Original subtitles

[music]

[Woman] Two men are found dead, Shot at close range.

[Man] The victim, who was shot in the chest,

died two hours later.

In the 1970s, Houston's crime rate was astronomical

and getting higher.

People didn't trust the police officers,

especially the Hispanic community.

The HPD had an atrocious record of solving murder cases

in the Latino communities.

Tension just escalates until it breaks out into an all-out riot.

[Cecil] There was a language barrier,

so these cases would sit there unsolved.

Nobody worked the cases.

So Jim said, "Hey, let's get out there. Let's speak Spanish."

And start kind of a special squad.

Oh, that's a good idea.

[Jesús] This is really the first fully bilingual Spanish-speaking

detective squad in the country.

[Jim M] They said it was going to be for 90 days.

They made it clear. If it doesn't work out,

everybody is going back to patrol.

I didn't know anything. They threw us out there.

We had to prove ourselves.

We couldn't believe what we were seeing.

[Cecil] I didn't know Houston was that violent.

The drive that we had, we went after these cases

like nobody's business.

It meant the world that I could help my community.

The pressure was there.

The other detectives resented them.

The racism, the ignorance, you came across it from all levels.

When the drugs came in, everything started changing.

These Colombians were heavily armed

with automatic weapons.

[Woman] The murders are brutal, sensational

and the ugliest side of drugs.

The Chicano Squad had an impossible job to do.

[Cecil] There were all these unsolved cases.

[Sergio] They're like, we have to succeed at this.

You didn't know if this thing was gonna last.

[upbeat, funky music]

[siren wailing]

[ominous music]

[Phil] In the '70s, Houston was a boomtown

because of oil and gas.

This is where the jobs were.

So everybody was coming down here.

There was an increase in demand for cheap labor.

And you start to see the influx of Mexican people into Houston.

They were coming into the barrios.

That's where they were landing.

And they were there to work.

They would do that labor that nobody else would do.

Well, for the most part, it is a tale of two cities here.

When you're dealing with the racial dynamic of Houston

and where wealth is concentrated.

[Phil] There was no legal segregation.

But there was segregation.

People stayed in their own neighborhoods,

and there was plenty of tension.

The racial tensions in Houston were always high.

We did not have good city services.

Unemployment was high.

We had schools that lacked resources.

There was just a lot of frustration.

[tense music]

Back then, Houston was known as

the murder capital of the nation.

[Man] We have murders, robberies and rapes,

just as does every large metropolitan area.

[tense music]

[Man] More and more of the murders committed here

involve Hispanics.

Police say within that group, the majority of those killed

have been illegal aliens.

[Melanie] In 1979, when these homicides are building up,

Police Chief Harry Caldwell is trying to rebuild

community relations, because it's very obvious

there's no law and order. There's no crime solving,

crime prevention in the Latino community.

Most of HPD was already notorious for police brutality.

Mexican-Americans started to find themselves at the ire

of the police, particularly the more non-native Mexican people

started to move in, the more aggressive police became.

They're trying to keep the help in line.

[Man] Mexican-American youth groups took to the streets

protesting poverty and police brutality.

The rallying cry was "Chicano Power."

You go and ask for justice and nobody listens to you,

and they send you right back, and they tell you,

you don't belong here.

Might as well just forget about it.

A lot of the cases would sit there unsolved.

It appears that they didn't care.

[José] Before the Chicano Squad was put together.

The Hispanic community had approached city council

and the police department,

because there were so many unsolved murders.

Back then, the pressure was on Chief Caldwell.

Our Black and white clearance rate

oftentimes was over 70%,

but our Hispanic cases were down in the 20 percentiles.

We needed somebody that could speak the same language

to come down and help us in our cases.

And Jim Montero was the start of that.

[music]

Jim Montero was one of few Latino detectives.

I was working as a patrolman in 1970s.

At that time, must have been about five Hispanic detectives,

two or three Black detectives.

But I felt inside of me that I could be promoted

if I applied myself. It might make a difference.

Have more people come in like us.

It was hard to get promoted because they didn't make

very many Hispanic detectives at that time.

But I guess I can't think of anything

he's ever really backed down off of.

And so he took the detective's test and passed it.

It was a big deal.

[Jim M] I was assigned to the robbery division as a detective.

[José] I tell you what, it gave me pride

because Hispanic detectives were pretty much unheard of,

especially for his era, because he's a lot older than I am.

It's no surprise that

Jim exhibited those leadership skills.

He took so much pride in his work.

He was extremely dedicated.

I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to solve crimes

involving Spanish-speaking people.

[indistinct chatter] [police radio chatter]

[siren wailing]

Way which Chicano Squad first started out was

at that time, the police department had a difficult time

solving Hispanic homicides. And so Captain Bobby Adams,

of homicide division, asked me would I come over

and translate for the Anglo detectives.

Jim would handle his workload in the robbery division

and come help us with our cases.

And so I go over to translate,

and I wound up doing the whole thing

because, oh, we're speaking Spanish.

The victim's Hispanic. The witnesses were Hispanic

and the suspect was Hispanic.

And I was working nights because I was the only one

that can speak Spanish.

There were so many murders, that he was being overwhelmed.

He needed help. He talked to Captain Adams and said, hey,

let's get officers from the streets that speak Spanish

and start kind of a special squad.

Oh, that's a good idea.

Let's go talk to the chief about it.

[music]

[Sergio] Jim Montero went to the police chief's office.

He goes, "well, I need Spanish-speaking cops.

"I need cops that know these areas

and are from these areas."

Good cops that live in Houston. They have contacts here.

Have family members here.

It would make it easy for them because they'd be accepted

into the neighborhood.

Of course, the big problem here is that

there was no detectives that were bilingual.

[Jim M] My idea was to have five patrolmen,

come in to work homicide.

All these guys would be patrol officers without any

experience in homicide.

[Jim M] And I said, "Well, Chief.

"Those five guys, the five patrolman,

They will be translators."

Bringing a translator to work with a detective

and help the detective work the case.

That's what the idea was.

So he said, "Go ahead. Go for it."

I think Jim, being a savvy vet on the police force,

navigated the police politics to get what he needed.

So he finally gets to sign off on that.

And say, "Okay, great. I need people to do this."

[funky music]

I did the best I could to put together a good squad.

First is Joe Selvera. Joe was ex-Marine.

Very structured. He likes doing things a certain way.

He was one of those kind of guys, just the facts.

Just give me the facts.

[Jim M] And then, of course, we have Mosqueda.

[Sergio] Cecil Mosqueda,

he is probably one of the funniest guys I've ever met.

Like he was also early partners with my father, José Selvera.

Cecil and him. You're talking about yin and yang there.

Because, I know my dad's personally.

He's like, if you're going to-- if you're telling me

you're going to be here at 7:00, you better be there at 6:30.

From what my dad tells me, like,

Cecil would show up at 7:30, maybe 8:00.

And just seeing how pissed off my dad would be

would be hilarious to me.

Then I had U.P. Hernández. U.P. was a strong muscle man.

Really good at interrogating.

He had a way of communicating with people.

Talk straight to you, look you straight in the eyes.

Then there was Joe DeLeon, and then Bobby Gatewood.

Patrolmen. Good, hard working officers.

And that would be the six guys.

That way it would be two, two, two. Partners.

Jim Montero was the leader, and it was obvious to me

and to others that he selected people that were of his mindset

with a high work ethic

and a reputation of good police work.

[José] That was the original guys,

and we became Chicano Squad.

