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AN END TO THE CYCLE
Convicted killer Armando Tizok Frias is determined to undo his family's
gang ties
Monterey
County Herald | November 23, 2003 Sunday
Copyright 2003 Monterey County Herald. All Rights Reserved. Posted with
permission.
By
VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Staff Writer
Armando
Tizok Frias was 4 days old, an infant in a crib at his grandparents'
house, when a family party erupted into a shootout with police.
He remembers at age 3 visiting his father at the state prison in Soledad,
where he was serving time for manslaughter.
From an early age, he was schooled in "the honor" of the notorious
Nuestra Familia gang that sprang to life in the 1960s at Soledad, spreading
its violence onto the streets of Salinas to this day.
As a teenager, he embraced what he believed was a way of life, a cause.
He made his first trip to the California Youth Authority at 16 for his
part in a robbery in which two people were killed.
Now, at 22, Frias has been sentenced to a prison term of 29 years to life
for the gang-ordered execution of Raymond Sanchez at Cap's Saloon in downtown
Salinas. He leaves behind a 3-year-old son of his own, but vows that the
cycle of violence ends with him.
Frias says he realizes now that the gang "cause" was a fairy
tale passed down by "hypocrites." He says he realizes that gang
life leads to life behind bars, and that the purpose is much less about
defending La Raza, the people, than about supporting old gangsters in
prison.
"I thought I was fighting for something good, I was accomplishing
something. But really, I realize I didn't accomplish nothing," he
said in a jailhouse interview. "It didn't get me nowhere, and it
didn't get them nowhere. Just a lot of broken hearts."
He says his turnabout is not an effort to solicit sympathy. He says he
simply decided to take responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty,
expressing remorse and accepting that he will spend the rest of his life
in prison. He says he hopes that speaking out will influence other young
Latinos to turn a deaf ear to used-up convicts.
Learning from a distant father|
Sitting unshackled in the Monterey County Jail, awaiting transfer to the
California Department of Corrections, Frias talked about growing up in
the gang and the days leading up to the murder of Raymond Sanchez.
The only color in the cold concrete interview room came from his bright
orange jail-issue jumpsuit and his aqua eyes.
Frias was raised in Salinas by his extended family. His father had 13
brothers and sisters and his many cousins were like siblings to him. His
mother was a Jehovah's Witness who took him, his brother and sister to
the congregation on Sundays. He missed the birthdays and other celebrations
that her religion prohibited, but he described himself as a quiet and
respectful child who didn't complain much.
His grandfather was a hardworking and hard-drinking man. With 14 kids,
he didn't provide much help to his family. At some point, Frias said,
he remembers all his uncles and some of his aunts embracing the gang lifestyle.
Some of his uncles, he said, are carnales, members of the Nuestra Familia,
the top rung of the Norteño gang structure.
When he was 5 or 6, he said, he started to develop "anger problems."
His aunts and uncles told him "You're starting to be just like your
dad."
He didn't really understand where his dad was, but he would eventually
learn.
"I started seeing pictures of my uncles coming home from prison,
their shirts off, their pants creased up, Ray Bans on, tattoos, stuff
like that. I started knowing. I wasn't a dumb kid. I started picking up
on whatever had happened. They were locked up."
Encouraged to stay away|
Soon he was listening in on family conversations to learn about gang life.
When his uncles returned from prison, he would see the respect they got
when they showed up for basketball at Closter Park. He saw the gang as
a way to get the attention he wasn't getting from his parents.
"The whole thing was not having that support there," said Frias,
who played baseball, basketball and football as a boy and dreamed of going
to college.
"When I hit a home run, nobody was there to cheer for me except my
teammates. My dad was always working or locked up. My mom was always working.
It made me look elsewhere for that attention I needed. I started seeing
the attention my uncles got from females, from other people, and I liked
it."
He started reaching out to gang members. When his father was home, he
tried to discourage him with a belt, so the boy just stayed away from
home.
"When I decided not to bang anymore, I didn't want him to bang either,"
his father, Armando Rico Frias recalled, using a slang term for being
a gang member. "I tried to discourage him, but he would run away
from home. Sometimes when he seen me coming, he would literally run."
After several minor scrapes with the law, young Frias and his friend,
Roy Sanchez, came upon a group of farmworkers near Los Padres Apartments
off John Street and decided to rob them. A gunfight broke out. Sanchez
and one of the farmworkers were killed.
