Fake news released by US police to capture gang killers
A California police department’s use of a fake news release in an anti-gang operation has drawn warnings that the tactic undermines police and threatens trust with the public.
Santa Maria police chief Ralph Martin defended the tactic last week and said it was necessary to protect the lives of two men from a gang that wanted to kill them.
I am keenly aware and sensitive to the community and the media. I also had 21 bodies lying in the city in the last 15 months
The fictional news release was found in court documents last week by the Santa Maria Times, nearly 10 months after the local paper and television stations had reported the story as fact. Police had said officers had detained two cousins, 22-year-old Jose Santos Melendez and 23-year-old Jose Marino Melendez, on charges of identity theft and had given the men to immigration authorities. The police had lied.
For weeks, the department had been running a surveillance operation on a gang called MS-13, with active wiretaps. Listening to MS-13 conversations, the police learned the Melendez cousins, members of a rival gang, were targeted for murder. Detectives took the cousins into protective custody, removing them from their home where the men and their family might have been targeted by the hitmen.
As a cover, the police wrote a fake news release to deceive the MS-13 assassins. When the would-be killers returned to look for the cousins, police eavesdropped on a phone conversation and heard the hitmen talking about news reports of the arrests.
Martin said the investigation, called Operation Matador, was able to continue thanks to the ruse, and police eventually arrested 17 gang members on charges related to 10 murders. The police chief refused to rule out fabricating another story to protect lives and investigations.