It should be stated that this is really sort of the first

fully bilingual Spanish-speaking detective squad in the country.

[Sergio] I think it's fair to say that at that time,

these homicides in the Latino community

just weren't a priority to HPD.

The Chicano Squad, they knew as police officers

that that was a huge opportunity to help the Latino population.

I think it was something that they carried with them

and that internally motivated them.

When that opportunity came in, my mission at the time was

I wanted to do what I could for the community,

for our community, because I'm part of it.

I grew up just north of Houston, where Chicanos used to live in.

In addition to that, they knew that if they did a good job,

that would hopefully make it better for the next group of

Latino homicide detectives who were going to come after them.

My idea was have my guys learn how to do

a good homicide investigation.

Once we can do that and we can conduct a homicide investigation

by ourselves, we're going to stay here

because they need us here.

It was so funny when they came up there and says,

"Well, what do we wear?"

I said, "You gonna wear the best clothes you got.

"Suits, sportcoats, shined shoes, comb your hair.

"Look good. Because coming down the hall,

"they're going to be looking at you

and they'll be wantin' to find something wrong."

[funky music]

On my first day in homicide,

we were all dressed in our suits.

Looking good.

The other detectives wondered, who are these guys?

Looked like a bunch of pimps. [laughs]

Once we were there, we went to this small room.

[Cecil] It was a little small. I mean, 10 by 10. 10 by 15.

Small room.

I thought, "Oh, man, this is not enough room for all of us."

[Cecil] One desk, one typewriter.

There was only one chair in there.

[José] That same day, the media was there.

Jim took us out to the front and told us,

"Don't look at the camera because we may be

working undercover one day."

So we all turned away from the camera.

And that's the picture you see in the newspaper.

Later on, we kind of went through an orientation.

Lieutenant told us what he expected of us.

Lieutenant Lofland, Chuck Lofland,

was my direct supervisor,

the Chicano Squad was put in his charge.

Yes, he was Anglo, but he accepted us from the beginning

and he supported us.

[U.P.] He explained to us what we're going to do.

We were put together as a group

to go up there to be translators for the detectives.

He told us we were going to learn how to investigate

by watching the other investigators

and what they were doing in the crime scene.

Then they gave us a period that we had to prove ourselves.

They made it clear, you got 90 days.

Said, okay, 90 days.

If it doesn't work out,

everybody is going back to patrol.

And of course, I took it, I'd better get my ass to work.

[funky music]

-Hey. -Jimbo. How are you? Cómo estas?

-Good to see you, man. -Same here.

Where you been?

[U.P.] Every day, from the beginning of the Chicano Squad,

we'd all agree to go eat breakfast together.

That was the routine.

Hey, guys. Que paso?

Que paso? [indistinct] Jimbo. How you doing, bro?

-Oh man! -Raymoncito!

Go have some breakfast at a Mexican restaurant.

Huevos rancheros... That type of thing.

And we would talk about the cases

and help each other.

What's going on, man?

It's a friendship. We still talk to each other.

We see each other all the time. We're buddies.

Glad to see y'all guys, man.

Man. Everybody looks good. Everybody's alive, that's good.

[laughter]

That's true.

I remember I came out of the military.

If you'd asked me why you want to be a police officer,

every job interview, they're going to give you the...

Hey, do you want to save the world.

Me?

I became a police officer because I needed a job.

But now, today, looking back on what the Chicano Squad did,

I'm proud to have been a police officer.

When I first went to a squadron, I was a patrolman, you know.

I almost quit the police department, you know.

'Cause I didn't know Houston was that violent.

Because, even though I grew up in the barrios,

I didn't see what I saw in the police department.

I tell you what.

I went through this journey to see what was going on.

Back then, the population of a Hispanic in Houston,

they were being robbed, they were being shot and killed.

I don't think the department cared about what was happening.

When they formed the squad,

what was the number of murders that made the squad?

Wasn't there 15?

It was 12 murders in one weekend.

There you go. All Hispanics.

When I went up there,

they said translator, interpreter.

I said, I can do that. I been doin' that on patrol.

Then told me you're going to work homicides for the first day

and I said "Oh, [bleep]."

Because I didn't know anything about it.

I didn't know anything. I was just following him, man.

I said, "Hey, whatever you do, Jim, I'm doing it."

[Cecil] Finally, we started our training.

The training, you know what it consist of?

Just following the officers, what they were doing out there.

Real simple.

And we were going to translate for the other detectives.

I was scared.

I was thrown to something that I had never experienced.

Being homicide division, you were considered to be

a top notch investigator.

And I told them, learn everything you can.

I know how to do it because I've been doing it.

I can go to a homicide scene and conduct a homicide scene.

I've done it before, but I want you guys to learn it.

And once you do that, you will stay here

because we'll be workin' those cases.

And they they'll have to keep us.

First time that I went out there, Joe,

I went out with Bruce Franks.

-[Cecil] He was a detective. -He was a detective.

And I said, "What are we going to do?"

He said, "Well, we got a homicide.

There's a dead body in a car."

[police radio chatter]

[U.P.] I got there and I saw all these people,

and I said, "Man, what's going on?"

And I was watching him. So I walked up to Bruce and I said,

"Bruce, what's that coming out of the bottom of the car?"

He said, "Oh, gonna be that body fluid."

Body fluid...

And I said, "So what's going to happen now, Bruce?"

"Well, we're going to open it."

U.P. was a tough guy, and he was strong, very strong.

He can get a telephone book and rip it. I mean, rip it.

[U.P.] That's true. And sure, I can be tough,

but when they open the trunk, that was a different deal.

I never had seen a dead body before then.

The body had been in the trunk several days,

and it was summertime.

So he's cooking.

The stench hit me and I went, a la (bleep).

Which means "Holy [bleep]!"

Well, that's how I started really coming to reality about

what this is all about.

Being with Bruce Franks was a learning experience for me.

Everything he did, I watched him.

I saw how thorough he was,

who he talked to, took information from everyone.

I mean, it's like the stenopad was turning.

Back then, detectives were doing the crime scene. We did it all.

Measure all the scenes, collect all the evidence.

So there was a lot of stress.

It was all new to us.

This is before crime scene units came in.

The best thing that ever happened to homicide,

crime scene unit, because they took a load off of us.

I'm telling you, because that took a lot of time.

Bruce Franks could really do stuff, and I thought

it's like another day for him.

Didn't--nothing bugged him. Nothing bothered him.

Even going to the morgue didn't bother him. And--

Did it bother you?

Oh my God.

That's another thing that got me. I'd never been there.

So when we got there, get to the bottom floor, the basement,

I'm hearing a saw.

And I'm thinking somebody is building something out here.

What's going on? So I kept looking around.

We came by this room.

And the medical examiner was there.

And then I saw what the deal was with the saw.

He was using it to open the skull.

And then he went [cricks] and I went...

-He popped it. -I was looking at all this.

This. Like I said, you learn quickly what this is all about,

and you either have it or you don't.

And here again, I held my own. I didn't want to lose it.

I couldn't eat meat for two weeks.

It stayed with me.

[Jim B] It is hard for any officer, young officer,

that's married with a couple kids at home,

to say, we need you to come

and you're going to be a homicide detective, and, uh,

you're going to work every Christmas

for the next ten years.

You're never going to have a holiday off,

and you don't think you're going to have

Saturdays and Sundays off, do you?

And by the way, you're going to do all this in the night time.

You have to be a special breed to take that job description

and say, put me in, Coach. But that's what they did.

