Docuseries – The Chicano Squad Premieres On A&E Sept. 2

For entertainment attorney Sergio Selvera, his father José is a real hero. The senior Selvera was a founding member of the first all-Latino homicide unit in Houston, which made history in 1979 by quickly solving a long list of open murder cases in the city’s decades-long neglected Mexican American community.

Tapping into his Hollywood connections, Sergio Selvera shared the history with producer/writer Nancy De Los Santos (“Say A Little Prayer”). “As a Latina producer and writer, I’m always on the lookout for a story that reflects our community in a realistic light,” De Los Santos said. “This story is true American history that hadn’t been told.”

Now, the crime fighters’ story is coming to television. “The Chicano Squad” premieres Sept. 2 and 3 as a two-part documentary special on the true-crime cable channel A&E, with the junior Selvera and De Los Santos serving as executive producers. 

Directed by Mario Diaz (“Right to Offend”), the series features interviews with original squad members Jim Montero, Raymond Gonzales, Urban P. Hernandez, Cecil Mosqueda and José Selvera. It explores how they revolutionized community policing and whose surprising success led them to become a fixture in the Houston Police Department (HPD) for nearly 30 years. The documentary also includes simple recreations or reenactments that add a 1970s visual feeling, an approach seldom seen in A&E content. 

“The story is inherently just fascinating,” said Diaz during a recent private and media screening of “The Chicano Squad” at the Creative Artists Agency in Century City. “It’s a piece of Latino history that many people don’t really know about.”

Decades of disregard and corruption inside the HPD led to widespread police brutality and hundreds of unsolved homicides in the city’s Latino neighborhood. Things came to a boiling point with the killing of José Campos Torres, a Mexican-American war veteran, at the hands of the police in 1977, which eventually resulted in days of riots. Campos Torres’ murder led to even more distrust of police among local Latinos. 

Facing mounting pressure for accountability from Latino activists and civic leaders, in 1979, Police Chief Rex Ingram Caldwell created the Latino homicide unit. The effort was led by Montero, a detective at the time, who set out to recruit five Spanish-speaking patrolmen from the limited number of Latino officers in the HPD. 

Diaz said that Latino activism forced a change in law enforcement. “The police department killed a Latino man, they beat him to death, essentially, and he was a veteran,” he said, adding, “So people were rightfully upset about what was going on. And so they put a lot of pressure on the police department to reform itself.”

But nothing was served on a silver platter for the rookie detectives. José Selvera recalled they were given only a few days of homicide investigation training, mainly by shadowing detectives working in the field. Then came another almost impossible challenge: they were given 90 days to solve more than 50 unsolved murder cases in the Latino community, the majority of which had no leads.

De Los Santos added, “The members of the Chicano Squad were up against the inherent racism of the time in the city and in the police force, but their dedication to their community and their tenacity to solve these cases was phenomenal. They are true American heroes.”

Montero’s unit did not let the police department or the Latino community down. Gaining the trust of both United States-born Latinos and Mexican immigrants, the rookie detectives solved 80% of the cases. They became popular with the new media, regularly covering their successful investigations in newspaper articles and television reports. Journalists dubbed the crime-fighting team as the “Chicano Squad.”

“These guys in Houston were tasked with almost an impossible challenge,” said Diaz.

For José Selvera, the task was clear and the mission was to succeed. “We came to Houston, we had a job to do and we got it done,” he said. He flew from Houston to Los Angeles for the screening in Century City, accompanied by family members. 

With such a success rate of murder solving that was unheard of in the HPD, especially by a rookie detective force, Caldwell decided to extend the squad’s life for many years. 

The homicide unit’s long history also faced new challenges in the 1980s. The drug trade brought Colombian cartels to Houston and the squad had to adapt to face a new enemy that had no roots in Texas, making their investigation harder than before, said Hernandez, who also attended the LA screening. The second part of the documentary deals with this period.

But the Chicano Squad kept on working and solving brutal killings, relying on their bilingualism, cultural sensitivity and hard-earned trust from longtime Houston residents.

Hernandez said he and all the unit’s members remain proud of their achievement. “Our legacy is that we were able to break a huge barrier,” he said. “Initially, HPD detectives didn’t think that we could do the job that they’re doing.”

“They were set up to fail and succeeded despite all the odds and brought closure to a lot of people who lost their loved ones in violent crimes,” Sergio Selvera. “They gave dignity to these Latino families.”

“The Chicano Squad is like the Latino Avengers story in law enforcement,” said an excited audience member,” referring to Marvel’s superhero film “The Avengers.”

“The Chicano Squad” will be available on demand and to stream after its premiere on the A&E app, AETV.com and other TV providers and online platforms.

The Chicano Squad” is produced by Jupiter Entertainment and Bender Brown Productions for A&E. Patrick Reardon and Eric Wetherington serve as executive producers for Jupiter Entertainment and the project was developed for Jupiter by Chris Spry. Lawrence Bender (“An Inconvenient Truth”) and Kevin Kelly Brown (“Trumbo”) are executive producers for Bender Brown Productions. Along with Sergio Selvera, De Los Santos serves as an executive producer. Maitee Cueva, Brad Abramson, and Elaine Frontain Bryant are executive producers for A&E.