Once Upon A Time in Compton

by Brennan, Tim; Ladd, Robert; Files, Lolita

  “Get down!” Tim yelled.

  Everyone hit the ground, including a cameraman who had been filming. He quickly regrouped, broadcasting the live action of the chase and shooting that unfolded.

  Around five other officers were present along with Tim and Bob. J.R. ran across the street. The chrome handgun he was holding was clearly visible. The officers ran after him, firing in his direction from about fifteen to twenty-five feet away. Finally, J.R. dropped to the ground. It had taken a small army of cops to kill J.R.

  Except they hadn’t killed him.

  This was still J.R.’s lucky day. (Or they were all shitty shots.)

  When the cops approached him, J.R., who should have been full of holes, only had one gunshot wound on his leg. He was like a walking, running, car-jacking, shooting, jail-breaking force field.

  J.R. was later convicted of all the murders and antics he pulled that day. He would never get out of prison again.

  Unless he somehow managed to escape…

  ***

  For some guys in the department, the extreme amount of violence was too much. There were shootings every night. That kind of violence could affect anyone psychologically or even create the feeling that extra protection was needed. One officer reached what must have been his version of critical mass.

  René was a big, muscular white guy who used to lift weights. He had huge arms, a wide neck, and a big square head. His hair was in a crew cut. One day he came to work and walked into the locker room carrying a large bulletproof shield. It immediately got everyone’s attention.

  Back then, shields were still fairly new to law enforcement. They were only being used by SWAT teams, and then only when they entered a house or a building with an armed and dangerous suspect. They weren’t exactly light, either. Ballistic shields were solid and bulky.

  René walked in all casual with this thing, set it down by his locker, and proceeded to get dressed. The jokes were instantaneous.

  “You made SWAT, huh?”

  Raucous laughter.

  Compton didn’t have a SWAT team.

  The jokes kept on coming until even René was laughing.

  “Fuck you guys,” he said. “I’m taking this out with me and I’m gonna use it during car stops.”

  The room exploded with even more laughter.

  “It’s dangerous out there,” he said, trying not to laugh.

  No one believed he was serious. The guys couldn’t wait for briefing to be over so they could see if he was really going to use it.

  Imagine a cop pulling someone over for speeding. The person stops and waits and, suddenly in the side mirror, sees the cop approaching holding a big bulletproof shield.

  At the least, it was startling. At the most, it was enough to scare a motorist into speeding off and creating more trouble for himself in the process.

  ***

  Sure enough, after the briefing let out, René hit the streets with that big ballistic shield in his vehicle. All the other officers were primed, eagerly listening for when he would get his first traffic stop. When they heard him over the radio, every free car rushed to see if he was going to use it.

  When they arrived, René was already at the driver’s side door of the car he’d pulled over. He was holding the shield. It was still daylight, and there he was like he was under major attack.

  Only in fucking Compton.

  This wasn’t a one-time thing, either. René actively started using it. Word got back to other officers about him approaching cars carrying the shield, spooking the drivers he was stopping.

  Nothing could be done about it. The sergeants couldn’t tell him he couldn’t carry it because there was no policy in place saying so. There’d never been the need to create such a policy. No one in the history of law enforcement doing basic policing, as far as anyone knew, had used a shield before.

  For weeks, guys on the P.M. shift would listen out for René’s vehicle stops so they could rush over to witness the spectacle. Seeing him stand next to a car holding that shield like a modern-day Viking and the shocked looks on the faces of the people he pulled over never got old.

  René eventually left Compton and went to Redondo Beach P.D.

  No one knew if he took the shield with him.

  ***

  Because they made so many arrests, Tim and Bob had to appear in court almost every day, even on their days off. Most of their cases were handled at the twelve-story Compton courthouse, right next to the police station. It being so close was convenient, but it was exhausting having to be there at such early hours. Working the P.M. shift meant they didn’t get off until late at night, then they’d have to be at court at nine the next morning. The worst was when they showed up in court all tired and the D.A. said the case was continued. Or if the suspect took a plea. Later, when Tim and Bob were a part of Compton’s gang unit and worked closely with the gang unit at the D.A.’s office, the D.A. was more lenient and would let them know in advance if they needed to show up or not.

  Bob Ladd in the early years when he first partnered with Tim Brennan.

  ***

  The neighborhood next to the courthouse was claimed by the Palmer Blocc Crips. Gang members could be seen hanging out in large groups, even selling dope, in plain view of the courthouse. At one point, they started shooting out the windows of the courthouse with AK-47’s. They’d wait until it was night, long after the courthouse was closed. This went on for several weeks.

  Guns hidden by Palmer Blocc Crips in the trunk of an abandoned car.

  When jurors came to court in the mornings, there’d be wood covering the shot-out windows on the west side of the building and signs on every floor that read, “Don’t stand next to the windows.” Compton’s police chief was inundated with calls for the department to do something about what was happening.

  Everyone, from D.As and judges to courthouse employees, was freaked out. The people who worked in the courthouse were used to coming in to work and being inside what had previously been an assumed safe space. Now they were getting a taste of what cops on the P.M. shift were seeing every night.