And they hit the ground running.

[Cecil] As we did more training,

the detectives were doing the crime scene.

We would do the follow-up. We'd take statements,

the question and everything else.

It was just trying to learn as much as I could.

You don't learn that stuff overnight.

However, we begin investigating cases

by the third day of training.

That was the extent of our training.

It was a three-day training. And then, here's your cases.

[suspenseful music]

[José] I think it was the third day we walk in.

Everybody got five murder cases.

[U.P.] It was sink or swim, more or less.

You have cases piled up, sitting there for months, maybe,

that no one can do anything with it.

I was shocked to see that. I couldn't believe it.

We're sitting in there on the floor and we're reading.

And the reports were nothing.

These cases were probably four or five pages long.

There was nothing done. No follow-up was done.

There were a lot of whodunits, unsolved cases.

There was a language barrier. I think that's part of it.

And also, it appears they just really didn't care.

Once we got into it, I kept track of all the cases

and who was working what.

And then I had my own cases to work with also.

[Jim B] These people needed to learn how to become a detective.

But because the demands made on them,

it was a show me what you've got right now.

And so the guys in the Chicano Squad had to walk into the fire.

I knew nothing about homicide. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

They threw us out there.

[music]

[U.P.] When we went up to homicide,

well, they told us it was going to be for 90 days.

At first, we were told we were going to be translators.

Before you know it, we were out investigating cases.

I took up the challenge.

I'm sure all the other guys felt the same way.

When you take the detective's exam,

you learn how to be a detective.

There wasn't time for that. So here you had patrolmen

without any experience investigating.

[Jim M] I was concerned they did not have enough training.

I felt like I needed to help them understand how to do

a good homicide investigation.

Jim Montero, he gave us a three by five card

that had how to conduct the investigation.

[Jim M] I gave them the card and I told them,

"Take this card and study it. Learn it."

And one thing that was very important, I told them,

I says, "You're not going to find out anything

"unless you knock on doors and see who saw, who heard,

"and what they know.

And maybe they'll give you that tip that nobody else will get."

When we went out there, we talked to people.

We did a lot of foot investigation,

a lot of knock and talk.

We didn't sit down,

we're going to call this person and--no.

It was hands on. We did whatever it took.

[José] When we first started working cases,

the community didn't really trust us.

They didn't want to talk to us.

Getting information and getting people to talk to you,

that's very important in an investigation.

And yeah, I got resistance, they were scared to talk to me.

Number one, some people are here illegally.

Number two, the community itself felt like the police

wouldn't do anything for them.

I can understand that.

When I was growing up, I remember hearing my mom

talking to a neighbor and saying,

"Don't ever say anything to the police

'cause they won't do anything."

[Cecil] I know why people felt that way.

Policemen were always coming around my neighborhood.

They were always after my brothers.

We thought that they were bad.

We just didn't trust them.

When I was growing up, we always got stopped by the police.

Oh my God. And it's the way they'd talk to us.

They were pretty rough.

They weren't friendly. They were serious.

Scary. My friends felt the same way.

They said, "You know, the cops treat you so bad, man."

You have to remember, people were still very upset

because of what happened to Joe Campos Torres.

Joe Torres was a pivot point.

It changed everything.

[Melanie] Joe Campos Torres was a Vietnam veteran

back less than a year from the war.

He was only 23 years old.

And he was trying to figure out what he was going to do next.

One night, José Campos Torres went to this beer joint.

There was an argument happened, and he got into a fight,

and they called the police.

Then the arresting officers take him to a place

that they identified as "The Hole."

The Hole was a location off of Commerce Street

next to the bayou in downtown Houston.

Every police force has a place where officers

go snag a nap or something along those lines.

They took him there.

[Jesús] The Hole was the place where law enforcement

would take people that they had under their custody

and teach them a lesson, often a violent one.

[Melanie] There were six officers there.

According to the testimony,

five of them just took turns beating them up.

[sinister music]

José Campos Torres is so badly beaten,

he's not resisting anymore.

According to the testimony,

one of the officers picked him up,

took him to the edge of the embankment

and threw him into the bayou.

And said, "Let's see if this (bleep) can swim."

Carless Elliott, an officer who didn't partake in this beating,

decided to tell the police department what happened.

[Man] It is not unusual to find the body of a murdered man

floating in Buffalo Bayou.

It is unusual when a Houston police officer

is charged with that murder.

The body discovered in the bayou

was that of a Mexican-American man, Joe Torres.

[Phil] Everybody was shocked.

The community, of course, is outraged.

[All] We want justice. We want justice.

[Cecil] What happened in Torres case,

it affected all the Houston police officers. All of us.

When I was on patrol,

I had people, Mexicanos, telling me [speaking Spanish].

You're a traitor. I had them telling me that.

[Raymond] A Hispanic one time told me,

"You got a white man's job. You're hurting your people."

And I can understand what they meant.

Was this justified, to kill him the way they did?

Even if he fought them back?

[José] He was a veteran, and I was a veteran.

And there's a brotherhood there.

You know, it should have never happened.

It made the police department look bad.

And I was ashamed of it.

[Jesús] Those five officers, they were fired.

[Melanie] Carless Elliott, the one who reported it,

he does get to go back to the police force.

But some of the other officers

had charges pressed against them.

[ominous music]

[Man] According to the verdict handed down today,

the jury did not think the police had assaulted Torres.

Or if they did, they did not think it was worth

the verdict of guilty of murder.

[sinister music]

The thing that hurt the most

was listening and hearing the sentencing of the officers.

When that came down, that just blew it.

The sentence was one year probation and a $1 fine.

A dollar?

I mean, what's going on here?

[sinister music]

[Graciela] It wasn't just about José Campos Torres.

It was about all of us.

[Jim M] In the Hispanic community, there was

the undercurrent continuously, this anger about

José Campos Torres. And rightfully so.

It was a bad situation.

Sometimes I felt like I was caught in the middle.

And if it was my kid, I'd have been the same way.

I'd have been angry.

[sirens wailing]

[Jesús] Tensions are high by '78.

[Man 2] Trouble began about 7:30 at Moody Park

in a Mexican-American neighborhood

several miles north of downtown.

[Jesús] And in fact, things did boil over big time.

You had what is today sort of commonly known as

the Moody Park Riots.

[Man] These are shots of the Houston SWAT team

that was called in to take over.

Shotguns, M16s, a lot of very heavy firepower.

The Houston Police Department and its relationship

with the Mexican community had always been one of contention.

By 1978, the tensions that were there did heat up.

[Cecil] There was the Moody Park Riots in the north side,

the same area, you know, that I was raised in.

Uh, just because, you know, what happened to Torres, Torres riot.

[Man] Pretty soon, buildings were burning,

stores were looted,

snipers were firing, and cars were overturned

in a 10-block section of the city.

[Man 2] Three Houston police officers were hospitalized.

[U.P.] I was here almost all night.

This is only my second year in the police department.

And already I'm experiencing a riot.

It's crazy.

My lieutenant gave me all this riot gear.

He said, "This is the way you're gonna wear it."

And I had never worn riot gear.

It's kinda sad to know that these guys,

they burned down the neighborhood.

Moody Park showed the chasm between the Mexican-American

community and the police.

[Melanie] It was an eye-opener for the police department,

for the nation, for the state

that something needs to change here.

[uneasy music]

This is the era in which the Chicano Squad was formed.

[José] Joe Campos Torres,

that was the reason people didn't trust the police.

So when they formed the Chicano Squad,

some people thought it was probably PR

just to satisfy the community.

