Early on a Thursday morning in February, two men in suits rapped on the door of the South Los Angeles apartment that Gadseel Quiñonez shares with his little brother.
The men were from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Professional Standards Bureau — the cops who police the cops. They wanted to know whether Quiñonez, 29, or his brother belonged to any gangs. No, he told them. They asked whether they could take pictures of his tattoos. Sure, he said. He had nothing to hide.
Months later, three LAPD officers were charged with falsifying dozens of gang records, and the reason for the early morning visit became clear: Quiñonez and his brother, Jose, had been falsely identified as members of MS-13, a street gang notorious for macabre killings, according to a complaint filed by county prosecutors.
Gadseel and Jose Quiñonez are among dozens of people who county prosecutors say were falsely labeled as gang members or associates by Officers Braxton Shaw, Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez. All three are with the LAPD’s elite Metropolitan Division.
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