  Tim and Bob had to deal with it, but they didn’t have the time to sit around waiting to catch gang members in the act. First they talked to a longtime informant who told them the guns used to shoot out the courthouse windows were being hidden in the trunk of an abandoned car in the backyard of one of the gang’s hangouts. Tim and Bob got a search warrant and seized the guns.

  Next, they decided to approach the problem Compton-style by going to see the Palmer Blocc OG’s. Both parties knew each other well. An ultimatum was issued.

  “If you guys don’t stop shooting out the courthouse windows, we’re gonna make it hard for you. None of you will be able to make a move without one of us stopping you. We’ll arrest you for everything. We’ll put all of you in jail.”

  No one in the Compton P.D. had the time nor manpower to do this, but the OG’s didn’t know that. All the old heads cared about was that, if this threat was followed through, they wouldn’t make money. Making money was way more important than courthouse windows.

  The shooting stopped. OG negotiations had their place.

  ***

  Sometimes there were silent burglar alarm calls from fast food places. The guys would arrive and find a window had been smashed. This was pretty common. It was an easy in-and-out job where someone would break in, get the cash register, and get out. One night, however, they got one of these calls, went in, and found a Black guy in the back by the cook’s area sitting on the ground. Tim and Bob pulled their guns.

  “Lie on the ground!”

  The guy looked up at them, unbothered by their weapons. That was when they noticed he was eating raw hamburger meat, shoving it into his mouth. He was oblivious to any commands. He was wasted on PCP.

  Sometimes gangbangers would smoke PCP and drink a forty ounce of malt liquor before going out to do a drive-by. Imagine a car full of guys high on PCP and drunk off Olde English 800, armed with AK-47s spraying neighb
orhoods. Gangbanging dusters.

  The carnage they’d leave in their wake was nothing short of a nightmare.

  ***

  Because Compton was rife with such incidents, sooner or later, no matter what beat an officer worked, a trip to the hospital would be necessary to take a report from a victim. The hospital most frequented during the eighties and nineties was unlike anything imaginable.

  Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center was located at 120th and Wilmington Avenue in the heart of Watts, just a couple of blocks north of Compton. Between all the violence in South Central and Compton, MLK was always busy.

  It was a trauma hospital, so this was where victims suffering from major injuries were brought. The hospital had such a high volume of trauma victims coming through its doors, military doctors trained there in preparation to work in M.A.S.H.[17] units. It was well-known that MLK had some of the best trauma doctors in the business. If someone was shot, this was the emergency room where he wanted to be treated.

  What a person didn’t want was to be admitted. That was considered a death sentence. MLK’s aftercare was notoriously awful, even once leading to the death of a deputy sheriff. The place was badly-managed and staffed with its share of incompetent nurses. There were cases of patients who had died in their rooms because nurses weren’t even paying attention to the machines that monitored their vital signs.

  The hospital had earned the nickname “Killer King” because of the gross negligence. It was eventually shut down in 2007 when, amid a long history of poor patient care, the emergency room staff refused to assist a woman who came in with stomach pains. It was her third time visiting the emergency room complaining of the same issue and she was turned away. The woman collapsed right there and threw up blood, but King’s emergency staff was not moved. They just ignored her. A janitor even cleaned up around her. She died at the hospital without receiving any aid.

  Tim and Bob got a firsthand view of the negligence that went on at MLK. There were so many gunshot victims from all the gang violence that the two sometimes had to make trips to the hospital on a daily basis to take reports from the wounded and interview them. MLK’s emergency room was always in shambles. There were people running everywhere. Victims would be in the hallways complaining of having been there for hours.

  On one visit to the emergency room, Tim and Bob walked in and saw gunshot victims lying on gurneys that were lined up in the hallway. The gunshot victims they had come to see were being worked on by doctors in a small trauma room with two beds. Chests were being cracked open. There was blood all over the floor. They passed one Black gang member who had been shot in the leg. He wasn’t dying, but he was clearly in a lot of pain.

  “This shit is fucked up!” he screamed at nurses. “I’ve been here for three hours! I’m fucking shot!”

  As this was happening, a car drove up outside, dumped another gunshot victim off, and sped away.

  It was business as usual.

  Tim and Bob often joked that if one of them went down or got shot, Killer King was where they wanted to come. Once stable, though, they wanted to be out of there, stat. This was often said as a joke, but both men were quite serious.

  ***

  One night, Tim and Bob had just left Killer King and were driving down Central Avenue. A little red car blew past them, flying. Inside were two Black males who had just committed armed robbery in the nearby city of Gardena, but they didn’t know that yet.

  Tim was behind the wheel. As they floored it in pursuit, they notified dispatch that they were traveling north on Central toward Imperial Highway. The red car was doing a hundred miles per hour with the two cops driving just as fast, right on their tail.

  As both cars approached Willowbrook Avenue, Tim and Bob saw the wigwags at the tracks up ahead were down. Red lights were flashing. A train was slowly approaching from the southbound direction.

  The red car’s brake lights came on for a second, then the car sped forward, smashing right through the wigwags, which shattered on contact.