Kind of like we brought these guys, shut up.

You got some Mexicans here.

[Sergio] They knew they needed the community,

so without a doubt getting the trust of the community

becomes a priority as far as solving these cases.

And they had 90 days to do this.

For the Chicano Squad, at that time,

it was kinda the impossible job.

[music]

At first, we would go out there and there's some people

that said-- they just wouldn't talk to us.

I was worried about that.

[Jim M] The trust was not there.

I tried to explain that I was there to help,

but most of them said we're police.

The witnesses, they would say, "I didn't see anything.

I don't know anything." Of course, being a missionary,

I guess I learned to not give up on that.

My father was a missionary. He would go from door to door

trying to help the local Hispanics.

Even when they'd tell him to get the hell out of there

and curse at him,

he would smile and say, "Thank you very much.

God bless you," and walk off.

And then he'd be back in two or three days,

knock on the door. "I'm back!" [chuckles]

Jim would say in Spanish, it's not what you ask,

it's how you ask it.

Being a police officer, I found it easier to be

friendlier in approaching somebody.

We did that in the Chicano Squad.

I told the guys when we're going out there to a scene,

be friendly and, uh, have a big smile on your face.

Try to be open-minded, not aggressive.

Jim's faith has a lot to do with the way he treats people.

He cared, you know, for people that just were disadvantaged

and would help anybody.

[Jim M] We'd knock on the door and identify ourselves,

as we are the Chicano Squad.

[speaking Spanish]

Then I would go, "Mm, you're cooking.

It smells very good." And she'd say, "Yeah."

"What are you making?

"Are they tortillas and tamalitas?

Mm, my grandmother used to do that."

"Would you like to have a bite?"

And we'd come in and...

It made a relaxed atmosphere.

It was just like you were talking to your aunt.

[upbeat music]

And you sort of relax.

And I found that to work out real good for me.

He never met a stranger, and that's how he operated.

And that's how he expected

the Chicano Squad members to operate,

and I think that's, that's how it was.

The guys on the Chicano Squad

had grown up in that environment,

had grown up in that community, so they knew the community.

They knew the culture.

And that was a big advantage that they had.

You know, just the fact that we're Hispanics

and we're talking to Hispanics, that had a lot to do with it.

[U.P.] We spoke the language. We looked the part.

It broke--it broke the ice in a lot of things, you know?

I'd tell them, I'm a police officer. I'm not immigration.

You're not in trouble. I know why you're here.

You're here because you want a better life for your family.

Make them feel comfortable. That's what made it for us.

Made it big time. We had it made out there.

They spoke to us. We spoke to them.

And that was kind of the origin of how they started getting

the trust of the community.

[music]

[Sergio] In the early days of the Chicano Squad,

the biggest thing that they did early on

was get out there and actually talk to the community.

The Chicano Squad was able to alleviate that tension

within the community and show them that,

hey, you have someone on your side.

You can call the police. It's okay to trust us.

We are here to help.

That was the first big step, especially because

within those 90 days, getting the trust of the community,

that was the thing that could help them solve these cases.

[José] What I experienced when we worked homicide in the barrio

if a murder happened here, you'd go a block up the way,

door to door, knock on those doors,

come back to the other side. And somewhere in those houses...

[speaking Spanish]

Or sitting out on that porch that saw something.

That's true. Oh, yeah.

But you get an Anglo investigator,

he's not gonna get that information.

[Cecil] There was one case, I go out with an Anglo detective.

And we went to the East End. There was a security guy

that got killed in one of the warehouses out there.

We're looking for this guy.

He says, "I'm looking for a guy named Flako."

The Hispanic people come in and, "We don't know no Flako."

He kept on asking, Flako, Flako? Nobody knew who Flako was.

It dawned on me.

I said, "Oh my God, he's trying to say Flaco, not Flako."

That's how lost the police were with the community.

They couldn't communicate with these people.

And that, that set it up for me.

[groovy music]

[Jim M] Cecil was what you call a barrio boy.

He loves walking around the streets of the north side

just being around people.

I heard that this used to be bad on the street, a lot of gangs.

-[Cecil] Oh yeah, yeah. -[Man] That's what I heard.

Now it's just a regular neighborhood.

He grew up in a big family. Tough, tough life.

[Cecil] I was the oldest of eight brothers.

My dad was always working. He was always gone all the time.

So I kind of took over his role.

I had a responsibility to watch over my brothers

and also was helping my mom to pay her bills.

I started working, selling newspapers at the age of five.

It was a tough, hard life, but he succeeded.

[groovy music]

[Cecil] Being in Chicano Squad, it satisfied me

to serve my community. I loved what I was doing.

As time went on, the more time we spent out there

investigating cases, the community saw someone

really care what was happening in their neighborhoods.

I felt that the Chicano Squad is going to work

because these guys cared.

[ominous music]

One of the first cases that I worked when I got to homicide

happened in a cantina in Manchester.

[ominous music]

Basically this guy came in. He was a troublemaker.

And he started arguing with another guy.

And of course he killed him.

[gunshot]

That particular murder had been sitting there for a while,

like two years.

No one had ever done anything about it.

In the report it says, uh, suspect heavyset, Hispanic male.

Went to Mexico, you know, no leads.

So where you gonna go with that?

Most of our killings in the '70s,

they were from cantina killings.

A cantina is a beer joint.

That's what you call it in Spanish, a cantina.

Sometimes there's a little dance hall connected to it.

[Raymond] Most of the cantina killing, it was just mostly

just macho stuff. Either an argument,

fighting over a woman.

At one time it was just over a pool game.

Some of these murders were as crazy as he raped my sister

back in middle school.

I met up with him and I got even.

That type of [bleep].

They meet up at a cantina. They settle the scores.

When I did my first murder there in a cantina,

we go out there. We get to the cantina.

And there was the barmaid. Claudia was there cleaning up

the cantina and then the other one was icing the beer.

And I introduced myself.

[speaking Spanish]

And she looks at me.

She said, "Hey, I thought y'all forgot about it."

And then calls Maria.

And she says, "Yes. [Speaking Spanish] I remember."

They started talking about it, giving me details.

They both saw it. They could identify the guy.

And he still comes in here. He's walking freely.

He thought it was over because the lady said...

Because nobody went to bother him.

Nobody worked the case.

As my dad tells the story, everybody knew who did it.

Like, everybody knew who the murderer was,

but nobody was gonna tell on this guy because

they were afraid of him.

[José] He comes in. He puts his .45 on the table.

He's in charge of the place.

People are sometimes afraid. They are. They're afraid.

Sometimes they don't wanna get involved.

That's why you gotta go out and be persistent.

Because people won't cooperate.

The other thing about this case is that as I'm walking out

to go to my car, Claudia says...

The lady said, "Right there where that car is,

that's where he lives at."

It was there the whole time. I was gonna get this guy.

[tense music]

I was surprised that this lady knew so much about this case.

She said she knows him and knows who he is.

He still comes in here. He lives right there.

At the time, the guy wasn't home, but his car was there.

Get the license plate. That's a big break.

We brought in these two witnesses.

Claudia gave me her story. She gave me a statement.

I start typing.

Then I go back to Maria. "Tell me what happened again."

Same story.

Then I went and ran a search on the car.

That gives you a name. That guy's been arrested before.

I got a picture.

I went up to the photo lab, put together a photo spread.

I said, "Look, this guy that you're telling me about,

can you look at these pictures and tell me which one it is?"

