They don’t see them as gangsters but as childhood friends who guarded homes, watched parked cars, kept drunks from disrespecting the women. It’s the police, they say, who will take things from the corner store without paying, shake you down on your walk home, make your 12-year-old daughter unbutton her shirt.

“People don’t go out on the street because they’re afraid of the government,” said Graciela Piñeda, whose 21-year-old son, Martin Garcia, was the second of her boys to be killed by authorities in the past three years. “These boys never disrespected anyone. They took care of us