Frias said he didn't shoot anyone, but because he participated in the
robbery he was convicted of two murders and sent to the California Youth
Authority.
That's where he received his schooling on the history and the ways of
the Norteño gangs.
'Beyond my reach'|
Young men who committed felonies while serving time in CYA facilities
were sent to prison, where they would be schooled by members of the Nuestra
Familia and its recruitment arm, Nuestra Raza. When the youngsters finished
their prison sentences, they returned to the youth authority and passed
on their lessons.
They taught Frias the "14 bonds," the rules of conduct for the
Nuestra Raza, and they lectured him on Norteño history dating to
the 1960s and about the gang's enemy, the Mexican Mafia, La Eme.
Though the Mexican Mafia had been founded to protect Mexicans from enemies
in prison, they told him, it had become abusive to the farmeros, Latinos
from Northern California farming towns.
They taught him that Norteños were being tortured and raped in
prison. In 1967 or '68, the legend goes, a Norteño inmate received
a pair of shoes from his family. Another inmate, a La Eme member, took
the shoes. It was a small thing, but to the Norteños it was the
final straw. What followed is the longest running war in California, the
war between the Norteños and the Sureños, the Nuestra Familia
in the north and La Eme in the south.
Sitting in CYA, Frias saw Nuestra Familia as a noble cause and a family
rolled into one. He immersed himself in the gang.
"When he got out of CYA, I noticed a real big change in him,"
Frias' father said. "He was real hard core and the people he was
hanging around with were serious Norteños."
The elder Frias tried to persuade his son to give up the life and go with
him to Oklahoma City, where Frias' mother, a minister, now lives. His
son refused.
"He was already gone," the elder Frias recalled. "He was
beyond my reach."
A worthy cause?|
Two other events had major impacts on young Frias' life. One, the 1996
death of his friend Roy Sanchez, who died that day at Frias' feet after
the botched robbery. The other, the murder of another gang friend, Vincent
"Chente" Sanchez.
Chente Sanchez was like a big brother to Frias.
"He was the one who always took care of me when I was out there on
the streets," said Frias. "He was older than me by about five
years. I kind of looked up to him as a big homey."
In 1998 Chente Sanchez received an order to kill a Salinas drug dealer
who had not been paying "rent" to the Nuestra Familia. The intended
victim was Sanchez's main drug supplier, a friend.
Sanchez refused the order. As a result, he was found on Pacheco Pass with
a bullet in his head.
Frias learned of the death through a newspaper clipping while he was locked
up.
"It upset me a lot. I felt like I'd lost two brothers," Frias
said.
Then he learned why Chente had been killed.
"He knew what he got himself into," Frias said. "He said
goodbye to his family (the night of his murder) like it was the last time.
He wasn't dumb. He was smart."
In a twisted way, Frias thought, his friend's death somehow legitimized
the gangs: If Chente Sanchez had been willing to sacrifice himself, it
must be a worthy cause.
Paroled from the youth authority, Frias and his girlfriend moved for a
time to Oklahoma City, where his mother was living. He stayed out of trouble
for a while. But soon, his girlfriend became pregnant with their son and
they returned to Salinas. His son, Armando Tizok Frias Jr. was born in
October 2000, but fatherhood did not alter the new father's course. He
found trouble again and landed back in the youth authority on a probation
violation.
He served his time and got out again in March 2001, determined to continue
functioning as a Norteño soldier. But he found that his old homeboys
were either locked up or settled down with families.
"The only ones out there still functioning were the NF members,"
he said.
No looking back|
For a time young Frias was a member of lesser Nuestra Raza, but he soon
got more deeply involved in Nuestra Familia. He began selling drugs on
the street, first heroin, then crank and weed. And he became more obligated
to the gang and the orders smuggled out of Pelican Bay.
"When you make that step and you start functioning with them, there
ain't no stepping back," said Frias. "I thought what I was doing
was right."
But he soon began to question the gang's commitment to its own mission.
Death was inevitable|
"I started seeing abuses of authority, people wanting something done
for their own personal gain, not for Norteños in general,"
he said.
He started seeing gang members using drugs, strictly against the gang's
constitution. Members who had been tagged "no good" by the leadership,
theoretically a permanent label, were able to buy their redemption by
sending money to Pelican Bay.
Some members told him the cause had been corrupted by money, Frias said.
"One told me he regretted joining the NF, but it was too late,"
he said.
It was too late for Frias as well.