"Yeah, it's number six. That's him right here."

It was there the whole time.

If you're not a persistent investigator, have that drive,

it's gonna die.

I've been working late on that night, two or three o'clock

in the morning, to do the typing and paperwork.

See, when I went to homicide, I was a single man.

And to me, work is what I had. I didn't have to go home.

If I had a case back then, I didn't think nothing

but I just gotta get it done.

[tense music]

And one day Maria calls me up and says, "Hey, that guy

that you're looking for, he just came in."

[Mexican music]

I'm thinking, "Let's go get him."

I went out with two detectives

because I knew this guy was dangerous.

[suspenseful music]

My father walks in the bar, asks the barmaid where is he.

The barmaid points him out.

[ominous music]

[José] And that's when I arrested him and cuffed him.

I said, "Is this what you're afraid of?

He's going to jail."

My father shows everybody in the bar,

you don't need to be afraid anymore.

[ominous music]

And that was kind of like, "Hey, the Chicano Squad's here.

You have somebody to call now."

[funky music]

[José] We went up there to be translators,

but when it came to that point when I did my first murder

and being able to bring closure to that, you feel good about it.

And I was able to help them. That gave me a purpose.

And back then, they told me, "You got 90 days."

It was, "That's fine. Let's go to the next one."

Going back to the first case that Joe had

from the beginning, you could see.

Joe was very persistent.

[Raymond] If you want somebody to investigate a case,

I would call Joe.

He was just good at what he does.

This picture here is you and I. And I had just gotten off

work that day. You can look at my face here.

I'm happy that you're here.

My father, José Selvera, is the hardest working person

I've ever met.

He's relentless and he's just one of those people that once

he gets his mind on something, just get out of his way.

When I was growing up, I mean, he certainly had a way about him

when you went a little bit outside the lines.

He had, like, this look.

Once you saw that look, it was, "Okay, I'm done."

It's just like that stare

that'll, like, pierce through you.

He has one of those.

Joe had movie star good looks. And he had those people skills.

And Joe never missed a beat.

Joe was a serious guy. He was a former Marine.

He acted like a Marine. He had that mindset.

[José] The military came in because I wanted to go

to college because I knew mom and dad couldn't

send me to college.

I walked into the Marine Corp recruiter and just said,

I said, "I wanna sign up." And I was, like, 19.

And uh, Vietnam was going on.

I said, "Well, I'll leave as soon as possible."

He said, "Okay, you can leave the day after tomorrow."

I said, "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute."

The Marines changed me a lot.

I came home and I knew that I was different

because my family had become my brothers

that were in the Marines. That was my family.

And I was at a crossroad.

I didn't know where I wanted to go.

So I applied for the police department.

I just wanted that brotherhood that we had in the military.

I found that with the Chicano Squad.

We're a brotherhood 'cause we fought our battles.

It's not a battle like war battles.

But we fought our battles to bring justice for people

that needed it.

From the beginning, when we went up to homicide,

the Anglo detectives, they were asking,

"What are these guys doing here?"

You'd hear this mumbling. And I heard somebody say,

"Hey, you guys think you're gonna do this?"

Kind of like a sarcastic remark.

In my mind, I said, "Hey, give me time."

Of course, we were patrolmen. And we were Hispanic guys.

Yeah, there were some problems there.

Was there resistance to change?

Yes, there was resistance to change.

The old white guys in homicide did not appreciate

their coming on the scene.

There were those that thought that,

"Nah, we don't need those guys. We can do it."

Early on, these guys faced incredible barriers

within the Houston Police Department

at all levels.

If you happened to be a minority of any sort, woman

or person of color, you better consider it

a privilege to be in the department.

The Houston Police Department at that time

had no real minority outreach.

The minority population of the police department was minuscule.

[Jesús] One of the things that the Houston Police Department

used to do was that it was denying the applications

of Mexican-Americans because they did not meet

this supposed height requirement.

You had to be at least 5'8", 155 pounds.

I was 5'7" 3/4, just a little quarter of an inch under.

I had to cheat a little bit on it.

I held on my tippy toes. And that's how I got accepted.

[José] That's the way it was. I dealt with a lot of that

throughout most of my career.

When I was working patrol out in northeast, this one officer,

he would say, "Joe, let's go get some wetbacks."

I mean, it was kind of like, "Oh, come on, man."

[siren whoops]

One day we stopped an undocumented man.

Didn't speak English, so we pulled him over.

And the officer with me says, "Joe, is he illegal?"

And I kind of like [bleep], I said, "Yeah, he's illegal."

He said, "Well, you know that's a felony."

I said, "Yeah, it's a felony."

He said, "Well, get in the car." And I had to do it.

There was conflict because you know whenever

I stopped that hardworking man that was all sweaty, all dirty

trying to catch a check, that was my dad.

So when I first went to homicide,

I'd seen enough of it.

That's what it was.

Back then, that's what we dealt with.

I could feel it. I could hear it.

I-I-I remember one specific detective who told me,

"You're not a detective? Why you guys are here?"

I said, "Because I'm doing a job that you can't do."

He said, "I know why y'all got in, 'cause y'all Hispanics.

That's why.

He's like, "You're not smart enough

to promote to be a detective."

Oh, man. Did that hit me hard.

And that's what motivated me.

I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

And to shut them down.

[music]

[tense music]

[Sergio] After the first month, certain cases,

they couldn't solve, but some of them were able

to solve with just a little bit of effort.

[twangy music]

The Chicano Squad, they uh, talked the talk

and they walked the walk.

After they were there, the Hispanic clearance rates

remarkably started going up.

Most of the detectives that had an open mind

were all for the Chicano Squad.

I went to the Chicano Squad with my hat in my hand

numerous times.

As a prosecutor, oftentimes it was very difficult

to locate witnesses.

A lot of times the witnesses did not want to help for fear.

Oftentimes, I would go to the Chicano Squad and say,

"Hey guys, I need this witness. I can't find him."

They would always say, "Let's see what we can do."

And oftentimes they would find the missing witness.

[Jim B] When you have a homicide division

that's working hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

of murder cases a year, this is not rocket science,

this is the basic needs of what we need here.

We needed the Chicano Squad.

I wanna show you something.

This is the original police department right here

for many, many, many years.

[clicky music]

There was a lineup.

This is where they used to do lineups.

This was the main office for the citizens to come in.

They had a front office.

This is the original office.

This is where we were assigned to.

There was just one desk and one typewriter in the back.

I was always in the office.

I mean, hell, I was always working.

All of us, the whole squad was working long hours.

[U.P.] What we learned from Jim Montero

during this whole process was that when you have a case,

you don't leave until you finish it.

So you couldn't just go home 'cause you wanted to go home.

[Cecil] A lot of times there was so much work because

we already had the cold cases, and then

we had to help the other detectives work a lot of cases.

And do the interviews or interrogation

or whatever we needed to do for them.

[Sergio] Everybody was looking for ways to clear their desk.

And I think the word was out within the department

that if you have a Latino or a Mexican surname on a case file,

you need to give it to these guys because they can speak

the language and they can do the work.

So as you can imagine, other detectives,

they started using them to their advantage.

We're not just talking murders.

We're not just talking robberies.

We're talking extortion, rapes, kidnappings.

All these other types of cases.

I knew what was going on.

The thing about it is, is that if we didn't help them,

it's not gonna get solved. We had to do it.

Luckily, I had that outline we got from Jim Montero.

I mean, I used that outline when I worked those cases, too.

