LOS ANGELES (CN) — Three members of the South Los Angeles street gang Florencia 13 received sentences of as long as 50 years in federal prison for the killing of off-duty LA Police Officer Fernando Arroyos when he was house hunting with his fiancée in January 2022.
The three pleaded guilty July 2023, shortly before they were to go on trial, to conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act.
The killing of Arroyos — a native of South Central LA who had graduated from UC Berkeley and was considered one of the brightest prospects on the police force — caused an uproar in LA where concerns about rising crime had already prompted an ultimately unsuccessful effort to recall liberal leaning District Attorney George Gascón.
“The senseless loss of life is all too frequent in our community,” U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson said at the separate sentencing hearings Friday afternoon. “It is literally ripping apart the fabric of our society. The sentence imposed today must send a message, not only to this defendant but to everyone, that if you choose to endanger our community by murdering, robbing and trafficking in narcotics, there will be significant consequences.”
Luis Alfredo de la Rosa Rios, 30, and Ernesto Cisneros, 25, were each sentenced to 50 years. They were the ones who robbed Arroyos at gunpoint before killing him. The third man, Jesse Contreras, 36, was sentenced to 35 years. He gave a loaded gun to Rios but stayed behind in the truck they were driving when the other got out to rob Arroyos and his girlfriend.
Earlier that same day, at 2 a.m., Rios and Contreras had already robbed two musicians outside a bar where they had been performing. They had been waiting outside the bar expecting that band members who had been performing there for hours would have a lot of cash on them, according to the prosecution in their sentencing memorandum. They took about $2,000 from the two victims at gunpoint.
Later that day, they picked up Cisneros and cruised around in Rios’s truck looking for people to rob. They noticed Arroyos and his fiancée and decided to target him because he was wearing gold chains around his neck.
“With his elite education, Fernando could have pursued any number of professions that would have been more financially rewarding than a career in law enforcement,” now-retired LAPD Chief Michel Moore said in a letter to the judge last year. “However, Fernando wanted to give back to his community and pursued his childhood dream of becoming a police officer.”
The three men, as well as Rios’s girlfriend, were arrested shortly after the Jan. 10, 2022 murder of Arroyos. They were initially charged with violent crime in aid of racketeering, which would have put them behind bars for life if they had been convicted.
In July 2023, prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles offered them a plea deal, which all three of them had to accept or none would get it, to admit to racketeering conspiracy with the understanding that the government would seek sentences of 35 to 50 years.
Contreras and Cisneros tried to withdraw their guilty pleas, claiming that they hadn’t understood what they were pleading guilty to, but the judge rejected their request in May, noting that during the change-of-plea hearings he had repeatedly asked them if they understood the terms of the agreement and whether they needed more time to confer with their attorneys.