In the spring of 2001, Raymond Sanchez had been flirting with death by
challenging the authority of the Nuestra Familia. A Nuestra Familia dropout,
Sanchez was selling drugs in NF territory. He'd repeatedly snubbed warnings
to get out of the area and had refused to share his proceeds with the
gang. In May 2001, the street soldiers were told there was a "green
light" on Sanchez: Any Norteño with the opportunity was to
kill him.
On May 21, Frias was selling drugs in Cap's Saloon in Oldtown Salinas
when Raymond Sanchez and his friend Joseph Cantu came in and sat at the
bar. Frias figured the green light was his responsibility. If someone
reported he was in the bar with Sanchez and didn't act, there would be
serious consequences.
"If I decided to say no, the same thing that happened to my homeboy
(Chente Sanchez) would have happened to me," said Frias.
Frias continued his game of pool and pretended not to notice Sanchez.
He sent a message asking for a gun, quietly met with gang leaders outside
the bar to confirm the green light and then walked back into the bar.
With a few beers under his belt, Frias was calm. He paused at the jukebox
behind Sanchez until he saw no one was looking.
"Then I pulled out the gun and shot him in the back of the neck,"
Frias said without emotion. As he fled the bar, he encountered Cantu returning.
He shot him, too. Cantu survived. Sanchez did not.
When asked if he'd ever shot anyone before, Frias declined to answer.
Asked if his target had survived, he declined to answer again.
What Frias would say is that shooting Raymond Sanchez didn't faze him.
"The truth is, I really didn't feel nothing. The life I chose let
me know those things are going to happen."
Frias' future was sealed the moment he pulled the trigger. Unbeknownst
to him, he'd been snared in the web of Operation Black Widow, a three-year
FBI sting operation that led to federal racketeering and murder indictments
against 21 gang members. The operation was conducted with the help of
a highly connected inside source -- Daniel Hernandez, the street general
who had confirmed that the green light was still on.
Frias was not charged in the indictment, but he was arrested within weeks
due to information the FBI passed to local authorities. After the shooting,
he and his girlfriend had fled to Oklahoma City with their baby. His son
was sleeping on the sofa in his grandmother's apartment when authorities
armed with assault weapons surrounded the house.
Handcuffed in the back of the police car, Frias asked the officers to
allow him one last contact with his son. They rolled down his window and
let his girlfriend pass the baby through for a kiss.
"My son was just laughing, he was playing with my face," Frias
remembered.
That was the last time they touched.
"Zoky" Frias Jr. is 3 now. He sees his father through a pane
of glass at the Monterey County Jail and talks to him over the phone on
the wall nearby. When he gets home, the boy picks up the phone and tries
to talk to his dad again.
'Greed, drugs and money'|
Frias said it wasn't until he reached Monterey County Jail that he began
to really think about his crime.
"I tried to feel what (Sanchez's) family was feeling," he said.
"I put myself in their position. I can imagine what they're going
through. If the same thing happened to my dad, he's my best friend, I'd
go crazy. The same thing with my son.
"If I could go back and change it, I would. I wasted my life. I took
a life and I've affected my son's life. And for what?
"I saw (the gang) as a movement, a cause, like Pancho Villa or Emilio
Zapata or Cesar Chavez. I thought it was pure. But really, it's all corrupted
by greed and drugs and money."
Frias said he hopes his epiphany will break the generational cycle and
save his son from his mistakes. His father has left Salinas and shed the
gang lifestyle. He says he's found God.
After a recent parole violation allegation that turned out to be false,
the elder Frias briefly shared a cell with his son in the Monterey County
Jail. They discussed their common mistakes and vowed they wouldn't let
the same happen to little Armando.
"The things he couldn't teach me, he's teaching my son," Frias
said of his father. "I want him to play sports, go off to college,
like I wanted to."
Frias said his defection from the gang feels "a great weight lifted
off my shoulders." Now he can be put in the general population when
he goes off to prison, and can have contact visits with his son. He knows
his disparaging comments about the gang could bring retribution, but he
says he's not afraid.
He said he never expects to be paroled and wants to spend his prison time
writing a book to discourage young Latinos from the gang lifestyle. Being
proud of one's heritage does not require a life of crime, he said.
"Use me as an example," he said. "Look where it got me
and look at my outlook now. Gang-banging ain't what everybody makes it
out to be. Learn from my experiences. Take care of your family and leave
everything else alone."
Virginia Hennessey can be reached at vhennessey@montereyherald.com.
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