The Chicano Squad weren't gonna turn any cases down

because they knew they were making an impact.

They were, um, clearly overworked because they were

having to help everybody with all their cases

and do twice the work.

But they were always glad to do that and never complained.

At that time, I had a routine down.

Early in the morning, I'm out there in the neighborhood

knocking on doors.

By two o'clock, I'm back in the office.

Then I would do my reports.

6:30, I was back out in the neighborhood,

and sometimes I was working surveillances late at night.

There I was, two or three o'clock,

four o'clock in the morning, questioning people.

Jim Montero, one day, he said, "Hey, Cec,

why do you work so much?"

I said, "For the victims' families."

Because they were hurtin'. I did it for them.

I was determined. I wanted to solve these cases.

And everybody thought that way.

We believed in what we were doing.

[percussive music]

We were just working, working, working.

We didn't pay attention. We were just working.

It didn't bother us.

[Jim M] The Anglo and Black detectives would have one

or two cases, but ours were three, four, five as a bunch.

Aside from homicides, we had a lot of kidnapping cases, too.

You could be working a murder case, but you're on call.

Hey Raymond, Joe, you're on call, brother.

We got a coyote mess. Okay, we're coming in.

The coyotes were smuggling people into the United States.

We worked quite a few of those cases.

[Man] Many of the thousands of illegal aliens that

cross the border each year pay professional guides

called coyotes to help them get to big cities.

The arrangements are always dangerous.

Many of the travelers die by accident.

Some are robbed or killed.

Those [speaking Spanish] were coming across

to hire a coyote.

The coyote would bring them in. They had set a price and paid,

but when they got here, they get to the family,

"Hey, you want this guy here? Another $15,000."

And the people, they couldn't afford that.

That's when they started calling the Chicano Squad.

[Woman] Last night at this eastside bar,

immigration investigators working undercover

reunited a Mexican family.

The mother cooperated with the INS

after smugglers told her they would keep her children

until a ransom was paid.

The coyote was making the threat.

The family member is saying,

"Hey, they said if we don't pay..."

[speaking Spanish]

I remember talking to one young man and I said, uh,

"What happened to your ear?" He said, "Well, he cut my ear."

I said, "Why did he do that?"

Because they didn't have the money to pay him.

Sometimes they did kill them. It turned into a murder.

We would find them dead on the side of the road,

in the back of pickup trucks. In my mind, I'm thinking,

"Man, these are your own people. You bring them from over there

and you're gonna treat them like trash?"

Dinero.

Oh, the money talks.

[Woman] Smuggling has become big business.

The market is there.

Aliens are willing to take the risk of being abused or worse.

[U.P.] One day while I was there at the police department,

I walked out to the hallway and they were telling me,

there's a guy up here.

You know, he had escaped from a coyote

and he only had his underwear.

And they only spoke Spanish, so they brought him up to us.

[uneasy music]

I gave him a t-shirt and some jeans.

We talked to him and he told us what had happened to him.

He's nervous. He's scared.

So I said, "Where did they keep you?"

The garage.

Men, women, and children in this garage.

[uneasy music]

The coyotes had little bags.

They would take their clothes, men and women.

So they couldn't go anywhere, right?

They're in their underwear.

I mean, these poor people, they had them sitting

on the floor of the garage. They can't move.

They're just looking at each other.

And they had these two guys back there with guns, taunting them.

[uneasy music]

They were scared.

The man who was kidnapped was able to tell us how he got away.

What they had were like porta-pottys.

They were taking people that were being held to the restroom.

And he's inside the porta-potty watching them.

[tense music]

When they walked away while he was in the restroom,

he said he looked and there was nobody there.

[tense music]

So he just took off running.

This young man was running around downtown

in his underwear, where he was found.

So the question was, "Do you know how to find this place?"

He said, "I think I can."

[suspenseful music]

When I started going through these streets, there's so many

apartments that I was wondering,

"Okay, which apartments are you talking about?"

We were passing some apartments on the way.

But this guy, where'd he come from?

[suspenseful music]

So I'm driving and I'm looking. I'm going,

"This guy is from the other side of the border.

"He is coming over here to Houston,

"a city he's never been to before,

now if he was able to find this place, that's a miracle."

Well, he directed me to the Westpark area,

which is the southwest part of town.

There's a lot of apartments over there

and a lot of Hispanic businesses and warehouses.

But we couldn't find the apartment that

he was talking about.

And then he all of a sudden said,

"Okay, okay. I think that's it. Right there, right there.

That one, that one. Go back. Go in there. Go in there."

And I did and he said, "Okay, see that one?

That's the apartment right over there."

It was evening. It was kind of dusk.

Not that much lighting, but you could see the apartment.

So I parked my car where I had a full view of the garage

that he was talking about and the apartment.

And that's when I got immigration.

I told them, "I need your help back here."

I called some patrol units, too, to help me because I knew

it was going to take a long time to get immigration there.

I knew that there were guys with guns in this garage

and they were dangerous.

[tense music]

[U.P.] I called immigration and I told them,

"I have a young guy that escaped from a coyote.

There's a garage here.

And he told me that they have other people in here."

And I gave them the address. And they said,

"Okay, well, we'll get there as soon as we can."

So I just kept my surveillance.

And we waited for them to come there.

I wanted to help these poor people.

When I was in the Chicano Squad, there were so many coyote cases,

the immigrants that were brought into Houston by the coyotes

and were being kept against their will,

those were the people who needed us the most.

And that's why I felt so much responsibility

to solving this case.

[suspenseful music]

I was just keeping an eye on the apartment,

and then, all of a sudden, a car drove in.

[suspenseful music]

That drew my attention because I went, "Wait a minute.

"Something didn't look right.

That's the pick-up guy."

They were coming here to pick up some people.

They spotted me.

Something didn't look good to them,

so they immediately took off.

And I couldn't follow them. I just stayed there.

I just kept my surveillance

because there's still more people in the garage.

There was no movement. Nobody was moving.

Nobody came out. Nobody moved.

Nothing.

[tense, buzzy music]

It took immigration quite a while to get there.

And then finally when immigration got there,

I got the officers, I went straight in.

[tense, buzzy music] [police radio chatter]

We opened the garage.

There were a lot of people in there.

We couldn't believe what we were seeing.

These poor people. They were all from Mexico.

So we started to take care of them and process the scene.

But the coyotes, we couldn't find them.

So we have a crime scene, but we didn't have the suspects.

They're gone. So I talked to the guy.

I took away and I said, "Tell me something.

"There's nobody there.

There's no guys back there with guns."

I said, "The guy that brought y'all over that had the gun,

so they're in there?" He said...

What are they wearing?

They took it off. They're like us.

And vaguely gave us a description.

We spotted them. We got 'em.

[sirens wailing]

And the assistance of the guy that was able

to escape helped a lot.

Immigration took charges on them, too.

Kidnapping.

The reason this case stays with me is because

I would have never,

out of all the investigations that I've done in homicide,

would have ever thought

that I would see people in that situation.

Being held against their will, it's terrible, it's horrible.

It meant the world that I could help people.

The work was very rewarding to me.

U.P. definitely was compassionate

with the community.

I think he had assisted more than just his cases.

U.P. did a really good job out on the streets.

[cool, upbeat music]

He made the citizens feel comfortable,

that they could come to him with anything.

[U.P.] I came from the hood. When I was growing up, we had

about 13 of us living in one house, so it was a big family.

My neighborhood was a little rough for me.

One day I decided I wanted to go to the park.