  Tim had to make a decision and he only had a second to do it. The two had been in a lot of car chases and Tim was an excellent driver. Still, a moment like this was already pretty nerve-wracking for whoever was riding shotgun. The train was halfway through the intersection. Bob’s ass was clenched.

  “Fuck it!” Tim said. He flew over the tracks after the car, barely making it before the train came through.

  “You motherfucker!” yelled Bob.

  “Ha!” Tim laughed, and they continued pursuit.

  Moments like this were their partnership in the making. These were the times that cemented their bond and assured each man how much he could trust the other.

  They continued pursuing the car into the Athens Park area just north of Watts. The suspects stopped and bolted out. Tim and Bob screeched up behind them just as they were heading down an alley. One of them fired shots at the cops, who jumped out of the car and fired back at the suspects. Bob went to the other side of the alley and they set up a containment area as units came in to assist. When backup arrived, the suspects were arrested without further incident. Luckily, even though there was gunfire, no one was hurt.

  Tim and Bob didn’t have wild chases like this every night, but wild chases weren’t so out of the norm that the two didn’t leap into action when they did occur. After encountering an extreme level of violence as a regular part of the job, they were ready for anything.

  Around the time that Tim and Bob were still out on the beat having these kinds of adventures, the Compton P.D. found it necessary to create a permanent gang unit. Dealing with fifty-five gangs concentrated in a ten-square-mile city mandated such a move. The high crime rate, drug trafficking, shootings, and murders had to be addressed in a more focused way.

  Sergeant Hourie Taylor was charged with this task. He was native to the area, having grown up in South Central and Compton. A heavyset Black man who sported a short afro and glasses, Taylor was incredibly knowledgeable when it came to the history of gangs. His experience wasn’t vicarious. He’d been a part of the landscape his whole life and had witnessed the causes that created the effects that resulted in Compton being so defined by drugs, violence, and unrest. Taylor had been around when the Crips and Bloods came into being and knew their origin stories, including all the players involved. Gang members respected him for being so knowledgeable. His lectures and seminars about the beginnings of gangs have been adopted and taught by many of today’s experts, including Tim and Bob.

  Taylor emphasized that in order to be effective, those who worked in the unit needed to thoroughly understand the dynamics of the gangs. That included knowing the gang members by face, name, and personal history, as well as each gang’s conflicts, rivalries, and their alliances. Accomplishing this meant being out in the trenches every day, observing how they moved, who they interacted with, and having direct contact with them. This was something that took time, but it was a strategy that proved successful.

  The first members of the newly-formed gang unit were chosen with great care by Taylor, each exceptional in his or her own right at solving gang-related crimes. Bobby Baker already had an established reputation for being the best dope guy in the department, even though he was white. He knew how gangs operated and wasn’t afraid of anything, despite his slight size and build.

  Reggie Wright, Sr. was like Taylor in that he was native to the area. He’d grown up in Imperial Courts in Watts, one of the most violent projects in South Central. Gang members all over the city knew and respected him. Reggie was the best at not just getting people to talk, but making them trust him enough to provide useful information that led to crimes being solved. He was a natural choice. He and Taylor understood one another. They would ultimately become close friends whose careers would always be linked.

  Mark Anderson was a big presence - a 6’5, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound white guy with brown hair and a mustache. He was just as crazy as he was funny. Mark knew gang members well; not just their names, either, but a
lso their nicknames. This was a skill he’d developed before the gang unit was formed. He had always taken the time to talk to gang members directly, personally. Many respected him because of this. On holidays like the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve, when gangsters often fired off shots in celebration - a dangerous act that could easily get someone killed if a bullet landed wrong - Mark had a way of shutting it down. He would load a shotgun with blank rounds, cut through yards on a street next to where the shooting was happening, yell out something random, then start firing. The gangsters would scatter.

  He was perfect for the unit.

  Eric Perrodin - Black, 6’2, about a hundred and seventy pounds with an athletic build - had grown up in Compton in an area that had been claimed by the Nutty Blocc Crips. He knew the gangs and their respective players. He was also very driven, with an aggressive work ethic. In his off time, he earned a law degree. Eric would become a Los Angeles County District Attorney in 1997 and, in 2001, he would become mayor of Compton and be the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history, holding that position for the next twelve years.

  Young Eric Perrodin, who would eventually become Compton’s longest-serving mayor.

  Cathy Chavers rounded out the unit. She was the first Black woman to work gangs in the Compton P.D. Cathy had long proven herself in the streets. She was highly-effective, able to be tough when it was needed, yet feminine enough to finesse hardened criminals into giving confessions.

  The gang unit, through their meticulous groundwork and reconnaissance, would ultimately document gang members and the organizational structures of gangs years before computerized tracking came into the picture. They were the first to provide gang intelligence to Bob Foy, the director of the Law Enforcement Communication Network, and the L.A.S.D. gang expert Wes McBride that ended up being used for the first computerized gang tracking system, G.R.E.A.T. (Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking, later called Cal Gangs). Foy and McBride worked with gang secretaries, Ruby Kenny and Joanna Brennan at the Compton P.D. to develop the system, which is now used by law enforcement agencies around the country.