At that time they carried 9mm. 15 round clip. He calmly pulled that gun and he deliberately emptied that clip. 15 rounds at the suspect, the dog soldier. But before he said that, because the Sinaloa dog soldier was gonna fire another fatal round into Officer Calvino. Officer Mitchell, to get the suspect's attention, he yelled out, he goes, Hey, over here, motherfucker, and he got his attention. As the dog looked towards Mitchell's way, he fired 15 shots, like I said earlier. Nine shots hit the suspect. Mitchell shot the gun out of his hand, along with two fingers. So this uh dog soldier, he staggered back into his car. Car took off at high speed. Training officer Mitchell, he had already dropped his magazine and he loaded another one 15 rounds. He fired another 15 shots at the fleeing car. Then he went up to his training rookie, Calvino. He was sure he was dead. Calvino was still alive. And he called an RA unit and the cavalry was already arriving. You could hear the sirens. Calvino was taken to one of the trauma centers in Los Angeles, the closest one, and he lived. Later they found this person. He had been unceremoniously dumped in the parking lot of an emergency room. So much for uh honor among uh among nefarious people. We were on the crime scene, and it was an army of people there. Half the people I didn't even know why they were there. And later it dwindles down, early morning, two, three o'clock. You're down to about 20 people, which is what we used to call the core. Criminalists there, there's evidence technicians, there's photographers, because it's a big deal when an officer gets uh wounded that way. And you know, one criminal was kind of joking, he was picking up the fingers, putting them in a bag. As I watched, the eyeball was in the gutter. And the eyeball, believe it or not, was intact. And he was flicking ants off of it. He was shaking it, flicking the ants off. He put it in a bag, they put the bag in a special cooler, and also they collect the guns, you know, and it was a long night. I mean, I was there past sunrise. Called the fire department, they came out with a ladder truck, they hosed down the scene, they gotta open the street, because Los Angeles is just gonna keep going. Street was open and oblivious, you know, all these people went by this horrendous scene that had happened that night. But you know, later through the intelligence, these Cinelo uh drivers and the other dog soldier, they got away. They went back to Sunny Mexico. And they were boasting, and they caught it on, I think, you know, some kind of transmission. They were boasting, they caught a they were boasting about the shooting in Los Angeles, and they were saying, yeah, they got back at the uh gringos that were occupying the city of Angels. One captain one night at a roll call for these Metropolitan officers, he had they had already heard about this, and they don't like that. And so he's talking to these metro officers, and basically what he told them is he goes, the Sinaloa Cartel, those fucking bastards don't rule the night in the city of LA, and neither does their dogs. They go, the Los Angeles Police Department rules the night. And he did that because, you know, people fell down after an officer got shot. Believe it or not, he got in trouble. He was what they call in the bizbag, and it's called administrative trouble. He gladly accepted the counseling for insensitivity and using profanity during a roll call. He was happy to accept it.