Unfortunately, I was met by three young guys

and I got into a little fight.

I had a busted lip and my shirt was torn.

So I started learning how to box.

I boxed in the Golden Gloves and I learned to defend myself,

protect myself.

[Linda] U.P. always worked out, constantly.

He wanted to be strong enough to deal with whatever could occur

when he was on the job.

My earliest memories of U.P. were like a bodybuilder

in a suit. Like, he was just a big guy.

Like, U.P. had some shoulders.

Like, how do you fit through that door?

U.P. definitely reminds me a lot of my father.

Very stern, but he definitely has a warm side.

Like, he was a big teddy bear.

[Linda] He's very loving.

U.P. would bring home what he called the Friday gift.

He would bring a gift home every Friday evening for me.

It could be a flower. It could be a candy.

It didn't have to be anything really big, but you know,

U.P. never talked about his work.

I never discussed anything with my wife

about the cases that I worked.

When I left work, I left it all behind.

[Linda] When he would come in, we had a back TV room

and he would go in there for a while and he would sort of

just watch golf or sports, or something to just decompress

from the day.

I would go in there, close the doors,

turn the TV on, and think about everything

I did that day, what I needed to do tomorrow.

Then I opened up the doors, come and talk to the kids,

and eat dinner. It's a habit I had.

It really helped me with seeing what I saw every day

in homicide.

U.P. was clearing cases.

I cleared my cases.

All of us, we were clearing cases.

[music]

Back when during that time,

uh, media was hot about Chicano Squad.

[U.P.] My mother was very excited

when she saw me in the newspaper.

My brothers and sisters, too. They couldn't get over it.

And she went and told all the neighbors.

And said, you know, "He's doing detective work."

We were constantly on the news.

And Mom was just ecstatic about it.

I remember the Chicano Squad came out

in the Houston Chronicle . It was on the front page.

-That's how we got known. -We just caught on.

You know, back in the '70s, Chicanos was the radical era,

the brown berets, Chicano power.

And I was surprised how popular we became.

Even the criminals liked us.

[laughter]

The Chicano Squad was so successful,

it just caught fire.

And then because they got so much media attention,

and they got more attention than anybody

in the homicide division.

And that caused problems because some homicide detectives

were just unhappy about that.

So that was another hurdle they had to overcome.

[tense music]

[José] There was resentment from the detectives.

It took us a long time to get respect.

Bobby Gatewood and I go out to work a murder case

and the body's laying out in the middle of the street.

I went in there and I told them, "We're from homicide.

"We need you to block that intersection,

block that intersection."

[sirens wailing]

And the first thing the detective says is,

"I don't take orders from you."

I called Chuck Lofland. I said, "There's a detective

says that we're not gonna work this scene."

He says, "Oh, really? Put him on the phone."

And the guy went on the phone. And I heard him say, "Yes, sir."

Gave me the phone.

He said, "Joe, you have any more problems, let me know."

He hung up.

Block that street, block that street.

And he took off. He left.

He never came back.

And that's basically what happened for months.

When we went up to homicide, that was a thing that would

happen all the time.

[José] One time I went up to accident division.

And I walked up and says, "Officer, I'm from homicide.

I need a copy of this accident report."

And he looked at me.

He says, "You can't have an accident report."

I said, "Look, we're working a murder.

"I need an accident report on this

'cause it's tied into my murder."

"You can't have it. Go through the procedures."

Lieutenant. [laughs]

[Cecil] The thing about it is, is that we did all the work

for the other detectives.

And at the end, they took credit for it.

We worked all these cases.

Well, they said y'all don't get credit for that.

And I'm sitting there, "Huh? That don't make no sense."

This is what I heard. The reason that we didn't get

credit for anything was because we were only a support group.

-Exactly. -But yet we were clearing cases.

When they started clearing these cases,

some of the officers that were already in homicide,

"Oh, give me that case back.

I cleared that case 'cause you're just a translator."

[Cecil] During the 90 days, the only way to prove

to the police department the Chicano Squad was working

was to show that we could solve these cases.

But if we didn't get credit for clearing these cases,

we got a problem.

[José] I remember the first two murder cases that I worked.

They were cantina killers.

The detectives, when they filed it,

got credit for it.

When I first went to homicide, I was an interpreter.

I can tell you right now there wasn't much pride.

I'm an interpreter.

But when I actually got my murder cases,

that gave me pride.

I got the statement. I got the photos.

I arrested him. I solved this one.

But then they went and filed it.

And filing the case is like, you know, you cleared the case.

But if you really look at the whole thing,

who really did the work? I did the work.

If we couldn't figure that out,

that was the end of the Chicano Squad.

In the early times when we started helping the uh,

other detectives to clear their cases, we arrested the guy,

we pulled all the witnesses. We did all the leg work for 'em.

And at the end, they took the credit.

This happened with Joe. And he had a cantina case.

He solved it and they took credit for it.

And I said, "Oh, this is wrong."

I did the work and then this guy is gonna take off

and says it's his.

Yeah, it upset me 'cause they're saying

that they cleared the case. They didn't clear it.

I did.

[Raymond] We felt, "Well, hey, that's not right."

If Joe cleared it, he should go file it.

But first they told Jim about it.

He talked to Lieutenant Lofland.

And Lieutenant Lofland said, "Well, that's gonna stop.

"If they give it to y'all, they say we can't handle it

"'cause there's a language barrier, and y'all cleared it,

y'all gonna get the credit, not them."

[José] Chuck Lofland says, "Joe, that's yours."

We solved it, so it went, credit for us, not them.

The lieutenant corrected it.

There wasn't literally a day that the Chicano Squad

wasn't caught in some type of controversy.

[Sergio] Again, this is not a bash HPD thing,

but the next hurdle was there were other detectives,

but also people who were trying to promote to detective

had an issue with the Chicano Squad.

[Cecil] Some of the officers were complaining,

"Why are they in homicide? They're officers.

They're not detectives."

[Jim B] There were bruised feelings.

There were a lot of young men and women

that wanted to be promoted to come to the homicide division

that were bumped out of that job.

The detective rank was the required rank to gain entry

into any one of the investigative divisions,

whether it was burglary and theft, robbery, or homicide.

But many of the guys in the Chicano Squad

only had the police officer classification.

[Cecil] All of us eventually were gonna take the test,

but it was tough because we're working all the time,

and so it took us a long time to study.

And so some of the real detectives, number one,

resented that they could have the same standing

in the same division without having taken that test.

So because of this issue, when you have an issue,

you file a grievance. So they filed a grievance

with the police union

saying these people are not promoting the right way.

[tense music]

They basically were filing a reverse discrimination complaint

against the Chicano Squad to, number one, try to make the

argument that they were being given special consideration.

[Man] The officers said they did it because they're fed up

with being pushed around by the police chief.

[Jim M] They came up there bitching at Chief Caldwell.

It was hard,

you know, because he didn't wanna mess with associations

and the complaints going to the union

and all that kind of stuff.

I'm here. Sacrifice my family.

Working overtime. Staying late at night

making the police look good and you're telling me

I'm not worth it. How can you say that?

The deal is this, we were clearing cases.

We were filing the cases.

We were testifying in court and getting convictions.

We're officers. They're detectives.

They took a civil service test.

They got a gold badge. I have a silver badge.

I didn't have to have a gold badge to do what you're doing.

I didn't understand it, you know?

I'm doing my job and your job.

[Jesús] The Chicano Squad had a lot of complaints

lodged against them.

And a lot of these complaints were because of

bypassing procedure, but a lot of those complaints

also were personal.

How dare these men come and be a detective

when they haven't really earned their stripes.

And now they're doing the job better than me?

I don't think so. It's jealousy,

but I think it's also sort of bigotry.

I think certain bigoted men did not want Mexicans

in homicide division simply because they were occupying,

and successfully occupying, what has been traditionally

a white space within the Houston Police Department.

[Graciela] For the most part,

the union at that time was very white.

And they were in control of who, what and how

was going on in the police department.

I think they definitely wanted to continue to control

because for so long we had been oppressed, we had been omitted,

we had been left out, you know, it was playing catch-up.

I think they did not like that.

And I think that they felt threatened.

Clearly, the challenges that the Chicano Squad faced

They had a tremendous workload.

They had these cold cases still that were pending.

They had a timeline that they had to meet.

I mean, it was pressure for them.

[José] The end of 90 days was coming

and we knew the complaint was still pending.

There was talk that they would have disbanded

the Chicano Squad.

I didn't think about it. We continued working.

Because like I tell you, we go back to the large number

of cases that were sitting there.

I told the guys in the squad, we're helping the people.

We're helping Chicanos.

My first priority's my work. That's what I was thinking.

[Sergio] This was always something that

could be taken away at any time.

They were like, "We have to succeed at this,"

because you didn't know if this thing was gonna last.

[music]

[suspenseful music]

Once the 90 days is coming up and they are proving that

they can do the work of the detectives,

the guys started thinking about what was gonna happen.

Remember, nobody thought they were gonna be successful.

At the end of 90 days, we were concerned what was gonna happen.

What happened was in only three months, the Chicano Squad

cleared 40 homicides.

[suspenseful music]

That is phenomenal. A huge clearance rate.

So they pretty immediately showed their utility

and their usefulness and why they needed to be there.

[suspenseful music]

They didn't clear all the cases,

but they cleared a whole lot more than we cleared.

And they cleared a whole lot more than would've been cleared

if they weren't there.

The homicide division had 200 guys.

The Chicano Squad was six officers.

They literally were getting almost identical,

the workload that the greater homicide division was getting.

And yet they were able to have a better clearance rate

than the regular homicide division.

The clearance rate I think speaks to the work ethic.

I think it speaks to how needed it was

and also how talented these men were.

They took it very seriously.

And they were able to accomplish what many thought they couldn't.

[U.P.] At the end of the 90 days, we heard from Joe Montero.

He says, "You know what, guys? Y'all aren't going anywhere."

"What do you mean?" "They're keeping y'all here."

The captain said and the chief said, "They're staying.

They're not going anywhere." I was so excited.

I feel very rewarded.

When we first got to homicide, they had no idea that

it was gonna be a success, but knowing that you did your best

and you got it, that's a great feeling.

It made me feel good and proud because we got recognized

by the work we did out there.

And I think they knew that the Chicano Squad

deserved to stay in homicide.

[U.P.] It felt great because we proved to y'all that

it doesn't take a civil service test

to find officers that have a lot of quality.

You got a lot of smart guys out there.

Give them a chance.

After the 90 days, all they did is kept giving us more cases,

so we knew we were there to stay.

Who else is gonna work the cases?

It's funny how sometimes people will try to set you up

for failure by not providing enough resources or support,

but it also can be a motivator.

And I think that that's what happened.

The upper ranks of the department recognized

that it was a necessity.

And the complaint against the Chicano Squad was resolved.

Caldwell was quick to work it out, and he handled it.

The chief said, "Okay, fine. I hear you.

"I'm gonna move the Chicano Squad.

"I'm going to assign them to the chief's office.

And if you have a problem with it, come see me."

And then U.P., Joe, myself, we all took the exam

to be a detective. I passed it and I got promoted.

I was happy 'cause I was smart enough.

And I shut them down.

Unfortunately, U.P. and Joe didn't pass.

I just blew it off because I didn't care for it.

I enjoyed what I was doing.

And you know, I'll tell you another thing about that,

studying the book, taking the promotion,

that doesn't make you an investigator.

You gotta have drive, discipline,

and you gotta go after it.

[Jim M] Joe Selvera and U.P. Hernández,

they were never classified detectives.

After I got clearance from the chief of police,

I started referring to them as investigators, and that way,

the guys who were waiting to be promoted to be detectives

could not make a complaint.

[Sergio] Once that happened, that was kind of the stamp of

the Chicano Squad is here to stay.

Get out of their way and let them do their work.

And then it was on.

[sirens wailing]

[José] Right after 90 days, Joe DeLeon decided to leave

the Chicano Squad because working homicide,

working around the clock, that's not for everybody.

[upbeat, percussive music]

Jim and the guys, we all talked. Says, "Who do we bring up?

"Do we want a worker?

Somebody we can get along with, so we can keep the..."

Raymond's name came up.

[Raymond] At first, when the Chicano Squad approached me,

I thought, "I really loved working the streets."

But homicide is a different game, I think.

[José] Cecil knew Raymond. I knew Raymond.

And I said, "Look, I know this guy is a worker."

I said, "Yeah, I'll give it a try.

Yeah, I'll go."

And then I think a week later,

they told me to report to homicide.

[funky music]

It was a new territory for me. I was nervous, but excited.

I wanted to learn.

[funky music]

When I became a police officer, a lot of my friends, they said,

"You know, Raymond, you're too nice to be a cop."

I didn't know cops had to be mean or something.

Raymond had a good heart. He was good to people.

He was understanding.

My father is the most calm, cool, level-headed,

super kind person,

so it's kind of ironic that he has another side of him

that investigates murders and interrogates murderers.

But that's his character. He's just always been that way.

He's, uh, very soft, tender, type of guy

but yet, he's tough.

Raymond went through a lot of different things as a patrolman.

[Cecil] And when Raymond got to homicide,

the first day, Raymond shows up with a--

I think he had broken his ankle or some [bleep].

And he had a sock over his cast.

And I remember telling Raymond, "Raymond, go home, man.

We got a murder, but you're hobbling, man."

He said, "Nah, I'm going with you."

And it had been raining that day,

but that's his personality.

[Sergio] So now you got Jim, leader.

You got Joe and U.P., two strong guys.

And then you got Raymond in there, who is also like,

"Hey, look, maybe there's a different approach.

"We can't do everything with strength and being stern.

Maybe there's a softer side to this."

So when Raymond joined, he really was a great addition

to the Chicano Squad.

[Cecil] Ninety days went by fast and we survived.

But we didn't know how dangerous it was gonna get later on.

[intensifying music]

[sirens wailing]

[Woman] A Colombian couple was found executed

and dumped in the trunk of a Mercedes at the airport.

The Colombians started moving their drugs here in Houston.

They were ruthless 'cause they would shoot and kill people.

[Man] It was cold-blooded murder.

[U.P.] The cartel was always armed heavier than we ever were.

We were no match.

[Jim M] We got a call about a baby crying.

Both the father and the mother had been killed.

[suspenseful music]

Uh...

It's a bad scene. It's a real bad scene.

[Woman] It doesn't look like there's any end in sight

with Houston's growing drug trafficking problem.

[Jesús] Here it is on the Chicano Squad

to try to put a plug in the city's downward spiral.

It's an impossible job at an impossible time.

They put a hit on me and my partner.

When a policeman gets killed, we don't forget.

And they don't. It's one of our brothers.

It was shocking.

These guys were gonna wind up killing more people.

[gunshot]

We gotta stop these guys, man.

[sirens wailing]